My wife and bought a new house about 2 months ago. We've only owned the "old" house for two years and thought we could be cash positive if we rented it out.
We did a crapton of work on the new house (replaced flooring, bathroom overhaul, landscaping, fence for our dogs).
About two weeks ago, a friend of my wife's called her and asked her if she could rent our house. My wife describes her as a "super neat freak" who wants to rent for a period of 6-7 years. We signed a two year lease with her, and she showed up with her first two months of rent. Boom. Asked us to "cash immediately".
I'm pretty stoked, and our old house will be rented out about three weeks after we moved out of it for the indefinite future.
I don't know what the future holds, but I'm glad we took the risk to do this. My biggest concern is the tax implications of rentals. Recaptured capital gains, legitimate deductions, etc, etc
One question I had: My wife, and our two daughters, and I have spent a combined 30ish hours working on the "old" house, to get it up to snuff. Deep cleaning, some minor plumbing, spackling, repainting. How do I deduct this from future rent. If I had paid somebody to do it for me, I could have. Do I have to start an LLC and pay all four of us a wage or something weird like that??