Purchased a duplex, seeking advice on owner-occupied landlording

[mrteacher]

Hi all,

My wife and I have recently purchases a two-unit home! The closing date is two months from now, so we have some time to figure out how to approach our new role as homeowners and landlords - it's the landlord role that for which I am seeking advice.

The house is a upstairs/downstairs split; we will live in the upstairs unit and rent out the downstairs unit. There are separate entrances for both units.

As we have never been landlords before, I am looking for any and all tips --- particularly from those of you who have done the owner-occupied/landlord gig. Anything specific we should know since we will be living above our renters?

List any and all tips: listing the unit, showing the unit, screening, rent collection, how to setup repairs when necessary, how to format and write a lease, etc.

Thank you!

[sokoloff]

To get from zero to baseline, I'd find a book and read it. I like "No Nonsense Landlording", but there are many to choose from.

The reason I suggest a book is that a book tends to be fairly broad and balanced, so rather than searching for individual topics (and having resulting "holes" in your knowledge), take the curated learning approach and read a book first.

At the risk of adding to the "holes" problem, in many states in owner-occupied housing, you have more freedom to choose tenants without running afoul of discrimination laws. I'm not saying that to suggest that landlords should discriminate, but more than 100% of your profit swing will come from good tenants over bad tenants, so make sure you know and follow your local laws (of course), but spend time thinking about the tenant profile you want. Most profitable tenants are probably not 800+ FICO score, single adult, no kids. Those might be "easier", but "easier" and "most profitable" are not necessarily the same thing.

[ginjaninja]

You must check out the bigger pockets blog: https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/

There are so many different articles on how to make sure that you are screening tenants legally, tips on "house hacking" (which is what you are doing with the duplex), how to handle tenant issues legally, the process to evict, things that will make your rental more attractive to potential renters, and so much more.  I know it can be cancer to go into the comments section on most websites but there are actually a lot of nuggets of info that you can find there too!

Good luck with everything, keep us posted :)