Great questions, Sarah!
The best time to get into your first rental varies person to person – but from my seat, it’s best to hop in when you have the means, bandwidth, and enthusiasm to do so!
I’ll share quite a few thoughts on this below, but if you want to skip my wall of text, I’ll encourage you to download our free Getting Started as a Landlord ebook! It walks you through setting business goals, finding/financing rental property, sourcing your first tenant, and everything else aspiring landlords need to succeed.
From a business perspective, make sure you build up your savings. Even the best tenants could miss a month of rent, and you need to have plenty in the tank or risk undue stress. Personally, I’d recommend saving up at least six months’ worth of mortgage payments in a high-yield savings account (or your favorite easily accessible account of choice) before getting started. While you build up that buffer, consider what you’re working with.
Some folks start with house hacking (aka they live alongside their tenant in the same property). If you currently own a home, this strategy allows you to continue building equity, try out property management, and save on mortgage costs in one fell swoop.
If you don’t currently own a home but want to house hack, I’d recommend looking at small multifamily property like a duplex. You could occupy one half and rent out the other, reaping all the benefits listed above while maintaining greater privacy.
Be sure to tell your lender that you intend to rent out a portion of your property, whether you’re a homeowner already or shopping around.
From there, start learning about how to set up good business processes and experiment with tools – particularly free solutions like TurboTenant. We offer the industry-leading all-in-one property management platform that over 700,000 landlords trust – and best of all, it’s free to sign up.
In terms of checks and balances, I highly recommend leveraging our free calculators. You can determine the potential ROI of a property, optimize your profits, discover how much rent you should charge, and so much more on our calculators page.
And the goodies don’t stop there! We have blogs, on-demand webinars, videos, and more to empower you to build a lasting investment portfolio. Check out all of our educational offerings here, including our guide to becoming a great landlord.
