Truer words have never been spoken imo SmileWavy

On the second set of tenants in 7 years. Both good. Get good people in there. How do you do that? Get references and choose the best tenants.Get a bank reference as well. Eliminate smokers.
The less turnover of tenants the better it is for you.

As the above says better to sit empty than have a bad situation...wise words.
G.

PS I self manage. I make up a lease with restrictions - max no. of tenants etc, no smoking, no pets and ours is 55 and over building.

55+ sounds like it should week out some undesirables. Being picky makes sense, assuming you can float the costs if the place is vacant. I'm sure it's tempting to move some one in when its sitting idle.

Does that work with section 8?

I've thought about getting into this more than a few times and each time I read about situation like Fred mentioned and I get spooked.

I'm currently renting. Gave my house to the ex-wife in the divorce, and haven't gotten around to buying a new one with the new wife, yet. Been in this house 4 years now; it was built in the 70's, so encounters the occasional problem. I've also got kids; they break ****.

When something breaks, I fix it. If it was a break caused by me or mine, I eat the cost. If it's a repair that the property manager would have had to take care of (leaking skylights, or something to that effect), I give them a receipt of what I paid to fix the issue, and they drop my next month's rent by that amount. I don't understand ****ty renters. This isn't my house, so I take care of it as good/better than I would my own. It's just courtesy, in my opinion.

Tenants..... they usually suck! I'm coming off 3 vacancies which have put me something like $20K out of pocket. Good thing I'm not a Type A. Wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

We had a property with 2 houses on it. First renter in the main house stayed about 3 years. He was great. Second renter was OK for a few years until his drinking got out of control, still for about 4 years not so bad, bit of a drama queen. Next renters in both houses we evicted after about 4 months (got a squatter in the house out back, was doing crack). Next renter took both houses, stayed about 3 years, ended up about 7K behind and I will never see it. Sold the property last November and made enough to pay off the house we live in.
I doubt I would ever own a rental property again. Happy that those people paid the mortgage down for us though. IF I did not travel so much it maybe, but really not worth the aggravation at this point.

Still waiting for pics of the filthy lesbians...