I've been thinking of integrating a rental property into my income stream for a few months now, and it seems that a unique situation has appeared that I may be able to take advantage of. Currently I run an online business, and part of the reason for the desire to get involved with a rental property is that I see rental properties as a smarter and more stable long term investment as compared to an online business that can dry up in a few years time.

Currently I live in a very low income city on the east coast. I rent a room from a landlord month to month without a lease. I have never missed rent and I've been here for about 6 months. There are three other tenants here, also without a lease who rent month to month, who are going to be leaving for different reasons over the two months. One is moving to a different state with his girlfriend, one is leaving to a new city, and another is leaving the state to go to school.

My online businesses are currently completely based out of this house. The tenants and landlord have been very understanding and flexible, and I'm able to use our shared spaces to do a lot of the processing I need to do, as well as use part of the basement for storage. I'm currently at the point where I do, however, need more space. The only space that would be practical would be on the 1st floor, which is all common space.

In seeking to kill two birds with one stone, I'd like to approach my landlord and offer to purchase the house from him. The estimated mortgage is cheap enough that even if I didn't have any tenants, it wouldn't really be a financial burden, and would actually be only marginally more expensive than renting commercial space for my growing business. If I had one tenant it would be much cheaper.

So I would be an owner-occupant, and would be running an online business out of at least one of the rooms in the house that is common space (probably the dining room). Any tenants that moved in would have to be okay living with their landlord and also okay with not having a dining room. I feel like being an owner-occupant would be a good way to get started in this venture.

I've watched plenty of YouTube videos, I've read some blogs, and I think I have a general sense of what the process would need to be for me to screen tenants, keep up with city ordinance and state laws and so on. I also am lucky enough to be friends with a person who owned 10 rental properties in this city in the early 2000's. He's been a valuable resource.

I'm just throwing this out there to see what this community thinks. Please ask as many questions as you'd like as I don't know what information would help you make the best informed response.

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