First time renting my house please help!!

[Nicole Cardona]

Just bought a house and will now rent out my current property in VA. I have been researching and there are sooo many things out there. I also been seeing websites that you can use to screen tenants and manage your property through their site. Are these good tools and which site is the best? I plan to manage myself, at least for my first time around and then maybe a property manager down the road. Any info and experience is greatly appreciated!

[Karl B.]

When I started out I went to my local apartment association and they did credit/criminal checks for me which was great. Plus they had a lot of resources pertaining to local laws and gave me access to a lease written for local laws as well as other paperwork (5-day notices, lead paint paperwork, etc.).

A lot of people use Zillow or Apartments.com for screening. I use Apartments.com for payments and it's kind of a pain (especially when a tenant gives you an incorrect e-mail address - long story) but they don't charge for ACH payments which is nice (though it takes almost a week to process). 

And so looking into Zillow or another similar site might be worth checking out.