Renting own home

[Don O.]

I will be moving soon to a new home, and plan to rent my current home - wasn't intentional but possible structural concerns w/ a basement wall killed a sale, so renting has become a good "second choice" for us. Luckily, I was planning to buy a property for rental in the next year and had some reserves and an open HELOC with no balance available to help me purchase the new house. I've lived in my current house almost 14 years and have repaired about everything. AC, Furnace, most of the electrical, plumbing, HW Heater, roof, etc. is new(er). My monthly mortgage is $2100 and the HELOC payment will be about $160-$200 unless interest rates go crazy. Tenants will pay utilities and I expect to rent for $2600-$2650. That should leave me with a "profit" of around $300/month which I plan to keep set aside for any repairs or fixes that I'll need to make after tenants leave. That's a little over 10%, which sounds like I'm good. Am I missing anything in this delta? I'm wondering if I should put aside more $$ up front of my own as a plan for problems.

My long-term goal would be to have someone live here 3-5 years and then either want to buy, knowing there may be a future expense w/ the structure to fix (so they'd be buying well below market value) or to maybe find another investor who would want the property if rents continue to climb. We're in a good school district just outside of Chicago... just have a 100+ year old house that I'm not willing/able to sink a lot of money into now when I need to move.

TIA for any suggestions on what I may not be thinking about.

[Allen Clark]

A couple thought come to mind. 

1. If you want to have a tax free capital gain when you sell the home then you must have owned and lived in your home as your principal residence an aggregate of at least two of the five years before the sale (this is called the ownership and use test). You can claim the exclusion once every two years. So as that time is up think about if you want to sell. I am not an accountant or tax expert, seek your own advice etc.

2. This structural issue will not be going away. When do you plan to fix it? If you want to sell in a few years you'll still have to address this issue. I like to keep my properties maintained in ready to sell condition. You never know when you might need to sell.