1st House Hack Renting Rooms

[Drew Harris]

Hey BP,

I'm in the process of purchasing a 5 bedroom 2 bath property owner-occupied. I'm in the Fort Worth, TX area. Any guidance on the following would be really helpful for me as a newbie in this:

1. What is best tool/software to screen tenants?

2. The best way to approach utility splits?

3. How do you handle the necessities splits Dishsoap, Laundry Soap, Household cleaning supplies?

4. Typical increase in insurance costs?

5. Best practices for common areas?

6. Posting house rules (yes will have in the lease but...) signs in common areas is it too much? 

7. Handling tenant guest's rules?

Sorry if this a lot but anything else you I may have forgot please drop the fruit of knowledge from your tree! Also if anyone is in the DFW area I would love to connect. 

Thank you in advance!

[Joel Calkins]

Hey Drew!

Congrats on the new deal I'm pumped for you! 

Hopefully I can answer all of your questions but here goes:

1: BiggerPockets advertises a pretty nice software/app called RentRedi, it has lots of cool features like tenant screening and payment services so I encourage you to check them out.

2: For utility splits if there isn't a separate meter already it's probably not the cheapest move to put them in. Some things you can do is charge a flat rate and cover the difference or call the utility company and get a 12 month average and make that a part of the rents.

3: Personally I don't believe in furnishing or supplying anything for my rentals because my market simply doesn't call for it.

4: Depending on your area and what the replacement cost for that building is, inflation can effect your policy differently, for this one I would call your provider and ask.

5: Common areas much like an HOA would charge, put a common element/area clause in the lease stating the tenant is responsible for a percentage of costs for upkeep of common areas.

6: This may depend on state laws, but I would look into if your area requires ADA compliant signage but if you wanted to put a no smoking sign so long as it's stipulated in the lease then it's your call.

7: You can't always do much about guests so long as they don't stay indefinitely or cause a danger to other tenants. When drafting your rental agreement and lease I would go over these details with a real estate attorney.

Hopefully this helped some. feel free to ask me any other questions!