Here to learn from Lawrence, Kansas

[Andy Krzanowsky]

We started our first rental this year... we turned our former primary residence into a rental and I had the help of a family member to do all of the paperwork.  My help had over 20 years of property management for a company that leased more than 3000 units.   All of the paperwork was tailored to my single family home.

I'm trying to learn some of the technical terms and calculations as I just kind of dove in head first.

We paid 200k for the house and got the $8k rebate from the Govt that didn't have to be paid back. I put down 25k(ish) and refinanced into a lower rate 2 years after living there. The rate is currently 3.35%.

My mortgage is now $1100/mo after the Homeowners insurance increase for it being a rental. We signed our tenant into a 2 year lease at $1700/mo. The house is a 1600sq/ft slab with 5" trim, granite, nice floors, etc. The home was built in 2010 and we were the original owners. Maintenance should be low and we have a great tenant. They actually put carpet into all 3 bedrooms at their expense. Dream tenant that we will never have again

I obviously would have done things a little different if I knew we were going to move but we ended up moving out of the blue into a bigger house. We actually moved right next door to the rental property. I know that some people will say we are crazy but we did not mind and nor did these tenants.  I'm sure we'll have a needy tenant at some point.   I think that the rent is high enough that we wont have to stress too much about the quality of neighbor. It's a quiet subdivision in a good school district. I'm glad we decided to rent the home and not sell it. Our Realtor said it would have sold easily at $230k but she agreed that we should rent based on the monthly return.

I'm hoping to educate myself further so that I"m ready to invest into another single family home in a few years. I have no interest dealing with duplexes or lower income housing at this time.  Currently I'm starting to try and gain information on funding for our next down payment.  Our house last appraised at 212k but should now be 230ish if we sold it.  That means we have about $80k in equity from the home.

I'm working on figuring out my ROI and some of the other calculators because they are all tailored for people who are purchasing the properties and use info that doesn't seem to apply to my situation.

I look forward to all the information and advice.  

Andy