Mortage higher than market rents

[Armand Sepulveda]

I'm very interested in renting out my current primary residence and moving to a different city but the mortgage I have on the property is higher than most of the monthly rents for similar properties in this market. Any suggestions? I live in a small town about 40mins east of Orlando FL and I want to hold onto the property. My mortgage is $1850 and most rent around here is $1700 for a 3-2 around the same sq footage.

Some ideas I have:

-Rent the property out at a loss. Not sure if it's common practice to rent a place out and lose money on it in the short term until rents inevitably increase or if this is a dumb move. If this was a smart move how would I determine the pace of rents increasing to figure approximately how many months I would need to take a loss?

-Offer lease-per-room options. Managing multiple leases starting at various times in one property sounds annoying but I'm thinking the individual rents could be greater than one lease on the house. Perhaps I could charge $900 a month for the master and $700 for the other two rooms apiece. Has anybody seen success with this kind of strategy?

-Only offering 1-month to 6-month leases and advertising it as higher rent because of the shorter term flexibility. Although if I were to do this not sure where would be best to advertise.

Any other ideas would be super appreciated

[Theresa Harris]

Sell your property and buy a rental where the numbers make more sense.