Ever Thought About Becoming a Landlord? Here are our favorite and least-favorite parts of the job
Lately Garrett and I have had a bit of a ’time’ with landlording. There was the Airbnb guest who locked themself out, called in a locksmith, and drilled out our deadbolt (wish they would have called us so we could have told them about the 2 SPARE KEYS on the property). The long-term lease that tenants asked to break on Feb 1 (the hardest month to rent in Seattle for us). A burst water pipe. Another Airbnb guest who booked for one person but turned out to be a large party from LA that left behind dozens of soggy cigarette butts on the deck, pools of dried beer on the hardwood floors, and a mountain-sized pile of used linens.
Point is, landlording is not always fun. And sometimes we dream about selling everything and getting out of the landlording gig. But honestly, that’s been the exception for us. More often than not landlording has been just fine. And since we get questions from people thinking about becoming landlords all the time, I wanted to share our favorite and least-favorite parts of the job.
all photos of our Ravenna House (which was a short-term rental before we sold it in 2018), sources here
Before we get into the lists, I should mention that Garrett and I have been landlords for 10+ years now. We currently have 1 Airbnb property and 4 long-term units and we manage all of them ourselves (although we do hire out most of our Airbnb turns now).
What we love about being landlords
Money
Of course this is number one on the list. Because landlording takes work and investment and if we didn’t earn money at it, we’d sell our properties and do something else.
Low time commitment
As far as jobs go, landlording doesn’t take much time. Airbnbs take considerable more than traditional, long-term rentals, but even that is much, much less than a full-time job.
Flexibility for the family
One great thing about landlording is that you can often bring your kids to work with you. Whether it’s showing a prospective tenant a unit or dealing with a maintenance issue, our kids often come along with us.
People
We’ve met some really cool people through landlording from all over the world. I’d say about 95% of tenants and Airbnb guests have been responsible and kind.
A place to stay
The best part of having an Airbnb in Seattle (the Dexter House, our former residence) is that we can stay there ourselves. It ends up getting booked so much that we don’t actually stay there as much as we thought we would, but we still use it a few times a year to enjoy our favorite big city.
Our least-favorite parts of landlording
unpredictable
Probably my least favorite thing about owning and managing our rentals is the lack of a schedule. There’s no routine and it’s really hard to predict when you’ll be needed.
emergencies
When issues do come up with the properties, it’s often an emergency and you have to urgently deal with it.
People
This item was also in the ‘pro’ category, but as I mentioned, about 5% of people are unkind, irresponsible, or just make bad choices.
landscaping
With one exception, we’ve found that long-term tenants don’t tend to take care landscaping. Nothing gets watered or mowed or trimmed or kept up. Now you may be thinking ‘isn’t that the landlords job?’ and it can be, depending on the property and how the lease is set up. We often leave the fenced backyard under the tenants care (and have even left a lawn mower in the past), and hire a service to deal with the front yard. But even so, the landscaping takes a beating.
Those are the top things we love and don’t love about landlording. Would you add anything to the list?