Accidental Landlords and Learning

Getting side income is great, but it’s not necessarily the best for everyone. Here’s a little something for our accidental landlord friends.

You Don’t Choose It – It Chooses You

There are many reasons why someone might call themselves an accidental landlord. The keyword is “accidental”. Certain life circumstances happened, which brought them to this predicament.

Some try to hit a home run on their first few real estate fix-and-flip deals but end up striking out. They didn’t get the numbers right, they paid too much, and now they had to recoup the losses.

You might have inherited a house or are just moving from one place to another with no intent to sell the old home. A good income source on the side, right? But, similar to the people in the paragraph above (real estate investors turned landlords), it’s quite a huge learning curve to overcome.

There is good reason to believe that having a rental income is a fruitful endeavor because it really is. But being a landlord isn’t for everyone. You could be used to chilling at home after work but soon find yourself having to fix a broken toilet after office hours! (And do you know how to do all that handiwork yourself?) For real estate investors, they quickly find out that talking to people with the intent of buying a house is way different from talking to someone to check if they won’t trash the place down while renting it. And speaking of rent, landlords need to regularly make sure tenants are paying rent! The amount and direction of attention are a massive contrast to what you might have been doing before.

This is where burnout usually comes from. We already deal with an infinite number of things, then something else adds to the pile of stress we have to go through. People literally lose hair just from the mental burden that being a landlord entails! If you don’t have this issue, congratulations! You’re well on your way to success. But many unnecessarily suffer from this situation that they’ve landed in. However, this doesn’t mean that hope is lost.

Your Purpose Derives Your Actions

We’ve actually discussed many helpful solutions earlier on – from property management companies, different apps or services you could use, how to identify good or bad tenants, and many more! These are available on our website, and you can read them after this. But the point we’re trying to drive here is a little bit different.

You can learn all these skills, but would they contribute to the kind of person you want to be? For those who just wanted some side income, did you expect to be doing this much work? Are you comfortable continuing to do this in the foreseeable future? Money doesn’t grow on trees, but the idea that you yourself always have to “work” to earn money isn’t always true. Passive investments exist! One way to do this, as mentioned earlier, is getting a property management company to do all the landlord stuff for you, and you just get passive income in exchange for a fee! But, various opportunities are out there outside the rental industry. There’s nothing wrong with starting all over again if it means saving your sanity!

The same idea goes for real estate investors who turned into accidental landlords. Is this whole landlord ordeal worth your time and effort? Sure, a little sacrifice goes a long way, but why not use that “sacrifice” on something that aligns more with the investor you want to be? Do you really want to be a landlord? Is recouping your losses worth learning all these things that you might not be interested in in the first place? If the answer is “yes”, then continue treading that path and jump out whenever you want out. But be wary that you might be on the path to burnout. And trust us, it’s not a good place to be in. You may want to pause for a bit and consider your next step.

Learning and Leaving

If you’re not sure if there’s merit to continuing your landlord adventure, try understanding the nooks and crannies of this job. Who knows? You might be mistaking the learning curve for burnout, but in reality, once you figure things out – after learning different strategies and using various tools, you’re good to go!

Other times, as you learn, you get to figure out other ways of doing things. For example, if you’re on the standard long-term rental train, you might come across short-term rentals and see it as a way to switch things up for the better. Maybe you could convert your property for an entirely different purpose. There are lots of possibilities out there, but it’s up to you to do the research, build (and communicate with) your network, and get experience!

If you’re looking to drive your resources into another business venture, then perhaps it’s worth your time to look into selling your property. You could do it normally through an agent, but you can always take a shortcut through real estate investors like Shorefront Investments! We’re Florida-based real estate investors looking to buy and sell properties fast. You can give us a call at (850) 713-4866, send us an email, or fill out a form on our front page! Want to buy more properties instead? You could be one of our buyers by joining our buyers’ list!

Of course, you don’t have to feel obliged to ONLY contact us. Doing your research is key to making sure that your next move is the right one.