Question for yall… I have a home in NW Houston, low interest rate on a 15 year loan, 3 years in.

I am taking a job as an Expat and they will pay for my housing in the new country. The role can be 3 years or potentially 6.

My question is should I sell, house has not increased much in value over the past 3 years. Or should I rent?

If I rent what are good tips? I would assume I will need a property manager as I will be out of the country.

My current thought is to sell most of my belongings and rent the home. Someone also said I could rent furnished, I may not be against that, but do not know if that would be the best route.

What are yalls thoughts?

The house is 5 bedrooms 4 bath ~3,500 sqft.

Renting makes the best sense if you do plan on returning stateside within 3-6 years. If you do end up renting, make sure you get a VERY GOOD property management company that will look after your home.

If anyone has any good recommendations, I will gladly take a look at any suggestions!

I do third party property management for a few expats from this board on top of my own properties that I manage. I'd be happy to help you with property management or even just connect with you to give you advice if you'd like. My cell is in my profile.

I do third party property management for a few expats from this board in addition to my own houses that I manage. I would be happy to help you property manage it or just connect to discuss and give you advice from one landlord to another. You can shoot me a PM here or a text, whichever is easiest for you. My cell and email are in my profile.

We spent about about 7 years abroad as expats. While overseas the company pretty much covered everything except food/vacay. I kept my house in Houston energy corridor and rented it out the entire time to other expats, and continued aggressive pay down.

Green Residential managed it the entire time. Yeah it sucks when you wake up at 6am on the other side of the world and have an issue, the positive was I came back to a fully paid off home (~800k). When we came back it had been long enough that we decided it wasn't our longer term home. Ultimately we sold and rolled the equity into our current home.

Thanks I will reach out!

Tormentos said:

---

We spent about about 7 years abroad as expats. While overseas the company pretty much covered everything except food/vacay. I kept my house in Houston energy corridor and rented it out the entire time to other expats, and continued aggressive pay down.

Green Residential managed it the entire time. Yeah it sucks when you wake up at 6am on the other side of the world and have an issue, the positive was I came back to a fully paid off home (~800k). When we came back it had been long enough that we decided it wasn't our longer term home. Ultimately we sold and rolled the equity into our current home.

---

Yeah I feel like renting it is the way to go and I'm thinking of doing the same maybe sell on return!

Rent it out.

BeatHellOutOfTU said:

---

What are yalls thoughts?

The house is 5 bedrooms 4 bath ~3,500 sqft.

---

No so Fast!

Yeah, it seems some people have had some success renting out a 3,500 sq ft home but let's take a pause for a minute. And ask a few questions.

1. Have you rented out a property before......do you have much experience with renting out property?

This is important to ask, especially if you are hiring a property manager to manage your property. Be ready to pay them a finders fee for the initial tenant in addition to monthly property management fee. They may even charge you for tenant renewal. Just be advised. Since you are moving out of country, this is the way to go, but it has consequences.

2. Are you prepared to go 3 months vacant?

This is a very different situation than renting out a 1000 sq ft property. Your rental pool is significant lower than one seeking to rent a duplex or small Single Family Home (SFH). A economy downturn will have a HUGE affect on the ability to rent your 3,500 sq ft home vs a small 1300 sq ft home.....just be advised. If we experience a recession, be ready to feel pressure to accept lower quality tenants to keep it rented.

3.Have you considered the amount of damage a tenant can cause with your large home?

Bad tenants pop up no matter how you screen. A very nice home can be ruined by a pet or tenants that are irresponsible. The smaller the home the less damage and time required to get it back in the rental game.

4. How much carpet do you have in the home?

Whatever amount of carpet you have, be ready to replace it soon after your first tenant leaves.

5. How much yard do you have at your property?

Tenants do not like to waste money maintaining your lawn, but your HOA may have something to tell you. Tenants do not like high water bills to keep grass green.

Now if this is a home that you must have when you move back and you really want to live in it, then if may be worth the risk to rent it out. However, renting property that, when bought was not the focus of renting out, usually is not an ideal property to rent.

This is good info for discussion. I can finally take a breather after listing a half a dozen homes for sale today, so my replies are in bold below:

Quote:

---

1. Have you rented out a property before......do you have much experience with renting out property?

This is important to ask, especially if you are hiring a property manager to manage your property. Be ready to pay them a finders fee for the initial tenant in addition to monthly property management fee. This is typical for Houston. They may even charge you for tenant renewal. Some do but I do not, as an example. It's a one page doc that is pretty easy to update and send to everyone for signatures, so I don't charge for renewals. Just be advised. Since you are moving out of country, this is the way to go, but it has consequences.

2. Are you prepared to go 3 months vacant?

This is a very different situation than renting out a 1000 sq ft property. Your rental pool is significant lower than one seeking to rent a duplex or small Single Family Home (SFH). A economy downturn will have a HUGE affect on the ability to rent your 3,500 sq ft home vs a small 1300 sq ft home.....just be advised. If we experience a recession, be ready to feel pressure to accept lower quality tenants to keep it rented. I think the longest downtime/vacancy I've ever had on a house is 7 days. My average is probably 3 days. In my opinion, if you are on the market for 3 months, you are overpriced or there is something wrong with your house. In recessions, you will see folks buy fewer homes and go more toward rentals. So there should still be a market for rentals even in a down market. Every locations is different, but Houston has a diversified workforce and doesn't really have problems with building too many homes even in good times. Houston is one of the least "sexy" markets in Texas and when other markets were spiking 45%+ in prices, Houston was increasing less than half of that. Conversely, when those markets saw zip codes falling 45%+ in the last couple of years, Houston is still trudging along with overall price increases of 2-5% per year.

3.Have you considered the amount of damage a tenant can cause with your large home? Completely true. Its very important to screen properly.

Bad tenants pop up no matter how you screen. A very nice home can be ruined by a pet or tenants that are irresponsible. The smaller the home the less damage and time required to get it back in the rental game.

4. How much carpet do you have in the home?

Whatever amount of carpet you have, be ready to replace it soon after your first tenant leaves. I only have carpet in two of my houses. There are better options for flooring for rentals, but carpet is also one of the cheaper flooring options there is, so it's definitely a trade off. I have carpet in one house that is 11 years old now and has been through 3-4 sets of tenants and their pets. I get it steam cleaned during rollovers and it looks great even at 10+ years. I also replaced carpet in another house because it was starting to show its age and then the next tenant destroyed one bedroom worth of carpet when his friend tried to clean it with bleach or something like 6 months after I replaced it. So they got to pay the carpet company to come back out and replace it midway through their lease. In general, I'm not a huge fan of carpet since I'm allergic to everything, but some people prefer it. To each their own.

5. How much yard do you have at your property?

Tenants do not like to waste money maintaining your lawn, but your HOA may have something to tell you. Tenants do not like high water bills to keep grass green. Very true. Sign your lease accordingly.

---

A buddy of mine rented his house in Dallas while he took a long term assignment in Australia and it was lived in real good during those few years. I know not all property management companies are the same, but I wouldn't want to come back stateside and live in my old house that a bunch of other people had been in. Maybe that's just a minority opinion though.

I did 5 years as an expat.

We sold. Don't regret it. When you opt to go abroad on assignment, the next possibilities for jobs opens up immensely. And repatriation is usually clunkier than most think in terms of jobs available and where you might go on a return home. Way more people than you think choose to localize in their host country at the end of assignments or find jobs not where they started in their home country. And those that do return where they came from tend to get the itch with the extra money in their pockets.

OP didn't mention location which is a factor. I have a ~3k square foot home that's about to turn over for the first time in 3 years and my vacancy is going to be 4 days. I too have a 15 year term and a rate of 3.125% and I'm not sure you could let that rate out of my cold dead hands.

OP, run the numbers on it. If you can cash flow while someone else pays the note, especially on that 15 year term, I wouldn't hesitate to do it.

I also can't recommend Jamie enough. He has been a tremendous help over the years. And after your time overseas you want to sell but are also not going to be in the area, I don't see any reason why you couldn't also handle that from elsewhere.

I'll also add that if you're moving this summer, you need to get it on the market as fast as possible. My home turns over July 1st and we signed the new lease about two weeks ago. Those are the kind of tenants you want, ones that plan ahead.

We are currently repatriating after a 7yr assignment abroad, so this is all very fresh and real.

We had initially opted to sell our 3300sqft house but due to other circumstances ended up renting, which turned out to be the best decision as we essentially used our rental revenue to pay down our mortgage completely in that time.

Your circumstances may be different, but I would suggest calculating rising home insurance premiums and the fact that if you are on an extended assignment, you will lose your homestead exemption - these are real cost impacts that you should consider.

We did not use a property management company and chose to self manage 6 time zones away. We did this because we had already dealt with major appliance replacements (HVAC) and had a new roof installed prior to starting our assignment. Because we had trusted maintenance contacts, we did not see value in payment premiums to a 3rd party.

Lastly, we never had an issue finding tenets and often had double-digit applications to review from. Not the best business decision, but we often favored young growing families and would at times drop the rental price 10% or more to incentivize home up-keep and issues resolution by the tenet.

Lots more to reflect on. Feel free to DM for mre specifics

Thanks for all the input yall! Sounds like renting is the way to go. We don't see this as a forever home but I think it makes sense to rent and build equity, especially as my company is covering my housing costs abroad.

Maybe one more question, is it better to rent furnished or unfurnished?

Someone told me furnished often gets a good bit of a premium and better renters.

Thanks all!

As for timing, as long as my visa is approved July 1 would be the homes open date which I assume is good for families moving in the summer.

That's generally when all my leases start, or that week.

What were the tax implications of moving back into a home you rented? Specifically, depreciation. Did you take a hit on depreciation?

as an expat, also think about whether or not you will want to return back to the same place. any chance you would move elsewhere?

also, when you live out of the country it can be nice to not have to worry about anything you own back home. house, cars, etc all require some bit of attention.

Gator92 said:

---

What were the tax implications of moving back into a home you rented? Specifically, depreciation. Did you take a hit on depreciation?

---

I'm not an accountant, but if you're worried about the hit on depreciation, why not just not take it in the first place?

Red Pear Realty said:

---

Gator92 said:

---

What were the tax implications of moving back into a home you rented? Specifically, depreciation. Did you take a hit on depreciation?

---

I'm not an accountant, but if you're worried about the hit on depreciation, why not just not take it in the first place?

---

Wish I hadn't. My accountant never asked me and I had no idea I'd have to pay it back...