To rent or to sell is the question many homeowners face when contemplating the option of owning an income property. Before you decide to officially become a landlord, here are a few things to consider while you make your decision. The very first factor to evaluate is whether or not you can afford to own two properties. You may be able to refinance your old home or borrow against its equity in order to come up with a down payment on your new one. But, once you officially own both properties, you will incur expenses that you might not expect.

Also, you will have repairs; which are not always as easy to plan for as you might assume. What happens when one of your tenants decides to leave the bathtub running for a few hours on accident? Or worse yet, what if they turn off the heater in the middle of winter, go out of town for the weekend and let the pipes freeze and burst? Sure, you’ll plan for the occasional coat of paint or garbage disposal repair, but oftentimes repair bills come in much higher than you budget.

You’ll also want to think about other factors that are out of your control. What will you do if you end up with a deadbeat tenant? Some areas take months to evict a deadbeat tenant. Will you hire a property manager or handle the property yourself? If you plan to live more than an hour away, you might want to consider turning over some of the hassle to someone else. For example, if you live in San Diego but your rental is in Laguna Beach, it will be a serious pain to drive all that way to show the property to prospective renters. But be careful! Some property managers charge ten percent or more of the property’s monthly rent.

If you choose to sell, current tax laws offer you a window of opportunity to avoid paying taxes on the gains from your former home. If you lived there for any two of the previous five years, you can sell a home, even if it is currently used as a rental property and any gain on the sale of the house is excluded from taxation. The limit is up to $500,000 for married taxpayers filing a joint return and $250,000 for single people. You will, however, still be responsible for the home’s annual property taxes.

Being a landlord may be a serious pain, but it also brings in extra revenue each month. It’s up to you to decide whether or not you’d like to venture into rental property waters. Even if you try it and decide it’s not for you, you can always sell the property and walk away without having to pay a heaping amount of gains taxes. If you are serious about the endeavor, talk with an experienced real estate agent about your options.

Choosing furniture for your own home can be tricky, let alone a property you intend to rent out to willing tenants. Finding a tenant for your buy to let property can be difficult, so the furniture which potential occupants see when coming for viewing at the property could have a serious impact on their decision, perhaps even as big an impact as the property itself.

There exists a contradiction for landlords. While minimising expenditure on furniture will increase profits made from potential tenants, these tenants might not be found quite so quickly if the property is not luxuriously furnished. The decision for landlords to make is what type of tenants they are looking for. Tenants who don’t mind shabby furnishings are probably more likely to damage the property, but attracting a higher class of tenant will require serious investment in furnishings.

Furnishings can change the look of a home, creating warm, welcoming spaces where once there was only a cold, impersonal one. Budget is all important consideration from landlords but there is a wide range of relatively cheap furniture available on the high street. Whether it’s antique or modern, traditional or contemporary, furniture doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.

Decide on a set style to furnish a property; be it modern, casual or traditional consistency is of paramount importance as mismatched furniture can be really off-putting. Ensure you have fully measured the dimensions of the property so you can purchase furniture which definitely fits. The worst furnishings are ones which clog up or obstruct a room, potentially even blocking doors open or closed.

Low priced furniture can be found in a multitude of places such as second hand furniture shops or furniture warehouses like Ikea. Most of this furniture is aesthetically pleasing and nice to most people. When furnishing a buy to let property, don’t spend a fortune on furnishings, but spending to little could mean a waste of your investment. Furnishing a property is one of the most important steps towards letting it.