Putting house up for rent

[Little Dutch]

Thanks folks. I appreciate all of the replies. I'll read through the website and come back with any other relevant data.
There's a possibility we are attractive for a lawsuit. We are deep in debt, but my wife is a DVM and the new house is in a 90's built "premier" neighborhood.

I'm tired of being busy; I had a property management company come by and take a look on Tuesday. They left me we a packet and instructions to call them when they can come take pictures.

This is in El Paso county, Colorado Springs.

[FoxtArt]

Important thing to remember is for an (irrevocable) trust to be effective, it has to be in place before a suit is filed, and with no suit specifically anticipated, e.g. DUI hits someone and kills them, then transfers to a trust the next day, likely not going to work... so people are always reaching for it when it's too late.

I also have seen lots of people that want to do a trust because grandma needs to get on Medicaid in a month... That has to be done five years before a Medicaid app (just a FYI for everyone, five year lookback period, no real remaining loopholes around Medicaid besides an irrevocable 5 years in advance).

Without a trust, Medicaid seems like a gov program to ensure the gov is the primary heir to any estate...

[theGinsue]

Not sure how helpful I can be, but we rented our house our in El Paso County, Colorado Springs for 2 years from 2003-2005 while I was still Active Duty up to my retirement. As a parting shot before retirement, the USAF gave me the gift of PCS'ing me to Hanscom AFB, outside of Boston, MA.

We knew NOTHING about renting a house out but we got mostly lucky overall. We had a lady at church provide rental management services for free. We had a pretty good (needing some improvements) rental contract as well. We ran background and credit checks on all prospective renters.

In the 2 years, we had 3 renters.
The first renters were a couple. The wife was unemployed and the husband was an Active Duty (AD) Senior Airman firefighter at Peterson. We offered a discounted rental rate ($100/month off) if they signed a 2 years contract. They went with the one year. 2 months later they asked about making it a 2 year contract, which we did - from the original date of renting. He was told his AD position was converting to government civilian so he got out of his AD contract. He wasn't offered the .civ position. They stayed in the house without paying rent for 2 months. I wish I'd known about Lease Protection Insurance (see Firehaus's quoted post immediately below). While not too bad, we had to have the house professionally cleaned. We lost more than a couple of grand from that whole ordeal and the deposit was only equal to 1 months rent.

Our next renter was a single woman who was a veterinary surgeon who was moving from Aspen. Passed both checks quite well. After a few months she quit paying rent, but stayed another 2 1/2 months. She moved out of the house in the middle of the night and the house needed extra cleaning before we could re-rent it. With the lost rent and cleaning fees, we lost almost $4k from her. The lost of rental income hurt as my active duty pay wasn't a lot.

Third renter was a car salesman (who was happy to tell you he'd previously owned his own general contracting business), his wife, their pregnant unwed daughter and their large dog. My rental manager allowed him to start moving his stuff into the garage >a week before his contract started. Before moving in he identified some mold in 2 closets (both closets butted up against each other). He found the issue was a roof vent that was leaking around the edge. He offered to fix it - for $630. I called him and set a time to meet him at the home and get a ticket from Boston to Colo Spr. I also made it absolutely clear that he was NOT to do any maintenance nor go up onto the roof (imagine the liability had he claimed to have fallen off?!). I sent a registered letter to him at my home address (this was the only address I had for him) clearly stating he wasn't to go onto the roof nor effect any maintenance on the dwelling or plot (something I later realized you want to have added to your contract ahead of time!) I showed up in the morning 2 days later and waited, and waited...he didn't show. I entered MY home and evaluated the mold and got onto the roof to evaluate the vent. Yep, not black mold and easy to remove (just needed a squirt bottle and some bleach/water mix). When I got to the roof I found that *someone* had already "fixed" the leak (Even as a non-professional I knew the job was total shit. This guy had been a general contractor?) I went to Lowes and got the stuff to remove the "fix" and to fix it correctly. I had just finished the roof re-repair and was in the house preparing to leave when the renter came by. You'd have thought I was in HIS house the way he acted (remember, his contract didn't go into effect for a few more days). He was likely upset because he'd already moved 50% of his stuff into the home (he was only supposed to stage things in the garage before the contract start date).

About a month after I returned to MA I received a "Hold Harmless Letter" that the renter wanted me to sign for the work he did on the roof - and to pay him ~$500 for his services. I refused to sign the letter and to pay him and (thanks to sending him the registered letter which I maintained the receipt for and had sent a copy to the rental manager). While he moved out when he was supposed to and paid for every month he was there, when we returned to the home I found that his dog had severely damaged many of the baseboards around the house (chewed on them) as well as chewed huge holes in the moisture barrier in the basement.

What I learned is I never want to rent again - and especially if I ever plan to live in the rented home again.

Also consider Lease Protection Insurance instead of a deposit. If they quit paying rent, you still get paid by the insurance. If they don?t qualify for the insurance, then don?t rent to them.

Run a credit check and a background check on a prospective tenant. If they have multiple judgements against them or criminal convictions...

I would use a property management company and leave all the legalities to them.

Important thing to remember is for an (irrevocable) trust to be effective, it has to be in place before a suit is filed, and with no suit specifically anticipated, e.g. DUI hits someone and kills them, then transfers to a trust the next day, likely not going to work... so people are always reaching for it when it's too late.

I also have seen lots of people that want to do a trust because grandma needs to get on Medicaid in a month... That has to be done five years before a Medicaid app (just a FYI for everyone, five year lookback period, no real remaining loopholes around Medicaid besides an irrevocable 5 years in advance).

Without a trust, Medicaid seems like a gov program to ensure the gov is the primary heir to any estate...

Lost of great advice here.


My wife's folks put their home into a Living Trust for her when the Medicaid requirement was 3 years. At 23 months after putting it into the trust the requirement moved to 5 years and it wasn't grandfathered under the requirement from the date of going into the trust. A few years mother-in-law passed away. Two years later, my father-in-law needed to go into a nursing home. When he went into the nursing home the home had been in the trust for just over the 5 year point. Medicaid fought us tooth and nail to take the house from us. Thankfully, the county Ombudsman was a family (extended) member. We also had another family member who was a county judge. They helped us fight off the .fed because we'd exceeded the government requirements. Still, since the house was in KY and we were here in CO, we had many extra 17 hour each way trips to KY to resolve this issue. DON'T TRUST THE .gov and get homes into a trust ASAP. (There's been various talk from the government of increasing the time to 7 or even 10 years before a trust will protect the home from the .gov stealing it.)

[Little Dutch]

Read and noted, thanks.