Property manager handles all this, or should do so.

Hope you aren’t paying 10% fees to them and then you have to find a tenant and have the tenant contact you about repairs.

You are lucky to find a two-year tenant in such an expensive place. Most people who can afford the 5 or 6k in rent are much better off buying and getting the tax deduction.

With all the questions you have, I suggest you find another property manager. There are many of them out there, including some with a PB headquarters.

I won’t answer all 75 of your questions, but staging a rental with temporary furniture sounds needlessly expensive, and pets are large risks in rentals and most people do not allow them.

I usually post my listings on zillow. Today I put one on and got 100 viewings and 3 favorites as saved. The tenants contact you and you can screen them with applications, credit scores, etc.

I use to use craigslist, but of lately Craigslist is filled with sketchy people… So my friend recommended and I used Zillow. It’s free. And I like how it automatically cross posts on two other websites….

My listingsnusually include something like

“Must provide proof of verifiable monthly income of 2x monthly rent and a credit score of 750 or above, no exceptions. Must provide proof of renter’s insurance before move in date, no smoking and no pets”

Although I never ask directly, tenants with impeccable background usually volunteer information that they are such and are usually the first to respond.

They usually say something like. “Hi, my name is X, my credit score is 750+, I make X working at employer Y for Z years”….By them doing that, it makes your job a lot easier.

For starters, if they volunteered the information that they work at a major company like Intel, Intuit, Qualcomm, County of San Diego,whatever….Employment/income verification is a walk in the park with the company….And you probably don’t need to do a background check, since that large employer already did it for you…..Chances are you only need to do a credit check with something like Experian tenant check.

The sketchier applicants usually don’t say anything or try to say something to get around rules or are professional renters trying to get you to make a mistake by saying something that can be construed as discrimination. For example: “I have an emotional support animal that doesn’t count as a traditional pet….it’s a pitbull BTW”…Yes, I shit you not. This is where that movie trailer tagline is good advice….. “silence is golden”. run far far away.

Price your unit well, and you shouldn’t have a problem getting a good pool of good applicants. That’s where I use craigslist as a “feeler post”… I’ll use craigslist to post rental in the general location with general pictures not specific to my property and noty specific address just to see how many responses I get within a 5 day window. İf you get slammed with a lot of replies within 24 hours, you priced it to low. İf you only get 1-2 responses over 5 days, you priced it too high. You can adjust it accordingly until you get a decent flow of interest..Then you can use that price on your real posting on Zillow.

This is also what I did before buying a rental property in a given location. Its a good test to see how much you really can fetch for rent.

Renters be aware, a lot of postings on Craigslist aren’t real for this reason.

a slightly related topic. When you are renting something out, get a “burner” email address and phone number from something like Google voice. That way , when you finally rented the place out, you don’t need to deal with any of the applicants that you rejected who might be coocoo… you simply throw away your burner email address and phone number. Kinda like what you should do when you buy a new car or if you planning to sign up for a online hookup website like tinder or bumble, and never want to talk to that person again (obviously not speaking from experience…just some tricks I learned from some of my single women friends) lol…..

Pretty much what flu said.

I would add that the fake listings on Craigslist are mostly from realtors looking for leads.

Flyer, if you rented your places on 12-month leases and used your additional time to work in the labor force, would you have a lower income?

I briefly tried doing short term furnished vacation rentals, and concluded the extra time it took me was not worth the extra income. Not even close.

If you are especially good at marketing, hospitality, and contractor management, and also like it, then sure. By that isn’t most people with 1 or 2 rental properties. And the original poster appeared to have little to no experience in property management.

Really if you have an extra SFH worth 1.6M, you are probably best off selling it unless you have some awesome low tax assessment/mortgage locked in you don’t want to lose. Few 1.6m SFH are renter-occupied for a reason.