I’m just going to weigh in on the renting aspect specifically. If you are pretty sure you want to go rent a place, here is what I suggest:
1) Find a place you like and apply to rent it before you move out of your present house. That way you can see if the hit to your credit score would impair you from getting a rental. If it would, you still have your present house.
2) In parallel, check the landlord out.
a) First go to Zillow and see when they bought the place. (anything more recent than 2003 and I’d watch out).
b) Then check the tax records. You can look up the parcel number on the County Recorder’s Search Page, getting all the jot and tittle hassles of the address’ spelling out of the way there. (Their pages are really picky about how you write the address.)
c) Then go to their property tax info page and plug in the parcel number you got. When this page comes up it will tell you who actually bought the place, when, and whether they are in arrears on their taxes.
The steps in 2 a-c) won’t necessarily keep you from getting hosed in a rental, but coupled with your gut feeling when meeting the landlord they can give you guideposts as to situations you might rather avoid.
When recently I did them on a potential rental I found that the listing person was pretending to list it for unnamed “clients”, but was actually the owner themselves. Why would I rent from someone who couldn’t be honest with me about owning the place? So I declined.
Finally, thanks for putting yourself under glass here on Piggington :>. Takes guts, and you are enormously educational to us. Several econ blogs I read speculate about the potential “ruthless defaulters” and how many there may be. And here you are, a “potential ruthless defaulter” under glass, as it were… we get to talk with you and see your thought processes. What you do may be relevant to what thousands of others like you do also.
