Advice on Renting out Our House Furnished (Sabbatical?)
My family has the opportunity to move to Copenhagen for a year, and we will need to rent out our home, which is in a desirable section of North Berkeley. We are hoping to rent it out furnished, ideally to a family, and thinking a sabbatical situation would be the best way to go. I would love to hear from others who have done this! Do you include all the utilities (water, garbage, Internet, etc.) in the rental price? Do you get a special lease drawn up (and who do you consult for this)? What kind of yard maintenance can be expected from renters (mowing, etc.)? Do you package up ALL personals, or can you leave books on shelves, toys for kids, etc.? What else should I be considering that I might not be thinking of? I'd love to hear about positive and negative experiences others have had... Thanks in advance! (And I'd also love any advice on Copenhagen neighborhoods, schools, etc. if anyone has it! :)
Parent Replies
Hi there, one word of advice, having learned the very very hard way -- please be sure you include a clause in your lease that the place was previously owner occupied. We had asked our property manager if we should inform our tenants that we might return to our house, when we moved cross country for an indefinite length of time, and she advised against it. Please include the appropriate language (I don't know exactly what it should be since we did not do it and were then exposed to a potential eviction lawsuit...).
Copenhagen is amazing. Have not lived there, but our friends moved there from CA to Nørrebro and we've loved it when we've visited. Renting in CPH can be challenging. I can put you in touch with our friends if you're interested in expats' experiences.
In the international school world, Copenhagen International School and Rygaards are pretty well known. I don’t personally know much about them except that it International school teachers are usually pretty happy to land at either of the schools.
Sounds like fun! The only thing I’d say at this point is that should Prop 10 pass, your single family home falls under rent control in Berkeley again, as far as we can tell. (One reason to consider voting no on 10...)
We did this in 2004 and it worked out well. It was stressful during the "looking for tenants" stage cause at first we were not getting any interest, but then suddenly we got a lot at the end. So don't panic if it takes a while.
Tenants paid the utilities directly. We did set the rental price including monthly housecleaning and gardening, which is what we had. We wanted those folks to have their income while we were gone and we wanted to be sure the house and garden were well taken care of!
We packed up all our clothes, jewelry, special toys but left out books and some toys (age-wise it worked out, but if you have a teenager coming to stay in a 5 year old's room, they probably want you to pack up everything!). We stored all that stuff in the garage (which we told them in advance was not available for them to use). It was a lot of work but good motivation to get rid of lots of stuff!
We asked a local friend to be the "property manager" -- to be their main contact while we were gone. There wasn't much for them to do.
I don't remember how we did the lease.
Renting out your home while on sabbatical - be sure to read this: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/berkeley-sarah-lawrence-pr…;
Make sure that your lease states when you will be returning and reoccupying the house.
You should review any rental laws that may affect your city/county. There have been issues with not being able to get back into your own home without paying the renter to move out (costs in the 100 of thousands of dollars). Also Prop. 10 if it passes will also affect rental of homes.