Owning a rental property is one way to turn your real estate investment into a real estate profit. Many landlords will tell you that dealing with tenants is one of the most frustrating parts of owning a rental home; tenants that don’t pay, tenants that destroy property, or just difficult tenants that quickly wear out their welcome. While problem tenants can become a pain for an ordinary landlord, they can become a full-blown nightmare for landlords who share a wall with these tenants. That’s right, owning an income suite can seem like a great idea, until your tenants realize their landlord lives just next door. This can lead to late night door-knocking and constant issues, or in more severe cases; vandalism.

Here are a few tips on how to handle life as a landlord in an income suite:

Property Manager – First and foremost, we recommend that you hire a property management company to collect the rent checks, answer the phone calls, and send over maintenance for your tenants. Not only do property managers make a landlord’s life far easier, they help keep your identity anonymous. A tenant can rent directly through your property management company, from the initial showing to the background check and making their deposits. Your tenant may not even meet you until weeks later, so they won’t assume that you own the property. While you may feel you can trust your neighbors, it’s always best to keep a fair distance when it comes to money.

Don’t Make friends – Your neighbor may become your good friends; it makes sense, you live next to someone with similar tastes as you, looking for a similar lifestyle and able to pay a certain amount for a unit. It’s not uncommon to become friends with neighbors, but it’s extremely important not to mix business with pleasure. For this reason you may want to buy the property under an alias or in an LLC, so your new neighbor can’t search your name through public records. Unfortunately, no matter how nice your neighbor may be, it’s easy for them to think you may be more lenient on rent, or even willing to look the other way once or twice if they are having a hard month. When looking at Denver real estate for sale, you have to extremely careful with how you run your numbers, since you need to still make the mortgage, tax and homeowner’s insurance payments each month. Missing only one or two months of rent can turn a profitable unit into a problem unit very quickly. Luckily, Denver has a great market for investment properties.

About PorchLight Real Estate: PorchLight Real Estate Group has the most experienced and knowledgeable Denver real estate agents in Colorado. For more information about homes for sale in Denver CO or specific neighborhood homes please visit www.porchlightgroup.com.