Tom, I'm new to the Dayton area. What I'm finding is that there was never a real run up in prices here. Hence there wasn't a big bubble to pop, so what you would sell your house at would be pretty close to what it would sell at normally because at least around here, it stayed fairly normal. It probably would take a fair bit longer to sell, maybe a little lower priced.
The Cinncinnati market certainly could be different. Have a realtor do some comparisons. Also pick out an older home or two that you like and see if the prices were significantly different a couple of years ago. Here appreciation has been running about 3% a year.
Regardless, you could rent too. I know I don't have what it takes to be a landlord but I know a lot of people that do it and it can be lucrative.

Renting is painful! Renters have more rights once they are in residence than landlords do. It takes alot to get them out if they decide they don't want to go. Legal fees can eat you up!
Then there's the wear and tear a renter can do on a home.
I don't care how well you screen a renter, how many wonderful referrals you get it's a crap shoot that the person you rent it to will be kind to the home. They could have been wonderful the last ten times they rented but people change and not always for the better AND it's not always the person you rent it to whose the bad guy. Often it's their kid or spouse or SO, which btw you can't get a dime out of cause they either don't have it or can't be found.
We rented a property we had once because the market was awful. NOTHING was moving and I will NEVER do it again.
The time, money and mental anguish we went thru just wasn't worth it and that was before we had to go back in and do repairs so we could get it ready to sell.

If you are prepared to be a landlord, both emotionally and financially, it can work. But it is not a panacea. You need to be able to afford to carry it when empty - this includes both before renting it and when a tenant moves out (until you can find a new one). General advice is to have at least 4 months equivalent of rent in cash so you can survive paying 2 mortgages if necessary.

Are you willing to pay to run credit checks on prospective tenants? Are you willing to spend time showing the place to people who call but then don't show up or show up late? Are you willing to assume responsibility for fixing appliances immediately, not when it's necessarily convenient for you? Are you able to spend time cleaning and repairing between tenants - no matter how well they clean, something always needs to be done before a new tenant comes in.

Is your current home furnished with things you don't mind seeing destroyed and can afford to replace? This can be anything from rugs to walls to dishwashers to closet doors. It is unfortunately not at all unusual to discover sizable damage in a rental unit that the tenant just couldn't be bothered telling you about at the time it happened.

Can you afford to take off work and wait around for repairpersons if the unit is empty? It often takes multiple visits these days, you can waste a lot of time waiting for them to show up.

Try to get your mindset off "getting a fair price" for your current home. Your current home is worth at ANY TIME only what someone else thinks it is. Sometimes it's a lot and sometimes it's not so much. Like the stock market, the long-term trend is upwards but there's a lot of bounces in-between!

Make sure you have the money to carry the house for 6-9 months if you have a delay in finding a tenant.
The other issue I repeatedly see is having a place sit vacant (with carrying costs) so that a particular rent can be obtained.
If the place sits vacant for 1 month with $1200 of carrying costs, you could have taken $100 less per month for an entire year.
This mostly seems to occur with RE agents trying to rent out a place.
They will not (maybe cannot) even consider a lower rent.

It's easy to get the first and last months rent. It's the ones in between that are hard to get!
Kathy G in MI

We have twice rented out a house while waiting for the market to catch up. It worked out just fine. This board is generally so negative about owning a rental that it makes you wonder where landlords come from. I currently have a house being rented by students. It has been 3 1/2 years without a problem. Maybe something bad will happen, maybe not. I just hate to have such a jaundiced view of humanity. Were you posters never renters? What are people supposed to do who can't afford to buy. Should we landlords demand that dogs and kids be assigned to a kennel somewhere?

Devorah, I take the posts as giving feedback about possible things that can happen, especially if the person has never been a landlord, they may not have a clue.

I've mentioned my dad's 2 family house before. He bought it new in 1967 and had he not done it this way, probably wouldn't have owned a home at all. From 1969 until it was sold in 2006 we had a variety of renters, most of them good.

One renter had a fish tank that was left running while they were on vacation. I'm not exactly sure what happened but some how the filter pump started a fire. It was a really good thing my mother was home at the time.

The last renters weren't the greatest. The roof developed a leak over one of the bedrooms, they waited until the ceiling was almost falling down before reporting it. When we entered the apartment to look at it, there was black mold all over the bathroom, they also didn't keep the kitchen clean. The house also had roaches.

One of the biggest headaches with these two was they were never on time with rent and when they paid the checks bounced. I was in the process of having them evicted when we put the house up. My dad's cancer got worst, so getting them out was put off (lived over an hour away, dad had moved out). We decided to leave the tenants with the house, the new owner kept them from what I heard.

The problem with renting and having a house for sale is the tenant doesn't have to agree to show the house. Our agent wasn't allowed to enter their apartment without their permission.

My BF and her DH are landlords and have been for 40 years. Yes, they tell me plenty of horror stories, but they wouldn't be doing it if it was all negative.
She is the one who says, "it's easy to get the first and last months rent".
Let's see, they rented out one house to a young man who was in law school, the very next week there was an ad in the paper for a home that sounded like the one they had just rented. She called on it and sure enough, he was going to sublet (in lease no subletting). Her DH went over there, the guy was sitting at the only furniture he had brought into the place, a card table and 2 chairs. DH told him to get out, gave him a check for his deposit and tossed his "furniture" out to the curb. Hmmm, seems he sued them for getting rid of his "furniture" and breaking the lease. The judgement was for the renter, as her DH had not gotten the sheriff to do the eviction and couldn't prove there was no furniture in there.
Or how about the time he was shot at when trying to do repairs on one of their homes.
Or how about the gentleman that they rented to for years who was on public assistance, was an alcoholic, they only charged him $100 a month (they felt this was their way of doing a charity act) and they paid all the utilities AND had him over every Thanksgiving AND Xmas for dinner AND bought him Xmas gifts. He was a smoker, fell asleep, died in the fire.
The gentlemans family, who had no contact with him, sued friend and DH for loss of future gifts and won.
No, being a landlord can have many downsides, but it must be lucrative.
Good luck, Kathy G in MI (sorry so long)

We have been landlords for 10 years now. We needed to move and buy a house quickly but did not want to sell the acreage with mobile home we were living in (we knew we would want to build on it some day) so we decided to rent. It was a 'modest' house -to say the least- but an awesome location. In the beginning we were 'nice', rented to a couple with 2 kids who were 'friends'. We were grateful to find such nice people who were willing to live in the mobile home...no deposits just pay us the rent please. Well it didn't work out so well with them - they took advantage. So we lived and learned and got more businesslike. Each tenant has taught us something new. At times it was alot of work and alot of emotional stress. When we needed to move again the market was soft in our area so we ended up making our last home a rental too. We just sold it and our primary home and will be moving back to the acreage once our new home is built-funded in part by all the work as landlords. :) For the last 2 years our rentals have been on 'auto-pilot'. Very little time or expense and payments consistently on-time and deposited into our account. We have learned over the years what we need out of our tenants and what we can live with. Our screening process is only half-after awhile your gut tells you alot about who to accept and who not to. We have found that you need to start out as you intend to go on and be firm and clear with people right up front. Do not let little things go or you will fall into the 'give em an inch and they'll take a mile' problem. NO tenant is PERFECT. We are renting right now and I'm sure we will not be viewed as perfect in our landlord's eyes-we had the nerve to suggest their rent was too high for the size and condition of the house, and bugged them about little things like a broken thermostat and non-functional smoke detectors. But, you can find a 'good enough' tenant. One of our biggest mistakes, and one we have seen other's who rent make over and over is this: it is not a charity, it is a business, you cannot make someone else's problems your own. There is a segment of the population who will see your generosity as weakness and they will prey on it. That may sound harsh, but it is reality. Perhaps because someone close to me was a 'con-man' I have a pretty fine-tuned 'BS meter' and a lack of sympathy for hard-luck stories. For the most part DH & I operate as 'Good Cop, Bad Cop'. Guess who gets to be bad cop? LOL! Once when I was feeling soft - I was pregnant and so was our applicant couple, my DH said, they have a shaky financial picture, will you be able to evict Dad, Mom, & brand new baby in the winter when they can't pay the rent? We went with the 2 guys who both had full-time jobs.
Hittlets, whatever you decide I hope something in this long post helps! You might check into your local community education classes, in our area they offer classes on rental management. There are some great books on the subject that can help you avoid many mistakes and if you know anyone who has been a landlord they will probably have plenty to share. You should also get a copy of the landlord/tenant law for your state-ours are available online, and find out the federal laws that you are also subject to. Being a landlord is not for everyone and even if you are good at it you may not 'enjoy' it. For us it was definately the right thing to do and we are fortunate not to have any True Horror stories like KathyG reports, ours pale in comparison!
Good Luck!

In my area, dogs and kids pretty much ARE assigned to a kennel where rentals are concerned. I had to live with my folks for six months until I could afford the down payment on a home when I moved to town. Nobody would rent to me. I was a professional woman with a decent job and good credit, a homeowner myself, with a well trained small indoor dog and two well mannered children. Being a single woman didn't help matters. I was "one of them". I always promised myself if I ever rented out a home, pets and kids if they appeared well behaved would be welcomed.

I have two homes now I could rent out, but what happened to my son (and he is a good businessman) is stopping me. I'd rather take a licking on the profit margin.

He had a well thought-out rental agreement, written with an attorney's help, and inspection clauses built in. These folks paid their rent all right.... right on cue, as they systematically destroyed the interior of that lovely old craftsman built house. No pets were allowed, so they sneaked theirs in to soil and rip up the carpets. The natural woodwork ended up all painted, against the ground rules, the tile fireplace ended up painted purple, a bathroom leak wasn't reported, it ruined the living room ceiling below it instead. The dwelling was infested with roaches and roach powder was everywhere. Eeewww. they threw their garbage down the register vents. When he tried to evict them, the serious damage started in and lasted for ninety days. By the time they left, not a window was intact. And even the landscape was damaged.

When it went to court, the damages were approximately what the house was worth to begin with and it didn't make any difference if the judgement went in his behalf. He never got a cent out of it, they quit their jobs and went on welfare and dropped out of sight.

He ended up having to sell the house as a fixer-upper and got out of it just about the amount of his mortgage obligation. It was a nightmare. The only way I'd ever rent a house now is if it were bare-bones, and easily fixable. When I bought my little speculation house, it took ten thousand to bring it up to snuff and make it livable and that was just to clean and repair everyday negligence and provide a safe heat source, and I figure one go-around with a bad renter would cost about the same amount to bring the house back to habitable condition again. That's a lot of rent payments.

The laws do lean heavy on the side of the renter anymore. It leaves landlords very little recourse. I know there are nightmare landlords, too.

A house is a big investment, and it all boils down to finding people who respect other people's property. I am sure they exist. My father was career military and we have lived in rentals through part of my growing up years. My folks always left those units cleaner then when they moved in. And we children were forbidden to engage in any activities some kids do to damage a house.

Go to mrlandlord dot com. Click on "Landlords, Click Here to Ask a Question". Then you see all the landlord Q and A to the left.

This site is priceless if you are thinking about renting out your home and even if you are already a landlord.

Actually, it is quite amusing just reading the posts, for the most part.

Also you can sign up somehwere on that site for credit reporting capability. It is around $10 or $20 to do a credit check, per person. Always do credit checks on all persons 18 and over that will be living there before you rent to them.

Before you even think about buying a bigger home and have a business partner rent, check the zoning laws. Many times business are not allowed in residential neighboured. Another thing, will he/she be allowing people to his office? What happens if you have a falling out? Someone gets hurt? or angry ? You need some legal advice before you allow this to happened. Your home insurance may not cover this?
As to renting--no way will I do it again