IL Postcard

How We’re Lining Up Rental Income Overseas

Date: 04/15/2009 Author: Dan Prescher

Suzan and I have decided to spend part of each year in Ecuador. There are lots of good reasons for this, and I’ll talk about them in upcoming notes.

But the big question for us right now is: What do we do with our newly remodeled house in sunny Merida, Mexico, while we’re up in the Ecuadorian Andes? With the pool and the gardens, it’s not exactly a lock-and-leave unit.

The obvious answer is to rent the house while we’re gone. It’s a strategy many expats who live abroad part-time use. We also know a few full-timers who actually fund their travels and provide themselves with a steady cash flow by owning properties in several of their favorite places. They stay in one while renting the others.

We’ve never rented our properties before, but we’ve already taken the two most-important first steps:

1.) Arrange for a rental manager. If you don’t plan to be on hand to do it yourself, find a good local rental management resource. We’re lucky in Merida that there are several rental managers who do excellent work. We know this from experience…we stayed in quite a few rentals ourselves waiting for our home to be remodeled. And we know lots of other expats here who have used local rental management. It didn’t take long for us to figure out who provided the best service.

(TIP: One major qualification in our rental market is the ability to speak English. Most renters of expat properties are expats, and most of them are Canadian or U.S. An excellent rental manager in all other respects who doesn’t speak English is a liability.)

Rental management rates vary in our market. Some take 15% - 20% of the rental amount, while other work for a flat fee (average is around $175 per week depending on the size of the property and length of the rental period). With your rental manager, you can work out details like the best price and minimum rental period for your market and whether or not to include utilities in the rental price.

2.) Develop a web page for your rental property. The Internet is now the happy hunting ground for global renters. If your place isn’t on the web and easy to find, your rental prospects are pretty dim unless you have your own list of potential renters.

There are several ways to go about getting your property on the Internet, but one of the easiest and fastest is VRBO, or Vacation Rentals By Owner. For $249 per year, you can post a listing with photos and contact info on what is probably the web’s most-visited site for vacation rentals.

VRBO promises “easy online setup--if you can type, you can do it.” That’s true for the basic service, though if you want more bells and whistles--maps, photos, credit card processing, etc.--it’ll likely cost you a little more time and money. In just over an hour, I was able to construct a basic listing.

TIP: Have all your ducks in a row before creating a VRBO listing--your prices, dates available, amenities, owner profile, any photos you want to upload, etc. VRBO gives you a number of pages of information to fill out and 30 minutes to complete each one. If you go over the 30-minute limit, you’re automatically logged out and have to start over. But when you have ready everything you need, half an hour is more than enough time. And you can always leave some holes in your info and go back and revise your listing later.

Stay happy and healthy,

Dan Prescher
Publisher, International Living

P.S. If funding your life overseas with real estate rental income sounds like something you’d like to do, then make sure you’ve got a seat at our upcoming International Real Estate Investment Forum. We’ll show you how--and where--you can do just that today (and point you to excellent-value deals all over the world). Plus that’s just the beginning. For a full rundown on the dozen or more ways (and places) we’ll show you how to turn a profit with properties overseas, go here now. The Early Bird discount of $500 expires in two days. That’s this coming Friday. So don’t delay. Reserve your place now while some seats still remain, and you save big. Details here.

To read more IL articles about rentals, see:

Rentals Overseas: To Rent...or Not to Rent