This blog is going to cover some tips to make being a landlord a great experience. Owning rental properties means dealing with tenants. Many investors either don’t like or don’t want to deal with tenant and property issues, so they will hire a professional property management company. But if you decide to self-manage, here are some things you should understand.

First, remember asset protection. Title to your rental should be held in a well-designed, protective LLC. Not all LLCs are created the same! What you get online is not sufficient. It should be created by a competent asset protection attorney. This will protect you and your personal assets from tenant slip-and-fall lawsuits.

Second, have really good lease agreements. There are numerous free forms available. So I would recommend getting at least 3 or 4 options and read through them. See what clauses are in them and which are important to you. If you need to amend or revise one, you should work with an attorney to draft it as you may accidently do something that might hurt you.

Third, make sure you have the appropriate liability insurance. This is the one you get
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OK, this is our fourth blog on understanding rentals. If you haven’t, go back and read the previous three for a better understanding. We covered the possible local laws restricting short-term rentals, how they are taxed at the federal level, how to hold title and how to save money on the self-employment tax.

This article is going to discuss another surprise tax that many investors don’t understand: sales and lodging taxes. These are the taxes all hotels have to pay, and they are at the city, county and state levels.

Short-term rentals, like those offered on services such as Airbnb and VRBO, have always been required to collect and remit sales and lodging taxes. Historically, the large vacation rental websites viewed these occupancy taxes as the responsibility of the host or homeowner responsibility, not the platform.

The platform was positioned simply as an advertising website or marketplace, and transactions occurred directly between homeowner and traveler. These taxes, however, were often overlooked and not well understood by homeowners and hosts.

As the short-term rental industry has continued to grow, these lodging taxes are increasingly part of the industry narrative and becoming much better understood. Short-term rentals are now ubiquitous, which has sparked pushback in some communities, with a new and heightened focus
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There has been a big push for landlords to look into short-term rentals (think, Air BnB) as opposed to longer-term (monthly or yearly) typical rentals. The reason for the push is that renting a property nightly can bring in much more per month—even including vacancies. It has become almost an entirely new real estate investing technique.

While a great way to make additional rents, there are things that you should understand before jumping in with short-term rentals. The first is legality. All rental properties are regulated by the city in which they are located. You will also see county or state-wide regulations. But typically, state laws govern the relationship between landlords and tenants and other larger matters. In most jurisdictions, the specifics of what types of rental properties are allowed are done at the city level.

This city-sponsored legislation arises because cities are charged with protecting neighborhoods and the “look and feel” of their respective cities. And they have a lot of authority on rentals. Most cities require landlords to register ALL their rentals properties, pay a licensing fee and make determinations as to how many unrelated tenants can live in a give property. If you are a landlord, you should take a serious look into your city’s regulations!

But, short-term rentals are a new and different kind of renta
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