How to Rent Out Your House in Western North Dakota

Most people who rent out their house in western North Dakota never set out to become landlords. A job moved them to another basin, another state, or back home. The house went on the market during a slow stretch, and the offers did not cover what was owed, or did not come at all. Renting it out became the obvious fallback, and suddenly they were running a small business they never applied for.

That is what people mean by an accidental landlord, and it is one of the most common ways a rental comes into being here. The energy economy moves people around, and it does not always move the housing market in the same direction at the same time. Becoming a landlord this way is not a mistake. Doing it without a plan usually is.

If you are still deciding whether to sell, our post on whether to sell or rent your house works through that decision. This one starts after it: you have decided to rent, and you want to do it properly.

Start with the numbers, not the listing

The most common mistake is listing the house before knowing whether renting it actually works. Three figures settle that.

• What it will realistically rent for. Not what an online estimate says, and not what you need it to rent for. In small western North Dakota towns the automated estimates are often unreliable, for the reasons covered in our guide to rental comps. Look at what genuinely comparable houses have actually leased for recently.
• What it costs to carry. Mortgage, property tax, insurance, any utilities you will keep paying, lawn care and snow removal if the tenant is not responsible for them, and management fees if you use a manager.
• A reserve. Furnaces, water heaters and roofs do not fail on a schedule, and a month or two between tenants is normal. Without cash set aside, the first large repair can wipe out a year of small monthly margins.

If the rent covers the carrying costs with room left for vacancy and maintenance, renting is a reasonable plan. If it only works when every month is full and nothing breaks, it is a bet rather than a plan. Our explanation of cash flow versus profit on a rental shows how to lay those figures out.

Three calls to make before a tenant moves in

A house you lived in was set up around you living in it. Three arrangements usually need to change, and each one is a question for the professional who handles it, not something to assume.

Your mortgage lender

Many mortgages taken out on a primary residence include an occupancy requirement. Ask your lender whether yours does, whether it still applies, and whether they need to be told the house is becoming a rental. It is a short conversation, and far better had before a lease is signed than after.

Your insurance carrier

A homeowner's policy is written for an owner who lives in the house. Once a tenant lives there, the risks change: your belongings are gone, the tenant's belongings are not yours to insure, and liability looks different. Ask your carrier what kind of policy a rented house needs and what it costs, then put that figure into your numbers. Ask, too, whether they recommend requiring tenants to carry renter's insurance.

Your tax preparer

Rental income has to be reported, rental expenses are treated differently from personal ones, and renting out a former home can change how a later sale is taxed. None of that is difficult for someone who handles it every day, but it is worth an hour of their time before the first rent payment rather than after the first tax season.

None of these three conversations is one a property manager should answer for you. What a manager can do is tell you what the house will rent for and what running it will cost, which is the half of the picture these calls do not cover.

Prepare the house as a rental, not a home

The house you lived in and the house a tenant will rent are the same building held to a different standard. A tenant wants it clean, working and neutral. It does not need to be the house you would have wanted to live in.

• Move everything personal out. Furniture, stored boxes, the garage shelving full of tools. Belongings left behind blur what is included in the rental and who is responsible for it.
• Fix safety, water, heat and security first. Those are not optional in a rental, and they are the problems that grow fastest when left.
• Inspect the whole house before you list. It gives you a repair list now and the baseline you will need at move-out. Our rental property inspection checklist walks through it room by room, including the fall checks that matter most here.
• Skip upgrades a tenant will not pay for. Fresh neutral paint and a thorough clean usually pay for themselves in how quickly the house rents. A kitchen remodel usually does not, at least not in rent.
• Decide what stays. Appliances, window coverings, a snow blower. Anything that stays should be written down, because it becomes something you maintain.

Finding and screening a tenant

This is where accidental landlords are most likely to cut corners, often because the first applicant is a friend of a coworker and seems fine. The tenant is the largest single variable in whether renting works, and time spent choosing carefully costs far less than choosing badly.

Our guide to advertising a rental property in western North Dakota covers where tenants here actually look and what a listing needs to earn a showing. The tenant screening process covers what to verify and in what order. The short version: use the same written criteria for every applicant, verify income and rental history rather than taking them on trust, and do not skip steps because you are in a hurry to stop paying for two homes at once.

Managing it from somewhere else

Most accidental landlords in the Bakken have also moved away, and that changes the job more than anything else on this list. A furnace that fails in January needs someone at the house within hours, not a phone call from three states away. Showings, move-out inspections and snow complaints all need someone local too.

Owners cover that in a few ways: a trusted friend or relative nearby, a handyman on call, or a property manager. Each can work. The one that reliably fails is having no plan at all and discovering it the first time something breaks at night.

If you are weighing management, our guides to what property management costs in North Dakota and questions to ask a property management company cover how fees are structured and how to tell a manager who knows this market from one who does not.

Bakken Property Management manages long-term residential and multifamily rentals across western North Dakota. If you have become a landlord without planning to, see how property management in Williston works, and we can tell you what your house should rent for.