How to Make Extra Money as a Landlord — Without the Hassles

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If boosting your monthly income by becoming a landlord sounds good but seems impractical, it’s time to rethink your approach.

An emerging breed of companies is making it easier for the average person to become a landlord. These companies help retail investors find, buy and manage rental homes across the country.

Investability, for example, provides access to more than 800,000 listings, helping retail investors search for single-family homes to become rental properties.

The company offers property and rental data comparable to that available to institutional investors. Investability also offers due-diligence documents like home inspection reports, according to its website.

HomeUnion — whose motto is “You invest, we can do the rest” — helps with every major step in the process of investing in rental properties. This enables you to profit from rental properties located anywhere in the country, not just in your area.

HomeUnion helps you with some steps, like finding a rental property and deciding how to pay for it, according to the company’s website. For other steps, it actually does the work for you. These include any necessary renovations and day-to-day management of the property.

Tyler Laprade, a 24-year-old software developer in Manhattan, tells CNBC that he brings in money from rental properties in Ohio and Alabama via HomeUnion.

Laprade was already invested in stocks but wanted to diversify his assets by buying homes in the $50,000 to $100,000 range. But he didn’t have the time to do it all himself, and homes in his price range are scarce in Manhattan. He tells CNBC:

“The market’s good sometimes, it’s bad sometimes, but rental income is consistent. Each month you get the same amount from the tenant.”

CNBC reports that companies like Investability and HomeUnion are an outgrowth of the foreclosure crisis, when institutional investors scooped up distressed single-family homes. As a result, single-family homes emerged as an asset class of their own.

To learn more about becoming a landlord, don’t miss “10 Keys to Finding and Owning the Perfect Rental Property.”

What do you make of these services? Let us know what you think in a comment below or on Facebook.

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