If you rent or lease, I wish you much better luck that we have had! We have two homes - the one we live in, and a condo that I owned before I met my husband. We leased the home to someone, and it went well for about 6 months. We came home from our wedding in June 2009 to no rent check, and it was a struggle from then until the end of the lease in September of that year. We cleaned it up, painted etc. and decided to put it on the market. With the current real estate market, we had no luck selling, so we decided to go back to renting. The second time around we were hoping to have a better idea about what kind of tenant we were hoping for. We ended up with an older person, with a job in law enforcement, had the same job for over 20 years. Wow, thought we were so lucky. That was back in May. Nope - not lucky after all - we found out about three weeks ago that our tenant has moved out (in the middle of the lease) and left behind a former significant other who is now encamped in our condo, but of course is not paying rent or returning phone calls. So we are currently working our way through an education in the legal system and what is required for evictions in NYS. When we are through this situation, we are finished with renting. It is not for us. Even if we have to stay the course for a couple of years, we are going to wait for a buyer. We find this landlord stuff way too stressful!

We plan to put our house up on the market the 1st of March, 2011.  If it does not sell by the end of summer, our real estate man will rent it for us.  He has all of the paper work; which will make it all legal.  It sounds like a good deal.  The rent will be high enough to almost make our payments & escro.  We will have to pull a little money out of our pocket to make up the difference and put money in a kitty for repairs.  There will be a liability limit (am I saying that correctly?), so we won't be winged and dinged for every little repair. . . . only the big ones, and the renters will have to pay the beginning of the repair bill.  (There is a word for that.  I just can't think of it right now.)  Our relator will oversee the rental and take 6% of the money.  He has other rental property and says that there is a need for it in the community.  Yes, we know him personally and can TRUST him!  It will be a relief to us.  Problem being - the house won't be able to be sold while it is being rented and we won't have cash up front to buy a nice big rig when we begin on the road.  Tell me what you think about this idea.  Thanks. 

Thanks for your response, CKerr.  I just checked out your blog.  I see that you already have a rig in place.  That has to be helpful. . . . but we are creative and can still make this work.  Our son has an RV that we can use next winter for a workcamping experience.  That will give us a good try at this way of living and let us know if this is actually what we want for the next 10 years or so.  I have heard that it takes about 3 fulltiming months to get used to the idea and like it.  I hope they are correct.  

Good point about paying off the house and using the rental property as retirement income.  We are blessed to be living in a good residential area, so that might be a plan.  I figured last night that we could triple up our principle payments while on the road and cut our debt down in no time.  We would have to workcamp to make this possible.  It would be probable. 

Maybe we will meet you at Sieverville.  We plan to be there in April and ask alll of our questions.  I am looking forward to it.  RV-Dreams' website has helped us a lot!!