Deciding To Rent Out Is Tough, But Spare Homes Pay Their Way

Deciding To Rent Out Is Tough, But Spare Homes Pay Their Way

Own a spare home? Many who do cash in by renting them out. Whether that’s personally worth it depends on circumstances, objectives, and changing wrinkles in the tax code.

Physician Dorothy Dugger offered to rent out her home near Tampa, Fla., for the Super Bowl.

“According to my accountant it’s tax-free money,” she said.

It is. She’ll owe no federal tax on up to 14 days’ rental income a year, but cannot deduct expenses. Renting a 15th day makes all income taxable.

PMI is not much help

PMI is not much help

If homeowners have been dutifully paying mortgage insurance all these years, shouldn’t the mortgage industry be covered in case of disaster? Like now?

Not so much, say industry professionals, who helped me sort out this strange conundrum. It’s strange because private mortgage insurance, or PMI, can be a large chunk of change for many of us.

But it tends to be required if you don’t put at least 20 percent down on your mortgage and that’s a difficult nut to crack with the average home price being well over $200,000.

You, the Good Citizen homeowner, get nothing for your payment, except the privilege of borrowing money. It’s all for the lender, who is supposed to be protected in case you go into foreclosure.

WL occupancy suit’s fees turn to tenants

WL occupancy suit’s fees turn to tenants

Three Purdue University students who were part of a costly lawsuit over West Lafayette’s occupancy ordinance must now foot the bill for more than $52,000 in fines and legal costs.

Jill Schuler, Kelly Underwood and Melissa Wood were among five women who lived in a rental home — owned by Jerry and Patti Weida — at 112 Sylvia St. during Purdue’s 2005-06 academic year.

The city’s ordinance allows only up to three unrelated people to live together in areas zoned residential.

A lease the women signed holds them responsible for court-ordered fines that came after a 2007 bench trial in Tippecanoe Superior Court 2, according to the Weidas’ attorney, William Kealey.

Suffering St. Lucie County called a ‘disaster’ area

Suffering St. Lucie County called a ‘disaster’ area

With unoccupied homes and families in distress, a St. Lucie County leader wants to declare a state of emergency to release $17.5 million in reserve funds.

The Baehrs — Derek, Kellyanne and their two young daughters — are five months behind on their mortgage payments. They sometimes eat at a soup kitchen and shop at a food pantry. They expect to lose their three-bedroom suburban house before the end of the school year.

”This is just awful, and I know that we are not the only ones going through this,” says Kellyanne, 37, an accounting clerk. Derek, 40, is disabled. “We used to try to go day by day. Now we are just trying to get to the end of each day.”

The details of the Baehrs’ descent into financial ruin are singular, but their predicament has become painfully common. Port St. Lucie, once the fastest-growing city in the country, full of families lured by affordable dream homes, is now pockmarked by more than 10,000 properties in foreclosure and drained by a 10.5 percent unemployment rate.

In Florida, Despair and Foreclosures – NYTimes.com

In Florida, Despair and Foreclosures

Desperation has moved into this once-middle-class exurb of Fort Myers, where hammers used to pound.

Its straight-ahead stare was hidden amid the chatter of 221 families waiting for free bread at Faith Lutheran Church on a recent Friday morning; and it appeared a block away a few days earlier, as laid-off construction workers in flannel shirts scavenged through trash bags at a home foreclosure, grabbing wires, CDs, anything that could be sold.

“I knew it was coming,” said Gloria Chilson, 56, the former owner of the house, as she watched strangers pick through her belongings. “You take what you can; you try not to care.”

Welcome to the American dream in high reverse. Lehigh Acres is one of countless sprawling exurbs that the housing boom drastically reshaped, and now the bust is testing whether the experience of shared struggle will pull people together or tear them apart.

Local company finds stability dodging bubbles

Local company finds stability dodging bubbles

In a state notorious for asset bubbles, quick money and grand dreams, Bill and Joan Clark are decidedly out of place. Masters of discipline, they built a real estate empire over decades, focusing on safety and income —- and using almost no debt.

Bill Clark will retire next week as chairman of the board for Realty Income, an Escondido company the Clarks founded 40 years ago that is one of the region’s most successful businesses; traded on the New York Stock Exchange and valued at more than $2 billion.

The couple grew the company slowly. It stuck to its principles, ignored the booms and spurned leverage even as much of Wall Street gorged.

The company’s conservative balance sheet means that while other firms struggle to survive and unload assets at fire-sale prices, Realty Income is sitting on a pile of money, eyeing expansion.