Furnished apartments, corporate housing, it’s pretty much all the same thing. If you bought your home within the last 5 years, chances are you have seen the value drop. If you sold now, it’s quite possible that you would lose money, which isn’t a good thing. There are millions of families who have found themselves in this situation, but there is a way out, corporate rentals.
I spent a lifetime living and working in Dallas, until last year, when I got an offer I really couldn’t refuse. An offer to work with a leading credit company in San Francisco with a salary raise and a significant promotion. In this market, it really was too good to refuse.
However, it wasn’t all plain sailing. I have a family, a home in Dallas and a problem to solve. My company would provide a relocation allowance and the use of their corporate apartment for 90 days while I found my feet. That was great for the move, but I still had to figure out what to do with my home.
The logical step was to sell, but I had bought only six months before the recession, on the high, so I would lose up to 15 percent of what I paid for it. Even with a better salary, that wasn’t something I was going to countenance. That salary wouldn’t stretch far enough to pay for somewhere in San Francisco and keep this house going either.
I would love to take credit for the idea, but it was in fact my wife who came up with the solution. We would keep the house in Dallas and rent it out. Neither of us particularly liked the idea of random people living in our home, we had no idea how they would treat it, or leave it. The idea of having to find several months mortgage money if a renter skipped out wasn’t a nice one either.
So, some further research got us onto the corporate rentals idea. We would rent our home out to an agency who would in turn rent it to company clients as corporate housing. That way we would have a better class of tenant and the money would be underwritten by the agency.
Our primary concerns with having our home wrecked were settled. There would be no bailing without paying the rent, or stripping the house for the copper in the pipes to sell to fund a habit, or any of the scenarios that our imagination’s created.
Not only could we retain a foothold in Dallas, the home would pay for itself. Then, once the mortgage was paid it would become our pension. While the real estate market may still be stalled, the rental market is flourishing. The corporate rental market even more so. Other people in our situation, relocating would enjoy the same benefit we were going to have in San Francisco.
The decision made, we had the entire house redecorated, tidied up each room and moved happily to San Francisco. Safe in the knowledge that our family home of so many years was still being useful as a corporate rental for some nice family moving to Dallas.
If you bought your home within the last 5 years, chances are you have seen the value drop. If you sold now, it’s quite possible that you would lose money, which isn’t a good thing. There are millions of families who have found themselves in this situation, but there is a way out, corporate rentals.
I spent a lifetime living and working in Dallas, until last year, when I got an offer I really couldn’t refuse. An offer to work with a leading credit company in San Francisco with a salary raise and a significant promotion. In this market, it really was too good to refuse.
However, it wasn’t all plain sailing. I have a family, a home in Dallas and a problem to solve. My company would provide a relocation allowance and the use of their corporate apartment for 90 days while I found my feet. That was great for the move, but I still had to figure out what to do with my home.
The logical step was to sell, but I had bought only six months before the recession, on the high, so I would lose up to 15 percent of what I paid for it. Even with a better salary, that wasn’t something I was going to countenance. That salary wouldn’t stretch far enough to pay for somewhere in San Francisco and keep this house going either.
I would love to take credit for the idea, but it was in fact my wife who came up with the solution. We would keep the house in Dallas and rent it out. Neither of us particularly liked the idea of random people living in our home, we had no idea how they would treat it, or leave it. The idea of having to find several months mortgage money if a renter skipped out wasn’t a nice one either.
So, some further research got us onto the corporate rentals idea. We would rent our home out to an agency who would in turn rent it to company clients as corporate housing. That way we would have a better class of tenant and the money would be underwritten by the agency.
Our primary concerns with having our home wrecked were settled. There would be no bailing without paying the rent, or stripping the house for the copper in the pipes to sell to fund a habit, or any of the scenarios that our imagination’s created.
Not only could we retain a foothold in Dallas, the home would pay for itself. Then, once the mortgage was paid it would become our pension. While the real estate market may still be stalled, the rental market is flourishing. The corporate rental market even more so. Other people in our situation, relocating would enjoy the same benefit we were going to have in San Francisco.
The decision made, we had the entire house redecorated, tidied up each room and moved happily to San Francisco. Safe in the knowledge that our family home of so many years was still being useful as a corporate rental for some nice family moving to Dallas.



