I was in a similar situation: I moved several hundred miles, I found I would take a serious loss if I tried to sell the house, and so I decided to rent it out.

I discovered that there are large risks and additional expenses.

Anything that goes wrong in the house, you have to fix. As you won't be living in the area, you'll have to pay someone to fix it. There are many minor repairs that if you were living in the house, you might do yourself at minimal cost. But a renter isn't going to do that, so you have to pay a professional.

I had one time a tenant complained that the water heater wasn't working. I had to call a plumber. He discovered that the knob on the water heater was set to "low". He turned it up to "normal". Problem solved. Bill: $200. I don't really fault the plumber. He had to drive all the way to the house, see the problem, turn the knob, wait around to make sure that solved the problem, then drive back to his office. I had many such trivial problems that cost me significant money.

Are you confidant you will have a renter 100% of the time? When someone moves out, it can take months to get another tenant.

And then there are bad tenants.

I had one tenant who did $10,000 in damage to the property. After they left, I found trash all over the house a foot deep. Everything from paper to rotting food. One bedroom had feces smeared on the walls. Almost every light fixture in the house was broken. I had to do major clean-up, re-carpet the entire house, and hosts of other repairs.

In my area, you can theoretically evict a tenant with 3 days notice. But in practice they just don't leave. So then you have to take them to court. The court will schedule a date a month or two away. Both times I evicted someone, they didn't show up for the hearing and the court promptly gave me a default judgement in my favor. Great. Now I have a piece of paper saying they have to leave. They still don't leave. So now I have to get the police to throw them out. That takes another month or two. In the time from when I tell them to move out to when the police actually throw them out, they are, of course, not going to pay the rent. Plus I had to pay a lawyer. They may be angry at you for ordering them out and deliberately vandalize the property. One evicted tenant stole appliances. Yes, I sued them and won. But they simply didn't pay and disappeared. Now what? I could hire private detectives to track them down, but that would cost more money with no guarantee of success.

My point is not that owning a rental property is always a bad idea. Obviously some people make a lot of money at it. My point is that it is not guaranteed free money. There are many expenses and many risks. If you want to get into the business of being a landlord, if you know how to manage properties or are prepared to learn, great, might be a good business. But to try to do it on the side while working some other full time job? I'd discourage that. Or at least caution you to investigate thoroughly and make sure you know what you're getting into.

I was in a similar situation: I moved several hundred miles, I found I would take a serious loss if I tried to sell the house, and so I decided to rent it out.

I discovered that there are large risks and additional expenses.

Anything that goes wrong in the house, you have to fix. As you won't be living in the area, you'll have to pay someone to fix it. There are many minor repairs that if you were living in the house, you might do yourself at minimal cost. But a renter isn't going to do that, so you have to pay a professional.

I had one time a tenant complained that the water heater wasn't working. I had to call a plumber. He discovered that the knob on the water heater was set to "low". He turned it up to "normal". Problem solved. Bill: $200. I don't really fault the plumber. He had to drive all the way to the house, see the problem, turn the knob, wait around to make sure that solved the problem, then drive back to his office. I had many such trivial problems that cost me significant money.

Are you confident you will have a renter 100% of the time? When someone moves out, it can take months to get another tenant.

And then there are bad tenants.

I had one tenant who did $10,000 in damage to the property. After they left, I found trash all over the house a foot deep. Everything from paper to rotting food. One bedroom had feces smeared on the walls. Almost every light fixture in the house was broken. I had to do major clean-up, re-carpet the entire house, and hosts of other repairs.

In my area, you can theoretically evict a tenant with 3 days notice. But in practice they just don't leave. So then you have to take them to court. The court will schedule a date a month or two away. Both times I evicted someone, they didn't show up for the hearing and the court promptly gave me a default judgement in my favor. Great. Now I have a piece of paper saying they have to leave. They still don't leave. So now I have to get the police to throw them out. That takes another month or two. In the time from when I tell them to move out to when the police actually throw them out, they are, of course, not going to pay the rent. Plus I had to pay a lawyer. They may be angry at you for ordering them out and deliberately vandalize the property. One evicted tenant stole appliances. Yes, I sued them and won. But they simply didn't pay and disappeared. Now what? I could hire private detectives to track them down, but that would cost more money with no guarantee of success.

My point is not that owning a rental property is always a bad idea. Obviously some people make a lot of money at it. My point is that it is not guaranteed free money. There are many expenses and many risks. If you want to get into the business of being a landlord, if you know how to manage properties or are prepared to learn, great, might be a good business. But to try to do it on the side while working some other full time job? I'd discourage that. Or at least caution you to investigate thoroughly and make sure you know what you're getting into.