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One of the most frequently asked questions we get when we tell people we’re going on a year-long boat trip is: “What are you doing with your house?” 

Most people assume we’re going to sell it and use the proceeds to afford such an adventure. There are plenty of examples of that. For us, being debt free and well down our path to financial independence, that’s certainly one option but it’s not a necessity to make this work.

When we look at it, we’ve got five main options:

1. Sell it
2. Rent It Out Short Term
3. Rent It Out Long Term
4. Hire a House Sitter
5. Crazy Unconventional House Swaps

Sell It

We’ve lived in our home for 20 years. It’s the only home that our kids have ever known. We like it. We have a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in the various remodeling projects we’ve accomplished over two decades. Although it’s tempting to join the “sell everything and travel” crowd, we love our life here. Our kids are connected to the community here and will want to finish out high school in this area and most likely from this home. Because they’re homeschooled, it’s not just their home, it’s also their school. Not returning here would be very disruptive. For all these reasons, selling is probably our last choice.

Pros: 

• We have a paid for house so it would be a big payday; no worrying about our biggest financial investment during the year we’re gone.
•  Invested, the proceeds of the house would earn more than the real estate value would gain in the year we’re gone. 
• We wouldn’t have to pay insurance, property taxes, utilities, and landscape maintenance while we’re gone.

Cons: 

• Nobody in our family wants to sell our home. 
• We’d have to pay to store all our stuff. 
• We’d have to obtain housing when we return for the kids to finish their high school studies here.

Rent It Out Short Term

If we’re not going to sell our home, we need to figure out a way to maintain it while we’re gone. There are jobs that need to be done like mowing the lawn, raking the leaves, and keeping up with a variety of little maintenance things that are just part of owning an old home (built in 1943).

Unfortunately, we typically have at least one critter decide to make their permanent resting place under our house each year, so we need someone to stay on top of it. One way to afford to hire a landscaper, handyman, pay property taxes, and keep the lights and heat on is to rent it out as a short-term rental.

Airbnb is the most popular of a handful of these sites. Because of the city and county we live in, we are somewhat restricted in what we can do. To address an undersupply of affordable housing, Portland has some of the strictest rules in the country for short term rentals. 

(Skip this part if you don’t care to know anything about renting out your home in Portland, OR)

There are two main permit types you can get:

• Type A allows you to rent out no more than 2 bedrooms to 5 overnight guests.
• Type B allows you to rent between 3 and 5 bedrooms to overnight guests.

In addition, either of these come with more regulations. To prevent people from buying real estate for the sole purpose of renting it out on Airbnb, the owner has to reside there 270 days each calendar year and the maximum guest stay is 30 days.

In both cases you have to have an inspection. For a Type A, it appears that not everyone gets inspected (only about 10% by a random selection process) but they’re looking to make sure your bedrooms qualify per building code and that you have smoke detectors, etc. 

Costs

Airbnb is, of course, going to take their small cut. Because of our special city and county circumstances, we have additional taxes collected as well. The city takes 6% and the county takes an additional 5.5%. The application fee for a Type A setup is $65 (plus $123 if you’re lucky enough to be part of the random inspection process). To go with the Type B (renting more than two bedrooms out), the fees jump to $5800 with a $196 inspection, which hardly seems worth it for the duration we will be renting out our home. We’d also need help managing the rental while we’re gone. Somebody to clean, change the sheets, respond to issues. There are services that do this, they just come at a cost.

Pros: 

• We don’t need to completely move out of our home. 
• We can return from our trip and our furnishings would still be in place.
•  We can start renting early to earn some extra income (and sleep on a boat, camp, travel, etc.) and learn the ropes.
• This option feels like we control most of it, which makes it feel more comfortable for us.

Cons: 

• Lots of rules and fees in our area.
• May be a bit of a hassle, even if we hire a short-term rental property manager to keep up with while we’re away.

Rent It Out Long Term

As we’ll be gone 12-15 months, having a single, well-screened tenant for that entire duration might be ideal. Since we’re not real estate moguls, hiring a property manager to handle listing, screening, collecting rent, and maintaining our home would be required. Having the right single renter in for that duration would possibly cause less concern and wear and tear than a constantly rotating roster of short-term renters.

There are a handful of sites that cater to folks looking for a house for only a year-long stay (sabbaticals, medical residents, corporate housing, missionaries on furlough). Again, our city has some quirky laws about rentals, mainly around rent increases and eviction rules (like you may have to pay to relocate your tenant; even though their lease is up). Following our strict local laws is important. That’s why having a rock star property manager to help will be required.

There are also horror stories out there about how things can go wrong when renting out your home. Again, hopefully this (and other potential disasters) could be prevented by hiring the right property management company.

Furnished or Unfurnished?

It would be ideal to not have to move our stuff out of our house and store it for a year. If something gets broken or dirty during the year, the rent would make up for any replacement or cleaning expenses. Aside from some sentimental furnishings (furniture I’ve made, heirlooms, etc.), most things could easily be replaced upon our return. Also, furnishings can be depreciated at tax time if you rent your home furnished, which may also pay for some select replacements when we return. While the income we earn on renting our house is taxable, depreciation (of the property, furnishings, appliances, etc.) might offset a significant amount of that income.

That said, if we rent it unfurnished, maybe selling the bulk of our personal furnishings would be the way to go and we would just plan to re-furnish the house when we return (rather than pay to store a couch that’s just a couch). We buy most of our furniture used on Craigslist anyway and sometimes finding it is part of the fun (the thrill of the hunt, so to speak). It might just be our unique flavor of fun to re-furnish the house when we return. Whether a house rents for more or less based on whether its furnished or not is something we’ll have to figure out. We’ll also have to look at the size of the tenant pool that would prefer furnished vs. unfurnished. Let us know in the comments if this is something you’re familiar with.

Pros: 

• This is a well-established model for property managers to handle. You’re just renting out your house with a one-year lease.
• It potentially could earn money to fund parts of our trip rather than just breaking even.
• With the right tenant, our home would be well cared for (either by them or through a property manager paid for by their rent).
• It could be a blessing to someone looking for a home for a year which might otherwise be a difficult thing to find.

Cons: 

• If we rent it out unfurnished, we have to store our stuff. We have a garage and a shop building here we could cram our stuff in, but they’re not climate-controlled and a tenant may want access to them during their rental.
• Renting for only a year is possibly a limited audience and could be tough to find a good tenant. 
• Our city’s renter-favored laws also limit us.
• There would likely be added expenses upon return (like carpet cleaning, painting, etc.).
• There is the possibility of us having feelings of weirdness with strangers making themselves at home in our home that are unique to a long term stay.

Hire a House Sitter

Probably the most expensive option is to lock the door and walk away when we leave for our trip and hire a house sitter and landscape company to watch the place. This could be as easy as the neighbor down the street, having a live-in house sitter, or paying someone for this service on a periodic basis.

Pros:

• Doesn’t require any of the hard work or logistics to sell or rent our house.

Cons:

• This would be a net negative cash flow.
• Our home would be maintained for us, but we would pay for that as a service.

Crazy Unconventional House Swaps

This wades into potentially sketchy waters for sure, but this works for some people (which is why there’s a whole section on Craigslist specifically for it). Anything from a hippy looking for a place to pitch a tent and tend a garden, somebody looking for a garage to store a vehicle, RV’s looking for a driveway to park in (to live or simply to store), or a host of other special circumstances you find here.

In the house swap section, people from all over the world are interested in trading their home for yours for a period of time. Usually these seem to be for weeks at a time and not years, but there are lots of special circumstances represented. Although we don’t need a swap for the year we’ll be gone, maybe somewhere there is someone who is a live-aboard boat owner who wants to trade a boat for a rental house for a year. Goswap.org seems to be the place for that.

The perfectly ideal (impossible?) situation for something like this

Hit us up if this fits your situation. We’d love to talk to you!

• You are living aboard a Great Loop-capable boat somewhere on the loop but want to be done with the liveaboard lifestyle in 2022.
• You have dreams of spending some time adventuring in the Pacific Northwest and may be having a hard time selling your boat and/or timing your move.
• Maybe you’ve got a Catch-22 where you need to sell your boat to afford moving and living expenses for that year but it’s hard to time it just right.
• Maybe this sounds good to you: in exchange for a discount on the purchase price of your boat, you’d love a year living rent free in our beautiful home in Portland, Oregon.
• Maybe it’s even more perfect in that you aren’t quite sure you want to give up your boat forever, and after a year-long adventure in the Northwest, might want an option to buy it back! 

Pros:

• There is probably some wickedly crazy scenario where this fits both parties like a glove and works out perfectly for everyone.

Cons:

• It’s a long shot to find a situation that works.

Conclusion

Other than laying out some options here, I’m not sure we’ve answered the original question of what we are going to do with our home when we retire early to spend a year on a boat.

We are actively searching for answers to this question. Maybe there is someone in our sphere of friends, family, and acquaintances that has housing needs for 2022-2023 or brilliant ideas we have not even considered.

For now, we are:

• Looking for housing needs within our network of friends and family.
• Educating ourselves about short-term rental rules in Portland.
• Locating a rock star property management company and learning about long-term rentals (furnished vs. unfurnished, etc.).
• Seeking any insights or wisdom from our community.
• Praying that this very big logistical piece of making our dream happen falls into place.