Pod People
We’re still fixing up the house and unpacking (slowly), but have had some time to get together with a few friends. It’s weird, in a good way, to see everyone again after so much time, but there are a few questions that everyone has. One of them is “what did you do with all your stuff while you were gone?”
The explanation leads me to some travel advice as well, so I think it’s a good topic. First off, we rented out our house, unfurnished, while we traveled. It was a big decision, but definitely the right thing to do. We hired a management company to handle the rental logistics and that was also a good decision. They did everything from advertising the property, finding a renter and doing background checks, to collecting the rent. They would also have handled evictions, but thankfully we didn’t have to put that to the test. We never even met the person and basically just received a direct deposit every month from the company. Of course, they take a % of the rent, but they are also available to help the renter get a plumber or handyman if something goes wrong. There’s no way I wanted to be worrying about whether the renter could reach us when we were 15 times zones away and the sprinkler system broke (which I’m told actually did happen and flooded the neighbors’ yard – better to find out after it’s all fixed).
In the end, the house survived pretty well with just a few nicks and our mortgage payments were covered while roamed around the world. It was a huge weight off our minds and wallets. If you plan to do this, consider the market conditions in your area though, and do some research on rent rates for similar properties. You might be able to get enough to cover other home expenses you might have like taxes or insurance. You’ll also need to think about whether you want to do a month-to-month agreement or a fixed time period. Our renter signed for a year, so there literally was no place to come back to after we left. A few months before the year was up, we decided to extend our travels for 3 more months. The management company also worked it out with the renter to stay longer too. Overall, the experience was good and one of the easier things we had to deal with before and after we traveled.
As I mentioned above, we rented the house unfurnished, which meant we had to find a place for our “stuff.” While we tried to sell/donate/throw away a lot of things before we left, we knew we’d be back and would need some of the big items, like furniture and the big screen TV again. The obvious choice is a storage garage, but we went with a “pod” instead. It’s a huge container that they deliver it to your house, you load it up, and they take it away. It’s stored in a climate controlled warehouse somewhere until you call and have it delivered again to unload. The best part about it was that we didn’t have to move things very far… just out the front door into the pod, and then back in again a year later. With a storage garage, you have an extra step of renting a truck and unloading/loading at the site. The only downside is that once the pod is gone, you really can’t get access to your things. You need to be sure that you won’t need whatever is in there until after you are back. For us, it worked out really well and was probably a slightly cheaper option, too.
We finished up moving boxes out of the pod and it was picked up today. It’s seems trivial, but that action made our return feel very real and final. Until then, I had the sense that maybe we could just send it back and hit the road again.
Here’s the Pack Rat pod in front of our very full garage.
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