What you should know
The math most landlords haven't run lately
Take the rent, subtract the mortgage, taxes, and insurance, and it looks like it cash-flows. Now subtract a month of vacancy every couple of years, a turnover (paint, carpet, cleaning, a locksmith), the management fee, one major repair a year averaged out, and your own time. A house that "makes $300 a month" is often netting close to zero — while sitting on $100,000 or more of equity that's earning nothing.
That equity is the real question. If it were cash in your account tomorrow, would you buy this house, with this tenant, to earn what it's earning? If the answer is no, you already know what to do.
Dallas-specific headaches
The City of Dallas requires single-family rentals to be registered and subjects them to inspection, and code enforcement in the city is active — an exterior violation on a rental generates a notice to the owner, then citations, then liens. Evictions in Dallas County go through the Justice of the Peace courts and, when contested, take longer than the statute suggests. Neither is a reason to panic; both are reasons a lot of out-of-town owners decide they'd rather not own a Dallas rental from Denver or Phoenix anymore.
How selling with a tenant in place works
The lease transfers with the house, and so does the security deposit — Texas law requires the new owner to take responsibility for it and the tenant to be notified in writing. We handle both at closing. If the tenant is month-to-month, behind, or in a holdover, that's ours to sort out afterward; we don't ask you to evict first, and we've done plenty of them.
Housing-assistance leases transfer too. We'll do the paperwork with the housing authority so the payments continue to the new owner.
Taxes on the sale
If you've depreciated the house for years, a sale triggers depreciation recapture plus capital gains. A 1031 exchange can defer both if you're buying more real estate; it has strict timelines (45 days to identify, 180 to close) and we can close on a schedule that fits one. If you're just done with real estate, a CPA can tell you what the bill looks like — it's rarely the reason not to sell, but it's worth knowing before closing.
