Can I rent a home after achieving FI and no fixed monthly salary

Question

Hi, I have came across different articles here and in the internet on how we can do better financially while just renting home (never buying a property) and investing into ETFs long term to achieve financial freedom. And I agree with this too. But here's my concern - I would still need to rent a home after FIRE phase. I know that real estate agents ask for pay slips and bank statements before agreeing to renting us out the property. After FIRE (assuming I won't have any monthly salary) , is it still possible to rent by just showing the ETF investments that I own (as per the current real estate process of renting) ? If not, wouldn't it mean that we would need to own at least one property before early retirement in any case? Any insights on this is appreciated, thanks.

Regards,
Deepak

Answer

Hi Deepak, very good question.

If you can show the real estate agents that you receive enough investment income to pay the rent, that should be fine in most cases.  Just explain you live off investments and earn $X per year.  You can also improve the application by having a decent amount of cash in the bank.  This will often put agents/owners at ease because they can see you’re someone who’s good with money and even if the investments don’t do well for a period you have a bunch of cash to keep paying the rent anyway.

At the end of the day, it’s up to the owner of the property whether they choose your application over someone else’s, so we can’t control for everything.  But I would say the cash makes a big difference if an owner/agent seems unsure of your situation.  You could also offer to pay some rent in advance as a gesture which may help also.  I’ve applied for a rental in the past while not working and it was fine, but in a hot market where there isn’t many rentals (which is not often), it is possible they choose someone who has 2x full time workers instead of someone with investments… simply because our situations are more unusual, which is silly, but that’s how people’s minds work sometimes.

And remember, at any time in the future, if you ever decide it’s not working as smoothly as you hoped, you can always sell shares to buy a home.  That option is always there.  Yes prices go up, but your wealth is going up too.

You don’t need to own a property if you don’t want to :)

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