How to budget for costs associated with a rental property that we own?
Suggestions on how to budget for costs associated with a rental property that we own? Do we set that up with a separate YNAB account?
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That's what I do for mine. I also have a separate checking account. In the rental budget, I have a category for Owner Draw where I allocate the funds that don't go to mortgage, management fees, or maintenance. When I transfer the Owner Draw to another account I treat it like any other expenditure. Then in my main budget, I treat it like another income event.
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jenmas that's what I did when I had a rental, except I didn't have YNAB, I just kept a paper ledger, but YNAB would be better. I'd just start another budget, not another account.
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Hi Mark Richardson !
There's two ways you can handle your rental property. You can create a "Rental Property" category group and then list different categories in that category group to cover the different expenses. Or, you can create a separate budget (in the same YNAB account) just for your rental property. If you have a business account or a separate account used just for the rental expenses and income, I'd definitely suggest that route - like Jenmas mentioned.
I think feedback from others who've done this (or something similar) would be helpful, so I'm going to move this over to the Small Business section to hopefully pick up traction over there. :)
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Faness at YNAB Thanks for the help and direction. The separate budget sounds like the best option, so I'll give that a try.
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Faness Thank you for mentioning this-- it's what I've done, but I'm a n00b when it comes to landlording, so I was afraid I was Doing It Wrong. ;)
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Alia Gee I'm happy this helped! It sounds like you're right on track! Good luck on your landlording ventures! :)
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Thanks @Jenmas, I'll give that a try!
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I must admit that this is one of the things that I am really battling with in YNAB: that you cannot logically apply INCOME to specific categories without messing things up. I cannot set up a separate budget for my rental flat, because I do not run a separate account. If could create a category group that can handle both income an spending, OR categories within Income that can be filtered, it would be dead simply to manage these transactions within my main budget. Getting an Income vs Expense is dead simple on the Expense side (I can filter for my flat expenses) but there is no way to filter out my flat income, because all Income is lumped over simplistically into a single basket that cannot be filtered.
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Hi Henri vd Merwe !
Income that's categorized under Inflow: To Be Budgeted is filtered by the Payee. If you have a "Rental Income" payee, then in the Income vs. Expense report it will have it's own line. I have a separate payee for every form of income I receive - interest, salary, reimbursements, etc.
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Faness
It still would be very helpful to be able to toggle on and off the different income sources in the Income v Expense report like you can do for the different categories in your expenses. I have a rental property and currently only have a single checking account and want to know how it is performing on its own, but all my other income sources get lumped into the report. At this point I'm considering creating a separate checking account just so I can create a separate budget and track it all separately. I wouldn't have to do that if you could simply toggle the income sources.
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Jonathan Thanks for letting us know you'd like to see an option to toggle those income sources in the Income vs Expense report! Would you mind sending that over to our design team as a Feature Request? They collect it—every last bit of it—which helps us determine what's up next for YNAB.
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Faness "I have a separate payee for every form of income I receive - interest, salary, reimbursements, etc." Can you please screenshot an example of this for me? Is changing the payee field an accepted/common practice? Thanks!
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Faness Is there a way to change payees in bulk for several transactions? So far, I don't see that as an available option. If not, please add it. Thanks!
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Faness I was just playing with the Income v Expenses report. It seems like you can choose which expense categories to include in the report, but you cannot choose which Income Sources to include in the report. If you could choose the income sources, then we could choose the rental income payees and the rental expense categories. That would be cool.
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Tomato Rain Here's a quick screenshot of what that might look like! You can customize your payee, even if you've imported the transaction. Click on the Payee field, make the changes you'd like and click Create.
You can use the Payee Management feature to cleanup your payees by editing, deleting, combining, and changing your auto-categorization rules to your heart’s content! -
Tomato Rain If you want to track income from a particular person or company, the best way is to use the Payee field with those changes above. Each payee will be listed separately in the Income v Expense report allowing for easy distinction.
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I'd like to hear more details on this topic. I created a new account for my rental, but I can't figure out how to budget separately for it. When the rental account is highlighted and I click "budget," it just goes back to my regular checking budget. Was that supposed to happen? Thanks for the help!
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Hi Slate Blue Stallion !
Yes, when you click on "Budget" it takes you back to your budget page. There, you can create a "Rental Property" category group and create a separate group of categories just for your rental property. If you want a separate budget just for your rental, you'll need to create a separate budget by clicking on the name of your budget, in the upper left hand corner, and then selecting "New Budget". :)
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I've recently started landlording/property management and also use YNAB to budget. I have set up a separate checking account, however this was in order to keep my business finances from my personal ones. In YNAB I created a new budget completely separate from my personal budget for the same reason of keeping business and personal finances separate.
Jonathan I very much agree that being able to separate income sources just as you would expenses would be very helpful in analyzing how each separate property is performing.
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I have been tracking rental income, mortgage payments, and other costs associated with the rental property in a category within My Budget. After reading this thread I created a new budget called Rental.
But I'm unclear how to move the money budgeted in My Budget to this Rental Budget. Also unsure about linking accounts. Say I have $10000 in the rental category of My Budget, and $15000 in the account I use to handle the property, what do I do?
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Steel Blue Colt If you get in touch with our support team (you can do so right from your budget!), we can walk you through the steps of transitioning from your "My Budget" to your "Rental Budget." :)
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I know this is old, but budgeting concepts are ageless.
2 years ago I bought a duplex. I live in one unit, and the other finally rented this month. Yay!
I don't feel I can just flag tax deductible expenses any more; I need to do real budgeting. But I want to keep it simple — multiple budgets don't work for me, I forget about whichever one is not open.
I do have help with this ... a property manager who is deducting expenses before the remainder is deposited in my "landlady" bank account. At the end of the year, I'll get an expense statement. They are handling routine maintenance, snow removal, etc.
I set up a tracking account for my Landlady account. I'll let it build an emergency reserve. Then, every so often, I'll transfer excess money to my personal checking, and budget the income then. I have a budget category (and savings sub-account) for larger duplex expenses; to cover big-ticket goals like air conditioning.
I think this will work for me. If not, it's easy enough to switch things around.
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ZCademy Sounds like that will work great since your expenses are removed before you get that deposit!
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