Investing in real estate is almost always a great idea. No matter what the economy is like there is usually a profit to be made. A very popular way to invest is to buy a rental property and become a landlord. There is a booming rental market right now due to a housing shortage. There’s never been a better time to become a landlord, in fact.
Although there is a lot of profit to be made with real estate in VA, there are times when you could be leaving money on the table as a landlord. There are mistakes that many new landlords make that end up reducing the revenue that they should be making. In this article, we will go over several of the best ways to increase the revenue of your rental property investment.
1 – Screen your tenants
Tenants that don’t pay and end up damaging your property will cost you a small fortune to deal with. Many laws are favorable to renters so it is expensive and time consuming to evict a renter that is causing problems. The best thing to do is to make sure that you never have those kinds of tenants to begin with.
Not only will you save money by screening tenants well, but you will make more money in the long run. When you have good tenants, they will stick around for the long term. The longer a tenant stays in your property then the more money you’ll make.
When the lease is over, it costs money to get another tenant in there and you are not making money while the property sits vacant.
Have a thorough screening process that evaluates whether a tenant will be somebody that will stay long term and respect the property.
2 – Offer perks
People will often pay more money when they feel they are getting some value back. The same holds true of a rental apartment. If you offer them some added value propositions then they will likely pay more money.
For instance, if you have a dedicated parking space in an area where parking is scarce then this will be something a renter is willing to pay extra for.
Likewise, if the apartment is furnished then this will save them a lot of money and motivate them to spend a bit more money to avoid having to buy expensive furniture.
3 – Keep it maintained
Spending a small amount of money now will make you more money later. Maintaining the property is something that seems like it can be neglected. However, as the property degrades, you will get fewer decent tenants and the amount you can ask for rent is going to drop. Not maintaining your property will cost you a lot in lost revenue.
You’ll also have to spend more to fix the problems you are neglecting now since they get bigger later. Patching things up haphazardly to save money just makes for a more expensive fix later on.
