Managing Your Rental Property

At first glance the idea of renting out your property and earning a nice stream of side-income may seem easy – but it is actually more involved than that. What most people don’t realize is that you need to manage your rental property, and that can be tricky and time-consuming.

While there are a number of different areas that you will need to covert to manage your rental property, some of the most important are:

• Determining and increasing rent

It is important that you set a fair market rate for rental, which will largely be based on the competition in your area. Additionally you will have to keep an eye on the market to know when to increase it in line with inflation – otherwise you’ll be losing out.

• Furnishings

Generally tenants prefer furnished apartments, and they command higher rates.  However at the same time you need to be careful about your budget so that you don’t invest too much in furnishing and end up losing money in the long run.

• Finding and interviewing tenants

In order to find tenants you’ll need to take lots of good photos, list your property for rent, and highlight its main selling points and features. After that you’ll need to arrange to interview the tenants, go over any rules and restrictions, and come up with a lease agreement for them to sign.

• Managing tenants

Once your property is tenanted, you’ll need to manage you tenant and collect rent, handle any complaints or requests for repairs, and collect the security deposits. It is important to keep your relationship with your tenants strictly a business one, so and handle issues that may arise such as late payment of rent or any damages to the property professionally.

• Inspecting and maintaining the property

As the landlord it is your responsibility to maintain the physical structure and ensure that it complies with health and safety standards as well as other laws. Periodically you will need to arrange to inspect the property, and carry out any require maintenance work that needs to be done. If the property is insured then the insurance company may have certain conditions that need to be complied to as well, and may carry out inspections of their own.

• Managing finances

Part of managing the finances includes collecting rent on a monthly basis, but it also encompasses paying the mortgage, insurance, property tax, and so on. Depending on your lease agreement you may have to manage the utility bills as well, as well as any other fees that need to be paid.

As you can see there’s a lot involved in managing a rental property, and it will take time and no small amount of effort. Rather than handling it all yourself you may want to look into property management Cornwall companies that will manage it on your behalf – for a fee. Although it will mean that you make a bit less from renting your property, it will take a load off your shoulders so that you aren’t constantly having to manage it personally.