If you’ve recently become a landlord or you’re looking into this as something you might potentially want to do, know that you’re making a good decision.
If you have the available funds, investing them in property is one of the best options. Not only is this a great investment opportunity, but you’re also allowing someone to live in a property you’ve carefully designed to be as pleasant to reside in as possible; you’ll be opening up opportunities for people to comfortably live and work in your town or city. It’s a lucrative, rewarding adventure, and you’re sure to get a lot out of it.
That said, none of this means that it’s easy (in fact, nothing worth doing is easy). While you might be considering this path for what you think is a relatively simple way to make money, you’ll need to reevaluate your expectations. The reality is that being a landlord is much more complicated than it was in the past, and you’ve got to spin many different plates at once, constantly keeping your eye on the ball, to succeed.
While the process taken as a whole is far from simple, there are many ways to make the fundamentals easier, and that’s what you’ll learn about in this article. Here are four key areas to focus on in the early days and how to make things more streamlined.
1. Use Dedicated Property Management Services
The digital revolution has improved many areas of life, including making owning rentals much easier to manage.
Property management services and software have evolved a great deal in the last ten years. Today’s packages enable you to take care of virtually every conceivable aspect of being a landlord all within one dedicated dashboard, greatly reducing the amount of paperwork – and the associated delays – inherent with managing tenants.
You’re able to use these systems to solve problems from start to finish. Tenant screening services allow landlords to bypass the often laborious and inaccurate process of screening tenants manually, making the whole thing quick and easy for both parties. You’ve also got advanced marketing systems, like the ability to list on the best sites all at once, as well as the tools to track expenses and general financial matters.
Each of the above and more allows you to run a tight ship, centralizing all the information you need to ensure it’s to hand at all times and that the most important tasks are completed as quickly and efficiently as possible.
2. Create a Detailed Maintenance Schedule
One of the best things you can do for yourself early on is create a detailed maintenance schedule. Winging it never works, as there’s simply too much to manage.
Fundamentally, you need a calendar and checklist, and these should be combined within a property management service or within something like Notion. Notion allows you to easily combine a calendar with your to-do list, so that anything written on the latter appears on its scheduled date on the former.
Of course, there’s then the matter of what to put in there. General maintenance checks are usually performed once per month, and this will include matters like checking there aren’t any leaks or signs of mold, addressing any basic breakages a tenant has alerted you to, and other more routine elements of keeping a property safe and secure. You’ve then also got the stuff that needs to be managed closely, but not as frequently (perhaps every three months, biannually, or annually), such as electrical safety, fire safety, gutter cleaning, and more (these should all have been addressed before the property was put up for rent, of course).
3. Understand any Relevant Laws or Regulations Early
One of the more complex elements of being a landlord is getting your head around the long list of rules and regulations. From ensuring tenant safety to more general building regulations, there’s a ton to consider here, and it’ll be different depending on where you live.
Contact your local authorities for more information on how the rules apply to the particular area you’ll be operating in, and you can also find out more through a quick search online (most info is publicly available). You will also be able to source official, general guidance through government websites.
Failing to comply with these sorts of requirements can lead to severe penalties and serious consequences. You have a moral duty to ensure everyone in your care has a safe place to live, and at the very least, you may not be able to rent the property you’ve invested in.
Once you’ve figured out what you need to adhere to, the best way to work through everything is to use or create a checklist you can rely on. You’ll need to update your knowledge, and possibly how you adhere to the rules, over time, so a list like this makes any adjustments quick and easy.
4. Keep Your Records Safe and Organized
You’ll be dealing with a lot of paperwork and digital documents as a landlord, and you’ll make your life a lot easier if you get organized early on. A proper filing system is a must: get yourself a high-quality cabinet for your office that can accommodate three drawers, and make sure it has either a physical or digital keypad lock on it, as you’ll be keeping a lot of confidential information in there (get something that’s fireproof, too).
When working with digital documents, you should keep everything stored on encrypted hard drives. Multilayered encryption ensures that no one other than you will be able to access these files, and it protects you from hackers and data breaches.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully, the above sections have enlightened you as to how to ensure your business prospers as it should while keeping everything as easy and efficient as possible. It still won’t be a breeze, but your future self will thank you for implementing each of these methods. Take things one step at a time, and you’ll do great. Good luck!
