The One Thing That Every Landlord Needs Is Time

I’ve rented a fair few houses in my time and I’ve had some great landlords, but I’ve also had some pretty shocking ones. Property is such a popular investment at the moment because you can charge a good amount of money in rent every month, and the value of your property is very likely to increase year on year. With so many people jumping on the bandwagon, the number of bad landlords is always rising. The main reason that landlords fail to cater to the needs of their tenants is that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew. When they first buy a property they think it’ll just be a case of finding a tenant and waiting for the money to roll in but it’s far more time consuming than that. If you’re considering investing in a property you need to ask yourself whether you have the time to be a landlord.

Finding Tenants

An empty house is just a money pit so finding tenants quickly is key. That means you need to put a good amount of time into it. Making appointments to show people around and then finding you have to cancel them because you haven’t got the time is a quick way to make sure that those people won’t consider renting from you again, and neither will their friends or family. If you are trying to fit your landlord duties into a hectic schedule, consider using Airbnb to find short term tenants instead. You can hire Airbnb Management Services to deal with all of that for you. Short term tenancies have their pros and cons; you can often charge higher rates but you aren’t guaranteed to have somebody staying in the property all of the time. If you’ve got a property in a fairly popular tourist area then you’re likely to find people to stay there most of the time, but if it’s in a residential area, you’re better off finding a long term tenancy.

Repairs

When repairs need doing that’s when you’ll really find out how good your landlord is. If you haven’t got the time to sort out somebody to make repairs or do them yourself your tenants are going to be left waiting for important repairs to be made. When it comes to things like hot water or heating, you need to sort it out immediately, otherwise, you could find yourself in legal trouble. Word of mouth spreads quickly so a landlord that leaves their tenants without basic amenities will quickly find themselves struggling to make a profit out of their property.

Decorating

When a tenant moves out and you need to find somebody else to replace them, the house is likely to need an overhaul. If you don’t have the time to decorate it properly you’ll struggle to find new tenants. You can pay a decorator to do it for you but that’s just going to eat into your profits. Even if you do get somebody else to do it, you’ll need to be around to supervise and make sure everything is exactly as you want it to be.

Property is always an attractive prospect but it isn’t the easy money making opportunity that people often think it is. If you don’t have enough time to dedicate to it, you won’t make good money.

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