Investing in Rental Properties

Investing in rental properties can be very rewarding or can be a nightmare. Besides property management and landlord forms, the answer to two most important questions to investing in rental real estate will determine if you will or if you are having a good or bad experience. 1) Are you receiving your money on time? 2) Are your tenants taking care of your property? Of course there are other factors involved in rental real estate investing, but we choose to discuss aspects of the two questions mentioned above. 

Your timely payments and property care is greatly influence by your tenant screening and tenant selection process. Despite the best selection process when investing in rental real estate there are always unforeseen circumstances. Therefore nothing is guaranteed, but you can sure stack the deck in your favor when investing in rental properties. r first paragraph ...

Property Care

Talking to the current and previous landlord can provide you with information about how tenants take care of their current and/or former residence. If possible or desirable, visit a tenant’s home. Nothing tells you more about a tenant than visiting their residence prior to letting them rent yours. In rental real estate investing, periodic inspections during the year will alert and prevent any major damage occuring to the property.

One possible set of tenants that will most likely take care of your property when investing in rental real estate are seniors. Due to the increase of seniors having more productive lives and living longer, there is a critical need for senior housing. As you are reading this page, there are literally thousands of seniors waiting for housing right now. Senior housing can be provided for the active independent senior or the senior that needs assisted living for some or all daily routines. This market for rental real estate investing will provide a steady stream of clients, and because of the high demand they are more likely to take care of your property.

Timely Payments

During the interview, application process, and signing of the lease, make sure you impress upon your prospective tenants that you are loaning them your residence and expect them to not only take care of the property, but to make timely payments. In rental real estate investing, if a tenant is late with their rental payment, make sure you file the necessary paper work immediately to start legal proceeding to get your rental payment(s), late fees and any other charges listed in your lease agreement, or an eviction. The legal system can seem slow when you want your money or control of your residence, so start early to get the process completed as soon as possible.

One alternative, to rental real estate investing, for receiving your money every month is section 8. Once the tenant selection has been done and your property has passed an inspection, the government will send you a check every month like clockwork without fail. You won’t have to worry about getting paid just tenants. Finding good tenants is always a challenge and of course there are no guarantees, but you can minimize bad choices by screening your tenants. You can screen your tenants, or have someone else do it for you.

In any event, once everything is set up, you have guaranteed money every month for the length of the tenant’s stay.

Property Management

Managing your own properties is a good idea until you have more than a few. Managing 10, 20, or more can be a headache if you are doing everything yourself. Even though it is a good idea to do everything yourself at first, you should consider hiring a management company to at least do some of the key operations in the rental process. When investing in rental properties, screening tenants, collecting rent, making repairs, evicting tenants, or finding new tenants are management items you need to consider. Depending on how much time you have and what you like and don’t like to do will determine what you will allow the management company to do. However I would not suggest you turn everything over to them or only to one company. At the bare minimum, I would suggest at least allowing a company to do your evictions for you when investing in rental properties.

Landlord Forms

When investing in rental real estate it’s important to have documentation that will protect you and your property once you have selected a tenant to occupy your residence. A lease agreement plus other landlord forms will be critical documentation that will be needed. To obtain a free lease agreement or a free rental agreement visit free landlord forms. Of course nothing replaces an attorney, but visiting free landlord forms is a place to start.

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