One of the big motivations for deciding to rent out properties is that you don’t have to be as actively “business-like” as you do in traditional business ventures. You don’t need to sell anything, wine and dine potential clients, or worry about rising and falling monthly profits. Once you have a tenant paying rent, you get steady, reliable income you can predict and plan for every month.
But the challenge in being a landlord comes in ensuring that you have renters that pay on time, and are reliable to guarantee that income every month. One of the important things you can do to ensure this continues is maintain your properties, and here’s why.
Tenant Safety
People will not live in a property that threatens their health or their safety. If you can’t provide a safe living space, you simply will not get regular renters. It’s important to make sure that your property is free from health hazards. Mold, for example, can cause severe respiratory problems for people that constantly breathe in the spores whenever they are home. Uneven steps or poor electrical wiring could endanger residents either through an unnecessary, avoidable slip and fall, or an electrical mishap or fire.
It may feel like taking extra precautions for health and safety is an added, unnecessary expense. But an unsafe residential property has trouble attracting tenants, and if an injury occurs because of landlord neglect, you leave yourself open to a lawsuit.
Lower the Incidence of Major Repairs
If you take the time to regularly maintain certain fixtures of your property, such as getting regular inspections and seasonal maintenance for the furnace or air conditioning units, you save yourself money in the long run.
Taking good care of major hardware such as environmental systems ensures that they run much longer and more efficiently, which also lowers your utility bills if you are paying these. Keeping the hardware in good shape with inspections also means you may catch small problems and address them before they grow bigger. You can prevent a much more expensive major repair by spending a bit more money on regular maintenance and evaluations to keep what you already have running smoothly.
Encourage Tenant Care
When a tenant sees that a landlord cares about the property, that makes it much easier for the tenant to care about the property as well. The best tenant is a well behaved, responsible one, and these types of tenants flock to a well-maintained property. If you neglect the property, and it becomes clear to a tenant that you don’t care about a building’s well-being, they may not see why they should either.
It’s a knock on effect, but it’s an important one. When you show responsibility and responsiveness to the tenants in your care, they will often reciprocate. When you make it obvious that you don’t’ care about the building, only the rent money, you’ll attract a certain type of tenant that holds similar values.
Being a landlord means having a different kind of business sense. But if you spend your time and your money wisely, it can yield great returns.
Make sure you have the right Landlord insurance by contacting us today at 800.644.6443
