Relocation is something that a lot of people have to deal with in their professional lives, whether it be for reasons within or out of their control. If you find yourself in this situation, you may decide to sell off your residential home, but find that the market price is lower than you expected.
The best thing to do to combat that would be to rent the unit out until real estate prices rise again.
The regular income you will earn from the rental can contribute to a passive income, which can fund your lifestyle in another city or state. With advanced technology, managing your rental space from a distant area is not impossible. However, there are specific issues long-distance landlords are faced with.
Below are some strategies you can adopt to manage your rental effectively from a distance.
Choose Your Tenants Well
It is essential to carefully choose the applicants you accept to live on your rental property. Since you will be away most of the time as a long-distance landlord, you’ll need to select occupants you trust. With visits few and far between, you’ll want to rest easy knowing that your property is in good hands.
Design a detailed tenant screening procedure, reviewing the following information about each applicant:
- Tenant history
- Credit score
- Employment and income
- Criminal and bankruptcy records
- Eviction history
It may take a bit of time to go over all of this information but the extra thorough process will be worth it when you’ve found a quality tenant for your rental.
Maintain Strong Communication
As a long-distance landlord, you’ll want to know what’s happening in your rental space. Having open communication with your tenants will protect your property by giving them space to inform you on maintenance or emergency issues that come up, keeping both your rental and your tenants safe.
Learning about maintenance issues like water damage early can prevent you from costly future repairs, and regular updates can catch even smaller problems before they’re significant at all. Make sure your renters can contact you directly, and update them if you have changed your phone number.
Being reachable helps you navigate rental issues, especially during property emergencies. Ensure you honor the privacy of your renters so your regular calls will not be ignored.
Plan Regular Visits to Your Rental
As a landlord, tenant updates are beneficial, but you can’t use them as a substitute for seeing your property in person.
The United States grants fully tax-deductible out-of-state visits for landlords to see their properties, meaning you won’t have to pay for– at minimum– a yearly visit to your tenants! This includes the costs of flying, hotels, and meals.
During your visit, you can evaluate how your property and renters are faring. Take note of any issues that will require your attention, such as maintenance problems or even upgrade requests.
Know Your Competitors
As a long-distance landlord, local landlords may have a bit of an edge on you by simply knowing more about the local market. To keep up with your competitors, make sure to stay up to date with the community your rental is in, including watching the news, or even attending local events while you’re visiting.
A myriad of factors can affect your rental business, such as a changing business climate, rental demand fluctuations, and local policies. You need to know your new competitors and be aware of your competitive edge.
Is your curb appeal competing adequately with other nearby rentals? Is your rent too high? This is important to keep track of, as vacancies can hit you hard if your rental prices are unknowingly too steep for the area.
Consistently staying updated on the community will keep your rental afloat. Keep your prices appropriate for the market, and apply community-relevant marketing strategies if you find yourself dealing with a vacancy.
Engage with Local Service Providers
Staying connected with a trusted local service network can help you manage your rental home even if you are a long-distance landlord. It’s important to have local help available for property emergencies or maintenance so that you can rest easy.
Without a team of trusted local providers, finding help when you need it might be a hasty decision. In this case, repairs could be more costly and lower quality than you want. Bad repair jobs might even need to be redone, which will just cost you more.
Since you will be unable to drop by and handle tenant issues, such as pest infestation or water leaks, you need to work with reliable people to keep delivering a habitable rental space for renters. Once you have a good local network to provide outstanding maintenance service, you can reduce further stress and problems.
Hiring Local Property Managers to Oversee your Property Investment
Long-distance landlords have the option of enlisting the services of local property managers. Having access to stellar management services can limit issues that you’ll need to deal with yourself.
A professional management team can help market vacant rental units, arrange repairs, collect rental dues, prepare leases, conduct property inspections, and screen tenants. They can also offer sound advice from their industry experience and local knowledge.
In addition, property management companies often partner with or have a solid network of maintenance providers, keeping expenses low and work quality excellent. You will also gain a professional representative looking out for your best interests at all times, even when you are based far away.
If you’re a landlord looking for a trusted property management team, contact Action Properties Inc. today!
Disclaimer: This blog should not be used as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed attorney in your state. Laws change, and this post might not be updated at the time of your reading. Please contact us for any questions you have in regards to this content or any other aspect of your property management needs.