Curb appeal is one thing, but what about yard appeal, backyard appeal, and the rest of the appeals? Real estate agents put a lot of value on curb appeal when selling houses, and to a degree, property managers tend to as well — it’s important that the first impression that a house makes on a […]
How are you motivating your PM to keep your best interests in mind? Being a real estate investor is always a careful monetary balancing act. You want to maximize your ROI, and the question is always whether you should do that by minimizing your input, or by trying to maximize your output. The problem is […]
If the choice comes down to taking care of an existing property, or selling you a new one, what is your PM’s priority? There are a lot of property managers out there that also sell properties to investors. The question is, how good of a property manager are they if they’re trying to do […]
Renters aren’t getting younger — but more young people than ever are renting! There’s a lot of data out there about who is renting, how much they’re paying, and so on — oftentimes, it’s too much, and we lose track of what we’re trying to learn about. So today, we’re going to break down […]
Bathrooms are usually pretty much the last place in the house that someone voluntarily spends an extended amount of time — but there are quite a few reasons why the room deserves your attention anyway. Both modern psychological theory and ancient Chinese feng shui rules will tell you that owning the spaces you must use […]
Becoming someone’s landlord — in other words, becoming a property investor — sounds complicated. Don’t worry; it’s at least twice as difficult as it sounds. Here’s our basic checklist of what you need to become a landlord successfully: Startup Funding Obviously, you have to purchase the property you’re going to turn into an income stream, […]
Buying an investment home without a mortgage is easy: just be rich enough to pay cash! No, seriously — not everyone can afford an investment home with a mortgage, much less without one…but you might be surprised at what assets you can tap to get in on the rental-investment game. Here’s a not-at-all-comprehensive but good-for-the-basics […]
Vacancies are down, tenants are good, and your accounts are flush because nothing has broken in a few months now. Guess what time it is? It’s time to raise your rent! Counterintuitive as it might be, waiting until things are starting to get tight to raise the rent is exactly the wrong idea. If things […]
It turns out, not even carpets like getting walked all over. So the tenants in 42 Boulevard Road St. just moved out, and the move-out video your inspector took arrived in your email inbox this morning. The first thing you notice as he walks into the living room: the carpet is probably going to need […]
Where does your security deposit go? What can it be used for? Learn it all here. A security deposit is an amount of money taken from a prospective tenant and held in escrow until that tenant moves out. Many tenants believe that a security deposit is only used when they move out, and only used […]