Insuring Your Income: The Starting Point for Landlord Peace of Mind
The landlord has to play multiple roles, starting from maintaining the property to financial management and ultimately ensuring his peace of mind. You have to pay attention to numerous factors for delivering an ideal renting experience. Safety and security of the properties are supreme when it comes to providing peace of mind for landlords.
To ensure your rental income, you must take a few steps. So, how do you start with doing the things that are a must for your peace and generate a profitable revenue stream? Let us find out.
1. Active communication
You cannot deny that happy tenants are equal to less stress in being a landlord. If the tenants are happy and satisfied, they are more likely to pay their rent on time and maintain your property as their own. It increases their chances of renewing the lease after its expiration. The best way to achieve this objective is to promptly address the maintenance concerns as soon as they arise. It makes the impression on the tenants that you value their comfort and take the maintenance issues seriously.
Furthermore, reply to all the calls and emails whenever you get time. It shows that you value the time of your tenants and are willing to go the extra mile to ensure their comfort and satisfaction. Thus, active communication plays a vital role in long-term tenancy and peace of mind for both the tenants as well as landlords.
2. Right property insurance
There is nothing that can beat the importance of the right type of insurance for your rental property. Traditional homeowner’s policy doesn’t work quite well for rental properties. So what you need in this case is rental insurance, which includes all the elements you want. Only a few policies tend to mitigate risk in terms of human errors or
“acts of God”. Rental policy insurance is something that provides landlords with this coverage (Unpaid rent, natural disasters, landlord’s belongings, and personal liability coverage). After all, once you get to know the right insurance policy for your rental property, you will be able to safeguard your real estate revenue stream.
There is no denying the fact that some properties are difficult to insure. So, always get in touch with a reliable insurance agent while purchasing any property or policy to secure the right one.
3. Level up the security
Undoubtedly, the elements of safety and security are correlated. Ensure that you are taking specific precautions while renting out your property –
- Maintain solid, high-quality doors so that they can be secured from breaking in.
- Include the locking mechanism in windows as well to prevent them from opening from the outside.
- Install lights everywhere, especially outdoors, to enhance the safety level.
- Modern home safety precautions include alarms, sensors, and security cameras.
All these might seem like simple solutions, but they are effective in creating a big difference in safety levels.
4. Background and credit check
How can you check whether an applicant is financially stable or not? The answer is by doing credit checks. The red flags for a prospective tenant’s credit include – undue payments, debt, eviction history, and bankruptcy filing. Having a good background and financial history indicates that a tenant is more likely to pay the rent on time and treat the property respectably.
Read More: Tenant Background Check
5. Collect the payments online
In today’s world, making payments through online mode is more secure and convenient. Adopting the easy method of paying rent increases the odds of payment by the tenants. Nowadays, many online platforms allow tenants to schedule their payments so that the rent amount can be deducted from their account automatically. Besides, personal information on online platforms is encrypted. You, as a landlord, can introduce your tenants to such platforms to provide them with convenient methods of payment.
Such platforms allow you to immediately know if the tenant has scheduled a payment, at what date the payment will be deducted from their account, and when it will be deposited to your account. In this way, you can save yourself from the message “The check must have gotten lost in the mail”.
6. Landlord laws vary
How do you ensure what you can do and what you cannot? Through the specific state laws about the landlords. For instance – Some states put a limit to the requirements for a security deposit. Some others consider it mandatory to give a certain amount of notice before entering the property of the tenants.
Legal disputes are not only time-consuming but also costly. Therefore, thoroughly go through landlord-tenant laws before renting out the home. Also, don’t forget to include relevant guidelines or restrictions in your lease agreement so that your tenants also have information about them.
Final Thoughts
Believe it or not, renting out can turn out to be a good financial opportunity for you. But be prepared for the responsibilities that come with it. As long as you take all the steps mentioned above, you will surely be having a successful experience.
Read More:
Do I Need Tenant Insurance if I’m Renting a Property?
Pranab Bhandari is an Editor of the Financial Blog “Financebuzz”. Apart from writing informative financial articles for his blog, he is a regular contributor to many national and international publications namely Tweak Your Biz, Growth Rocks ETC.
