Wanting to rent your property but not sure what to do? Well, you are at the right place. We are putting together a blog post series that will provide overview of what need to be done.
While rental property is often referred to as passive income, it’s not simply a “set it and forget it” type of business. Once you make a decision to rent out your property, there are many tasks involved. All these tasks can be break into 4 major components:
- Tenant Placement
- Rent Collection and Lease Enforcement
- Maintenance
- Accounting
For this first part of the blog series, we will focus on Tenant Placement:
An empty house is NOT going to produce income for you, everyday pass without a tenant in place is money loss. So let get started on how can we put a tenant in place so you can start making money.
- Get your property “Rent Ready” – This mean fixes any current house issue for example: hole on the wall, broken toilet, AC/Heating problem. Then, make you house presentable by deep clean the house, paint the wall, clean the carpet, cut the grass, etc. The house presentation is a huge factor of how fast it will rent and how much it could rent out for.
- Determine Rent Rate – How much can you rent it our for? How much should you charge for the rent? How much prospective tenant willing to pay? Your rental rate typical determined by 3 mains factor: property condition, property location, and number of available rentals in the area. You can get a decent estimation by looking up current rental rate in the area online, however that rate usually just based on what people list it for without the consideration for condition, location or inventory. Having the right rent rate have a big impact on how fast your property will get rent.
- Market your property – You can’t rent out your property if no one know it is for rent. This is where you take great pictures of your rental, put together a desirable property description, and rental information in to a package. Now you can use that package to market your property by put up a rent sign and post it online through resource like Zillow, Realtor, Facebook Market, etc. The more exposure the faster you find a tenant.
- Select Qualify Tenant – If you follow everything so far, the property should generate a lot of interests. This is where you show the property and get to know the potential tenant. There a couple of things that should take into consideration when select a tenant: background history, credit score, rental history, financial qualification. Also, you should get familiar with the Fair Housing Act to understand what you can/can’t do when select a tenant. Select a quality tenant will eliminate a lot of potential headaches down the road.
- Signing the Lease – First you have to make sure that you have a comprehensive lease agreement at that take into account: who is on the agreement, term of the agreement, payments, property condition, and any other potential situation that could arrive. You want to walk the potential tenant through the lease to make sure that they understand what is expected of them and what can be expected from you as the landlord. When signing the lease, you would should also be collect the rental deposit and potentially the first month of rent.
- Hand over the key – This is the last step of the Tenant Placement, this is where you will hand the tenant the key to the property, which is typically done on the agreed moving day. Before hand over the key, it is recommended that you do a full property assessment and document the property condition. After handing over the key, it is also recommended that you should require the tenant to perform a property assessment. This will help you and the tenant to be on the same page of the property condition and make it easier to file/claim any damage during the term of the lease.
Hopefully these 6 high level steps will help guide you through the process of leasing out your property. Kept in mind there is a lot more involvement within each of those steps to get the job done correctly.
At PMI Heritage, we have refined/master those 6 steps through experience, process optimization, clear communication and utilize top-notch technology. Which enable us to get your property ready, listed, and rented at quickly as possible and start produce income. Our tenant placement service is priced comparatively and it is often offset cost by how quickly we can get your property rented.
If you have a comment, suggestion or question about our service please don’t hesitate to reach out.
