Landlord Tips: Habits to Help You Be More Successful

The life of a landlord and real estate investor is busy and can be stressful if you let it. Working with a property manager can help keep your life manageable, but you still need to adopt a few habits to keep things in order. Successful real estate investors have many of the same qualities, here are a just a few you can work to adopt.

Here are 5 habits to develop as a real estate investor:

Negotiate
As you work to buy new properties, sell old properties and fill your units, you will need to have powerful negotiating skills. When it comes to your rental units, always try to negotiate labor costs for repairs. Some tenants will try to negotiate with you over rent and security deposits, stay strong and know how low you’re willing to go.

Follow Through
Whether you’ve done this for years or you just purchased your first property, it can often be a struggle to follow through on completely ongoing maintenance and other tasks. Many ongoing tasks, such as keep your books up to date, replacing air filters and even responding to calls don’t feel urgent. However, if you push these tasks off for too long you’ll find yourself unorganized and behind creating more stress in your life. Follow through quickly on basics tasks.

Budgeting
It’s important for you to treat your properties as a business because it is. One of the most important things you can do as a business owner is keep to a budget. As a landlord, lots of unexpected expenses can pop up when appliances break, a pipe leaks or a tenant moves out and leaves a mess behind. Create a budget that allows for plenty of wiggle room in your cash flow for making unexpected repairs.

Future Focused
Real estate investing is not a get rich quick scheme, it’s a long-term game. Remember to always focus on the long-term instead of being short-sighted. Don’t let the cost of a vacant unit or basic repairs get you down. The money you spend then will help you get quality tenants to take care of your units. It may not feel worth it in the short term, but it will pay off in the long term.

Detail Oriented
When you’re balancing multiple properties you need to be detail oriented. Keep your receipts organized by property, document all repairs and keep updated photos of your units. The idea is to stay more organized than you would imagine. It’s always better to have everything you need than to be missing records.

If you would rather leave all the details of property management to someone else, get in touch today.