Tips for landlords to keep your properties occupied!
Once you have decided to rent out your property, it is important to keep it occupied at all times if possible. If you don’t, the mortgage, council tax and any other bills will be coming straight out of your own pocket. Here’s a few tips to ensure you avoid any ‘empty property’ periods…
With a few tricks, great relationships, and some handy tips, you can make sure that your property is always making you a great profit yield. Here’s how:
Use long term contracts
Try and avoid six-month contracts where you can. Having people come and go more regularly can be quite disruptive and one-year contracts work much better for both landlords and tenants.
Once the contract is up, think about asking your tenants whether they would be interested in signing another contract – you don’t want to get into a rolling contract if possible, as it gives you less peace of mind, knowing they could up and leave at any time.
Move Fast
Once you know your current tenants are planning on moving out, try and visit your property as soon as possible to find out if anything needs fixing or replacing. Get quotes for any new furniture or appliances and book in contractors to carry out any work needed as soon as possible.
The best time to do up your property and give it a quick lick of paint is during the first week after tenants have moved out. This means the house will be available for viewings quickly, hopefully resulting in brand new tenants.
Look After Tenants
The easiest way to avoid an empty house is to look after your tenants as well as you can. This may sound obvious, but it is easy to just ask tenants to sign a few contracts, hand over the keys and walk away.
Build up a relationship with tenants and try and solve any problems they may have as quickly as possible. If your tenants do move out, having a good relationship with them means you can ask them what the reasons behind their move are. If it’s something that can be changed you can do so before any new tenants move in.
Advertise
If you do find yourself with an empty house, then good marketing and adverts can make a world of difference when it comes to finding new tenants. Choose a letting agent that can give you a great plan for your property, and already has a list of tenants on a database ready to match.
If you need help finding a new tenant for your property or are considering what you can do to avoid empty periods in the future, get in touch today for expert advice.