Every investor enters the world of property investment with the aim of getting the most out of their buy-to-let investment as possible, and so finding ways to help to increase this can often feel like a dream come true. Improving your property and what it has to offer can really prove to be worthwhile further into your investment, and much of what you are able to do can be done cheaply, making it much more worth your time and effort.
Maintenance and Repairs
The first and most simple thing to do is to ensure that everything in the property works as it should do, and has a clean look to it. By maintaining the property to a high standard and by making simple but effective changes during void periods can really give your property a boost and make it stand out. Making cosmetic changes to your property, such as cleaning, polishing and making sure everything works correctly, can often add value to your property, and most of them may not cost you very much at all.
Enhance Key Areas of the Property
Making key areas of the house, such as the kitchen and the bathroom, as appealing as they can possibly be, may help you to generate more money from your property, by ensuring these areas of the house are spotless, this will help viewers to picture themselves living in the property without anything within the room distracting them. The good thing is that changes to these areas may require low financial outlays, needing just a bit of your time and effort. From cleaning to painting, and re-tiling to changing the layout, there are a number of things you can do to improve the quality of these areas.
Make your Property Appealing to Potential Tenants
When trying to improve your property and the way that it looks, it may be very easy for you to decorate and change the property in ways that may appeal to you, especially if you begin to build up a picture in your head of how you would like it to look. The issue with this is that you won’t be the one living with it, and so it is extremely important to go for a look that would appeal to a greater number of people, ensuring that you have a good chance of more people being interested in it.
Right from the initial fitting stage through to the accessories stage, you should constantly remind yourself that you need to tailor the property to what most people would like. A good way to do this is to employ a neutral colour scheme and furniture that combines well with it. This means avoiding any extravagant statement pieces.
Improve the Garden Area
A garden can be a very appealing and important factor for those looking for their new home, providing that it has been well looked after, and no garden or a poorly managed one can detract from the value of the property. You can help to increase the value of your property by making the garden a tidier and more attractive, developing the greenery and adding plants. An easy way to help you do this is to ensure that the responsibility of looking after and maintaining the garden lies with the tenants, stating it in the tenancy agreement, meaning that you can easily add value when it comes to finding new tenants in the future.
Give People a Reason to Want your House
Finally, adding incentives for potential tenants certainly won’t harm the value of your property, and so including extras that may appeal to people may mean that you can attract a higher price. For a little outlay, you can create a property that has a modern vibe with the latest technology and a luxury feel, all of which can help to increase the overall value.
Calculating Rental Income
It is essential that all investors are aware of what they are able to achieve from their investment, and increasing the value of your property is a very big part of this. By increasing the value of your property, you will be able to charge more in terms of weekly or monthly rental payments, and thus achieving a higher rental yield. By knowing the value of your property, you can then determine how much you can realistically charge through rent, which can then be used to calculate your exact rental yield. The calculation for rental yield is as follows: ((Weekly Rent X 52)) / Property Value) X 100 = Rental Yield.
Author Bio
Hopwood House are property investment specialists and estate agents in Manchester, offering investors a full 360 service of buying and selling investment properties.
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Daniel Peacock