Tigard rental properties keep investment property owners hard at work most of the year; however, you may end up being a bit less busy during the rental market’s slow season. While it may be inviting to put everything on autopilot for a moment or two, it may not be the best use of your time. The slow season presents an opportunity to deal with a few important but often overlooked tasks. By maximizing your slow season, you can be better prepared for the busy hours and optimize the potential of your investment property.
Develop a Marketing Plan
The slow season is great for establishing a fantastic marketing strategy if you don’t have one now. With effective marketing, you can immediately attract excellent tenants and keep your rental property occupied year-round. At a minimum, your marketing strategy must provide things like an outstanding newspaper or classified ad for each property you own, and knowledge of the best places to post your ad online, and how to utilize social media to attract applicants. With your marketing prepared and ready to go, it’s one less thing you’ll have to be concerned about when things get busy.
Ask for Online Reviews
Aside from effective marketing, it is imperative to have a positive online presence. In today’s digital world, prospective renters will search to see what past tenants have said about you and your rental home. You can guarantee that what they discover is positive by asking your tenants to leave you reviews online. Through platforms like Google, Yelp, and social media, you can invite tenants to leave feedback. Make it convenient for them by sending them a link, and don’t let the fear of a bad review deter you. People who rely on reviews understand that the occasional poor review exists and don’t allow it to affect their final decision.
Re-Work Your Budget
If it has been a while since you updated your operating budget, the slow season is a great time to do so. The rental market, just like your rental properties and tenants, is perpetually in motion, and your budget should be updated every so often to reflect recent changes. To start with, you could go through your expense items and update any out-of-date numbers. Then, recalculate things like your vacancy rate and capital improvements, adjusting the numbers when needed. Having an accurate budget can help you make more confident decisions about your rental properties throughout the year.
Get Your Paperwork In Shape
The slow season is also a good time to get your paperwork in order – particularly if you’ve been postponing a few tasks, like accumulating all the invoices for replacements or upgrades to the property, tax records, reconciling accounts or auditing your books. It can be stressful to keep up with smaller tasks like monthly bookkeeping and bank reconciliations when you don’t have much time. And then there are the important annual tasks, for example, tax document preparation and auditing. Taking advantage of the slow season to do these things can help you streamline your schedule and keep your focus where it needs to be.
Plan Your Next Investment
Lastly, one of the perfect times to evaluate your investment strategy and make arrangements to add to your portfolio of rental homes is when things are a bit slow. Whether you intend to hold and rent a single property for future use or to build a large, lucrative portfolio, using the slow season to develop plans is a fantastic use of your time. Then when things begin suddenly, you will be able to readily conduct the following actions.
If you feel that your busy schedule is causing you to overlook these and other tasks, it may be imperative to work with professional property managers to help. At Real Property Management Assurance, we do the majority of the day-to-day work of owning rental properties for you, freeing up your time for more critical activities. To learn more about the range of services we offer, contact us online.
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