Property can be a great investment. Having your tenants pay off the mortgage on a property that you own can leave you with a mortgage free property where your only large financial outlay was the original deposit. This a fantastic way to buy the property you hope to live in when you retire or just as a way of creating the sources of income to fund that future retirement. The one great drawback that prevents people from following this path is the time and effort that you will need to devote to property management. Here we will show you a few tricks that you can use the make property investments less of a headache and more rewarding at the same time.

One of the biggest hassles is managing the process of getting reliable tenants for your property. Running ads and then sorting through the responses, showing the property and reference checks can be very time consuming and stressful. This is something that you should consider farming out to a letting agency. They have much lower costs since they do this all the time and have systems in place to make it flow smoothly. They are also probably more skilled at weeding out potential problem tenants than you could ever be and are likely to save you from that high stress situation. A letting agency will also collect the rent and transfer the proceeds to your account saving you the additional hassle.

Taking care of the property, particularly maintenance of the grounds can also be something that is much easier and even cheaper when you use a professional firm that specializes in this area. While mowing your own lawn may be something you like to do yourself this may not be possible in your property is some distance away from where you live and work. Having someone else do it on a set schedule will mean you can be confident the property is being kept in good condition and that any damage or problems are brought to your attention in a timely manner.

One of the things that will let you have more confidence is making sure your property is fully insured. This will not just protect your investment from natural disasters like fire or flood but can also be specialised policies that cover any damage to the home or it contents by tenants. It is also becoming quite common to have the tenant pay the premiums on the insurance as part of the rental agreement. Nothing can be more stressful than a careless or destructive tenant, by having insurance you will make sure you don’t end up out of pocket as well.

You can find individual letting and maintenance companies that will make your experience of owning investment properties easy and hassle free. You may also chose to have all your real estate needs managed by a single property management company. Some of them even provide the additional services needed to rent your properties on short term letting services like AirB2B where you can generate much higher rental income than you could with long term tenants.