Top tips to get your home ready to rent
Our top tips to get your home ready to rent!
Whether you’ve become an accidental landlord or you’ve decided to embark on property investment as a means of income, it’s essential that you make your property “rent ready”. Prior to offering your property on the market, we would advise that you consider a few basic things to ensure you have the best chance of letting it to the perfect tenant. We’ve pulled together what we believe are a few golden rules, which will make finding a tenant easier and help maximise the rent yield of your property. From the legal side to the practical side, take a look at our top tips below:
What are tenants looking for in a rental property?
It’s time to look at your property from the perspective of a potential tenant. Remember, remember, remember, you are not living there, so there’s no need to spend a fortune. So many first time landlords overspend on a property. Tenants usually want to decorate the property themselves (which isn’t a bad thing as they’ll usually stay there longer), so don’t go overboard on new flooring and decoration if the existing is clean looking and fine. You should also consider what you are going to include with the property. For example, be aware that if you include white goods in the rental price then you will have to replace them if they break. We usually advise opting for an unfurnished basis, unless of course you wanting to leave a fully furnished property for tenants to use, which will of course attract a higher rental value.
What type of tenant will you accept?
Is Spot or Mr Whiskers welcome? We would never say never… some of the best tenants we manage at Sylvester Properties have pets and the keep their houses immaculate. However, the choice is ultimately yours – remember we do perform regular landlord inspections so we can monitor how a tenant is looking after your property.
Will you accept DSS tenants? Again we would say judge every person on their individual merits. Having done previous landlord reference checks, credit checks and council background checks we believe in treating everyone equally. If these come back fine then there is no reason to not trust they would look after your property.
The beiger the better and don’t forget to clean up when you’re done
There’s never a truer phrase than “the beiger the better”. Bold colours can easily put off future tenants, so making the place look appealing with neutral colours is the way forward. At Sylvester Properties we would advise Magnolia walls and white ceilings as they are easy to review at each check out/check-in. With regard to flooring we always advise darker, hard wearing carpets or laminate which easy to replace when needed.
It’s a pretty easy mistake to make but you should always make sure that your property is clean and tidy before a tenant moves in. This should include a full clean of the property as well as appliances such as the cooker. At Sylvester Properties we always undertake a full inventory, including taking pictures for future reference, before the tenant moves in. We do this so that if there is a dispute over damage at the end of the tenancy, we have proof of the original condition of the property.
The legal bits and pieces
So you’ve got your property ready … now’s the tricky bit. When letting out your property there are lots of rules and legal requirements you must adhere to when agreeing a short term let. That where the experts at Sylvester Properties come to your aid as we have many years of experience in letting property and our fully trained staff will ensure you comply will the latest regulations, which will ultimately protect your investment
Let’s get your property let
When renting out a property, it’s essential you choose to work with someone who has plenty of experience and knowledge of the local market, so they can assure you that they give the maximum exposure your property needs.
At Sylvester Properties we work with a range of landlords. Some have just one property and others we look after have a portfolio of over 50. We let to professionals, people on benefits and work closely with the council re-home vulnerable adults. So as you can see we work with everyone and our expert lettings agents pride themselves on the strong relationships they build with each client. We genuinely care about all of the properties we manage and treat them like our own, which is why so many landlords would be happy recommend us.
Don’t take our word for it… We recently received a score of 95.72% landlord satisfaction rating from the recent Estas Awards for Estate Agents … one of the best national scores!
