You've Decided To Rent Out Your Redding, CA Property, What Do You Do First?
In today's economic landscape, the real estate market is being turned on its head. As a result, you may be an investor who has bought what will be your first rental property, or perhaps even a homeowner who took advantage of low-interest rates to upgrade your home in hopes of selling it, but now find yourself becoming an accidental landlord and instead renting out your property. Whatever the case may be, we know you've got plenty of questions now that you've decided to rent out your
Redding, CA property. Before you get started and make crucial mistakes along the way, take a deep breath, place your trust in us, and get ready to find out everything you'll need to know to make renting your property easy and of course profitable.
Know the Laws
Since we know you don't want to use up all the profits you'll get from renting out your property on lawyers you'll need to represent you in court to fight one lawsuit after another, we highly recommend you not rent out your first property until you've got a basic understanding of landlord-tenant laws. While you don't need to become an expert overnight, we do suggest you have some general knowledge of the local, state, and federal laws pertaining to landlord-tenant relations. In particular, learn about the Fair Housing Act of 1968, since discrimination is one of the most popular reasons lawsuits are filed against landlords.
Wrap Up Major and Minor Maintenance Issues
One thing we've definitely learned over the years is that tenants don't want to live in a rental property where they are always having to call their landlord about one maintenance problem after another. Rather than having your phone ringing at 3 a.m. about a clogged toilet or burst pipe, take care of all major and minor maintenance issues with your property before renting it out. This will let you command a better price for your property, help you establish a good reputation as a landlord, and guarantee you'll get a good night's sleep instead of being awakened by an angry tenant on the other end of your phone who's waiting on you to arrive with your plunger.
Paint, Replace, and Clean
Like many other situations in life, we can assure you that you will never get a second chance to make a great first impression with your Redding, CA rental property once it goes on the market. Since you want your prospective tenants to be smiling once they enter your property and start looking around, we want you to prioritize painting, replacing, and cleaning. First, we've always had success with rental property when we've painted the walls a bright yet neutral color, replaced carpeting, and had the property cleaned by trained professionals who know how to get every nook and cranny spotless. Next, don't forget your property's lawn. By trimming a few trees, planting some pretty flowers, and getting rid of any excess clutter, your rental property will immediately gain extra curb appeal.
Settle On a Competitive Rental Price
Of all the things you will be busy doing before listing your
Redding, CA property for rent, determining a competitive rental price will probably be your hardest decision along the way. When we've had to do this, we've always kept in mind that the amount of rent we will ultimately seek from our tenants each month may not be necessarily what we would absolutely love to earn under the most ideal circumstances. Instead, we focus on a price that will be competitive with other similar rental properties in the Redding area.
By doing so, we have been able to neither underprice nor overprice our properties over the years. When determining your monthly rent price, always keep in mind that you want a price that's low enough to attract quality tenants to your property, but not so low that you don't make enough of a profit to satisfy you month after month. Should you try to make your monthly rental price too high, we guarantee you'll be staring at a vacant property much longer than you ever anticipated.
Change Your Insurance
If you've decided to rent out a home you had anticipated selling, always make sure you have the proper insurance coverage once you turn it into a rental property. Unfortunately, we often find this is one of the most common mistakes accidental landlords make along the way, and it can wind up creating plenty of legal headaches.
If you have homeowner's insurance, this won't apply to a rental home. Thus, you'll need to switch to a landlord policy that increases liability coverage. You may also want to require renter's insurance from tenants, since landlord policies don't cover tenant possessions. We also recommend you make sure your landlord policy provides you with
loss of rent insurance, and find out how and if your property is covered in the event of a fire, flood, or earthquake.
Have Your Lease Lawyer-Approved
As we mentioned earlier, knowing landlord-tenant laws can save you plenty of legal headaches and money once you rent out your first property. In addition to this, we can't stress enough how important it will be for you to have any lease you plan to use carefully examined by and approved by your lawyer before you ever let any tenant sign on the dotted line. If you fail to do this and toss caution to the wind, we can say with certainty that you might as well start setting aside a few days in the near future to spend your time in a courtroom. By having a lease that adheres to all laws and clearly spells out what you expect from your tenants and what they can expect from you as their landlord, few if any hassles should come your way after your tenant moves in.
Make Rent Collection Easy and Safe
While you may not need to be reminded about this one important fact, we do want to emphasize that once you have Redding, CA rental property on the market, your goal is to actually get tenants moving in and paying rent to you as fast as possible. Once this happens, it's vital that you set up a rental payment system that is easy and safe for you and your tenants.
As technology has found its way more and more into the management of rental properties, we've found that using rental apps like Avail are convenient and popular with tenants. By using this rent collection app, you as the landlord can schedule upcoming rental payments, have automated reminders sent to your tenants, and set up late fees when a tenant is late with their payment. As for your tenants, we find they like being able to make their payments online rather than with an old-fashioned paper check, being able to have their rental payments automatically withdrawn from their bank accounts each month, and having their on-time payments being reported to credit agencies, which can help them increase their credit scores.
Maintenance Tracking System
If you eventually have multiple rental properties, setting up a maintenance tracking system will be one of the best things you'll ever do for yourself as a landlord. When we first got started with rental properties, keeping track of all the maintenance requests felt completely overwhelming. But here again, this is where the Avail app can be your best friend. Once your tenants have their own Avail accounts, they can simply use their smartphones to send maintenance requests your way, complete with photos and descriptions of what needs to be fixed. Along with making sure you'll be able to get to the maintenance requests in a timely manner, this will also let you track maintenance requests and expenses, which can add up in a hurry if you're not careful.
Screen Your Tenants
As a first-time or accidental landlord, you will of course be like we were early on and find yourself jumping for joy when someone actually wants to pay you money each month to live in your Redding, CA property. However, don't make some of the same mistakes we did at the beginning, one of which was not thoroughly screening any and all prospective tenants. If you don't want to get burned by a tenant who vanishes in the middle of the night without paying their rent or possibly moves in and either throws endless loud parties, gets in trouble with police, or trashes your property, have a thorough screening process in place from the beginning. We suggest you check out each and every reference listed on a rental application, conduct a criminal background check, and verify the tenant has the financial resources needed to make their rental payment month after month.
While it may take you some time to establish your routine as a new landlord, keeping each of these tips in mind will make the process much easier. Before you know it, you'll be a Redding, CA landlord who has an amazing reputation and plenty of profits in your pocket.
If you have question or just want us to handle if for you don't hesitate to give us a call. 530-410-6085
