prepare rental property Archives

Energy Saving Tips for House Owners

Introduction

Saving energy in your home always used to be a reconsideration, but as the times have changed, it has become a most important thing for the homeowners. Homeowners are constantly looking for the latest and most convenient energy saving tips – energy saving tips for your home.

Reducing your home’s energy consumption leads to lower your bills and fewer emissions released into the atmosphere – it is a win-win possibility to save energy. Most energy saving tips for your home can be done with minimal effort.

Efficient Lightening

Lights appear to be such a small phase of your home, but they can either bother or support your home’s energy savings based on how you handle it.

One of the simplest methods to save energy is to remember to turn your lights off when you leave the respective room. Follow that good habit with energy efficient light bulbs, such as LEDs or CFLs, and you will be right on your plan to a more efficient home.

And the next important way is to make sure your lights are not placed near your thermostat. The heat from lights could cause your thermostat to run your furnace or air conditioner more than you need them to.

Motion detecting lights are growing more popular among homeowners, where you do not have to be conscious to turn the lights off.

Place a Programmable Thermostat

The best energy saving tips growing its popularity right now is to replace your old manual thermostat with a new programmable type. They automatically adapt to your agenda by providing you control of your home’s temperature no matter where you are, and you will have more planned and various other options to help you save energy as much as possible.

Upgrade your appliances

Old refrigerators, washers, dryers, and other home appliances were not actually made with energy efficiency in mind nowadays. So, when you decide to replace your old appliances, keep a lookout for a new appliance with the “Energy Saving Star” tag. These appliances are guaranteed to help save you money on energy bills. The cost of those might be bit costly, but they will end up paying for themselves by savings on your bills.

Install Energy Efficient Windows and Doors

If you feel the need to put up your furnace and air conditioning more than you should, your windows and doors may be to blame. Drafty windows and doors can certainly take a toll on your home’s energy efficiency. Replacing your windows with strong vinyl windows will surely lower your energy bills.

Additionally, your entry doors are a primary donor to your home’s energy saving perspective. Replacing your old entry door over a steel or fiberglass door is a smart investment for homeowners. If you are not ready to do a full entry door replacement, then consider introducing a storm door. Storm doors add an added layer of insulation, stability, and energy efficiency to your entryway.

Pull the Plug on Wasting Energy

Like turning off the lights when you are not in the room, you should also unplug any devices or appliances when you are not using it.

Having things plugged is referred to as “phantom loads.” It is stated that 75 percent of the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the appliances are turned off. To make the method a bit easier, plug your devices or appliances into power layers so that you can unplug the power band when you are not using them rather than unplugging everything one by one.

Vinyl Siding Saves Energy

Your home’s exterior coating plays the main role in how your home consumes energy. If you have broken, crumbled out siding then the outdoor elements have an easy way into your home.

In return, you will have to put more pressure on your heating and cooling systems, which will raise your energy bills.

Conserve Water

There are some energy saving tips that can assist you to conserve water in your home. Using limited water will lower your water bills certainly, and using limited hot water will help reduce your gas bill.

Some steps can be followed to take control over it like setting your hot water temperature to a moderate degree, taking quicker showers, and being conscious on how much water you use when preparing dishes, washing clothes, and dishwashing.

You can also establish efficient new showerheads and toilets that are designed to use limited water to help you save money.

Overlook Your Garage Door

If you have a connected garage, you can lose a lot of heated or cooled air through your garage door. This can affect the temperature of your home and will cost you more energy bills.

The best solution for this dilemma is to get a steel garage door. Steel garage doors are made to withstand any harsh weather. It has a lather core that restricts heated or cooled air from passing through it. Also, make sure your garage’s molding is not damaged as it inhibits drafts from hiding into your garage under the door.

Use these effective Energy Saving Tips to Reduce Your Home Energy Bills

Being a homeowner, it is important to be mindful of your usage of energy so that you can reduce the bills as low as you can. By understanding and following the above energy saving tips, you can definitely notice the gains on your future energy bills and develop the footprint you are leaving on the environment.

How to Save the Time Land lording and Improve the Time Living

Top 7 tips for reducing landlord time

When you step in real estate investing, you would be prepared a bit unwary – as most of us do. We assume we understand what we’re acquiring into, but we aren’t conscious of something it takes on a day-in and day-out basis until we’re forced into the shot for the first time – Top 7 tips for reducing landlord time.

One thing that you probably weren’t aware of was just how much time it takes to manage a rental property. Surely, the return on your money might be enormously positive, but the drain on your time is equally as powerful.

To relish the business benefits of maintaining rental properties for years to evolve, you need to locate a proper plan to manage your time adequately and savour surpassing work-life stability.

Suggestions for Reducing Your Time Engagement

Burning out of energy and enthusiasm is a common factor among landlords. Most people start with anticipation and excitement, but it’s evident that this energy to disappear as dilemmas emerge, schedules pack up, and duties become monotonous.

If you want to overcome your risk of burning out of energy and maximize your cash flow, you demand to discover ideas to impede your time devotion.

Your time is very valuable and is a limited resource. So to enlighten this, let’s explore some of the effective ways you can reduce your time commitment and spend more time resting with your friends and family – Top 7 tips for reducing landlord time.

1. Build Precise Rental Listings

You might think you’re doing yourself a favour by planning rental listings that are intentionally hazy, but you’re doing yourself disfavour. Sure, you’re building touch points with more leads, but you’re also losing time with people who eventually won’t be inspired to rent your property.

Be as precise in the listing as possible. This involves every relevant detail about price, rooms, square footage, location, rules (such as pet policies), and period of the lease agreement. Thus, when a lead does contact you, you’ll surely know they’re honestly serious.

2. Pre-qualify Renters over the Phone Call

One more factor that wastes your time is revealing your property to unqualified candidates. Just because someone wants to see your property, doesn’t imply you should show it to them.

You can avoid wasting time by pre-qualifying potential renters on the phone. Ask them several questions about income, timeframe, and specific needs. (Keep these questions consistent for every caller to avoid any accusations of discrimination.) If they meet your guidelines and are still interested, then you can set up an appointment.

3. Answer Your Phone and tackle the Problem

If one of your tenants calls, don’t let it ring and go to voicemail (unless you have to). This only extends the amount of energy you use to resolve the issue they’re calling with. By the time you check the voicemail and operate phone tag, it could be hours or days until the query is dealt with.

4. Invest in Quality Equipments

In a low-to-middle income rental house, you’ll be intrigued to place very basic appliances – but beyond that, you should think in another way. Basic appliances do demand a modest upfront investment than more excellent models, but they also lead to having more maintenance problems. This beats up the cost of ownership and requires more of your time.

By initially investing in quality tools, you conserve the time that it takes to plan and manage maintenance issues. You’ll also keep your tenants satisfied, which reduces turnover and promotes stability.

5. Automate Rent Collection and Processing

For maximum landlords, the first week of the month is an engaged one. It has been spent on collecting and processing rent checks. And there is also a chance, where you have to chase down one or two late payments. But when there is a way to lead these processes? Getting a smile right!

The best task you can do is automated rent collection and processing through some online payment portal. By claiming your tenants to sign up for automated drafts, you can reduce the possibility of late payment and start processing a decidedly smoother procedure.

6. Carry a Pre-Ride Inspection

At the conclusion of a lease agreement, nothing is more time-consuming than moving back and forth with a tenant regarding their security deposit (if you’ve decided to keep all of it to address the damage.) To save time, you can carry a pre-move construction.

“Strive to walk through the property with the tenant before a month from actual move-out and look out what particularly has to appear for the tenant to receive the full security deposit back,” The best suggestion is don’t threaten to take deductions from the security deposit, or this walk-through will produce the inverse effect.”

7. Hire a Property Management Company

If you’re deciding to handle everything on your own, you’re ultimately going to approach the end of your rope. The smartest option a landlord can do is hire a professional property management company to support the heavy lifting.

A property management company can manage as many of your responsibilities as you’d desire. From tenant acquisition duties like scheduling optimization and screening to the ongoing concerns which you deal for months and months, a good property manager will help save your time, money, and sanity.

Let AGILE PROPERTY Help You

Until you have got a property manager on your side – taking charge right from the rent collection to efficient maintenance coordination – you don’t understand how much time you’re spending on ordinary tasks and responsibilities. When you work with AGILE PROPERTY, we win these details off your to-do list and provide you the opportunity to relish with more free time. Contact us today for an outstanding property analysis!

Ascertaining Rental Value

Now that you have purchased a property and ready to rent it out, you have to derive the right price range for renting it out. It is mandatory to know the optimum rental value because a lower rent will result in loss to the Property Owner and higher rental value will result in putting off the prospective tenant – discover rental value.

To make sure that you derive at a right price, explore the following factors:

Market Value

The Rental value of the property is in direct proportion to the Market Value of the Property.

Market value of a property is the current value of the property in respect to the infrastructural developments. For example a new fly over or a metro rail link increases the value of the property and will increase the rent of the property.

For properties in demand and developments of infrastructural facilities like drainage and metro water by the Municipality also increase the value of the property along with decreases the recurring expenses eventually you can command a higher rent.

Stalled infrastructure projects, congestion in traffic, depletion of natural resources & availability of essential commodities, increased pollution levels etc decreases the market value and also affects the rental value.

Property’s Desirability

Apart from the location, infrastructure developments, type of property, Sq. Ft. of the property are some of the general factors.

The other specific factors with respect to the unit like parking facility, amenities in the house, design of your unit, size of the bedrooms, storage, location of your unit (in the same street), balconies, view of your property, facing, age of the building – can have different desirability levels compared to the other properties.

Prevailing Rental Rate

It is important to do a research into the market of your area. Look around the neighbourhood for similar properties and enquire about their pricing. You can also contact a local Property Consultant of Property Management Company who can advice on the Rental Value as per the market.

Vacant Properties

It is also important to make a list of vacant properties in your neighbourhood. Vacant Properties for a long time indicate that the demand for the property is less or the pricing of the property is not viable in the market.

In a saturated market, a reasonably priced property will not be rented out quickly. In such a market, the House Owner has to consider offering incentives or additional amenities if required.

Also make sure to evaluate the reasons for a property being vacant for a long time. The reasons could be insufficient parking, storage, location of the unit, physical home size – bedroom sizes, bathroom, furnishing in the unit, etc.

Properties that are rented out quickly have a possibility of fetching a higher rent.

Other Factors

The other factors which determine a slightly rental value are type of fittings and fixtures, clubhouse & facilities (like swimming pool, club house, jogging track, supermarket, visitor parking, etc), schools close by, connectivity, additional balcony as compared to the similar properties in the locality.

Conclusion

Evaluating the above factors will assist you to
1. Respond to the prospective tenants appropriately
2. Minimise the Vacancies
3. Assess the increase or decrease of rent in future.

Prepare Your Property for Rent

Before you go on to advertise your property, show the property to the prospective tenants, be sure to do the basics of preparing the property for rent.

In my personal experience, we visited a property which was not cleaned for several months. We visited the property and my executive told me. The property needs to be cleaned and painted. On having a closer look, he realized that the house was painted but due to the dust all over the house, the impression perceived is that the house is not painted.

The impression or the feel that a prospective tenant gets when he enters the house influences him to take a decision about the property (and of course the Owner / Care Taker). Nothing will turn off a prospective tenant than a dirty place.

A clean and presentable property with all electrical fittings in place, no leaks, no dirty walls or kitchen or toilets will influence the prospective tenant to confirm the property immediately.

No doubts that the property will be made ready before handing over to the tenant but the advantage of getting it ready before showing the property is not to miss a prospective tenant and the advantages of showing a prepared property to a prospective tenant are:

The tenant gets a positive impression of the owner and the property.
The tenant is clear of the condition of the property and all the things that have been provided by the owner and gets a message that anything extra may have an impact on the rent.
It gets an indirect message to the tenant that he should return back the property in the same condition.

Steps to Get Your Property Rent-Ready

Each house is different and will have unique things to pay attention to. The steps mentioned below will be a guide line to prepare your property for rent and can be implemented:

Once the house is vacated by the tenant, it may be messy at times. First clear the unwanted stuff from the house from both inside and outside the house.
Inspect the house thoroughly and make a list out the list of repairs and classify them as Major or Minor Repairs. Fix the Major Repairs first.
Pay attention to the fittings and fixtures and appliances inside the house and see that they are in good working condition. Replace any broken switches, plug points, rusted towel rods, rusted curtain rods.
Pay attention to the toilet – stained toilet seat covers, stained toilets put off a prospective tenant and turns him away from the property and he may prefer another property.
Give special attention to the kitchen – remove the oil stains and repair any damage to the wood work or the modular trays, handles, hinges if rusted are to be replaced.
Freshen up the walls by painting or touch up painting as per the condition of the walls. The condition of the walls can make a difference between renting it out and renting it out faster.
Thorough cleaning of the house is most essential. This includes walls, floors, fans, lights, cupboards, doors , windows, grills and special attention needs to be given to the toilet and kitchen.

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