Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Investing in Real Estate and Becoming a Landlord

Real estate is no longer just about finding your dream home it is now one of the most popular investment vehicles that is used by individuals. The market of real estate has a huge amount of opportunities that individuals can take advantage of in order to see a big profit, but the process of purchasing and owning real estate is much more complicated than the process of investing in stocks and bonds.

Investing in real estate is one of the oldest practices that there is. Individuals will purchase a piece of property and allow tenants to rent it out. The owner of the property is the one who has to pay the mortgage, taxes, and maintenance cost, which is covered by the rent that the tenants are required to pay. Some landlords set the price of the rent at an amount that allows them to maintain the property and gain a small profit. More commonly landlords will only set the rent at an amount that allows them to pay all of the bills associated with the property and will not be interested in also obtaining that monthly profit. They exercise patience until the mortgage on the property has been completely paid off which enables most of the rent from then on to be profit for them. A lot of times property will appreciate which will result in the landlord being left with a piece of property that is more valuable than it was when originally acquired.

Dealing with renting out property is not always easy some individuals are unfortunate and end up dealing with undesirable tenants who damage their property or they may not be able to obtain any tenants at all. If either one of these situations occurs real estate investors will be left with a monthly cash flow that is negative which could make it difficult for them to make their mortgage payments. It is important that investors choose property that is located in an area where the vacancy rates are low which means individuals actually want to rent property in that location.

One of the main differences present between rental properties and other types of investments is how much time an individual has to invest in the maintenance of the property. When an individual invests in rental properties there are a lot of other responsibilities that come along with this decision of becoming a landlord. If you find that you do not enjoy having to perform handyman work on your property you could probably get a professional property manager to take over the property for you if you offer them a good price.

For individuals who are interested in purchasing rental properties, but do not want to have to deal with the duties that are associated with being a landlord they may want to look into real estate investment groups. This could just be the perfect solution to their dilemma. Companies that purchase or build sets of apartments or condos will turn around and let investors purchase them through their company which will enable them to become members of the group. The company that is responsible for managing the investment group will be responsible for managing all of the units such as advertisement of available units and maintenance, but the individual investors are able to own as many units as they want. The company receives a percentage of the monthly rent earned from the units in exchange for them managing the properties.

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