Renting Out Your Old Home: The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Landlord

Investing in real estate is a great way of building wealth. To start building your real estate portfolio, one smart strategy is to hold onto your starter home after you build or buy your second home. In a healthy real estate market, you will quickly build equity and use the rent to cover your mortgage. However, while becoming a landlord and making money may seem easy, there’s more to succeeding as a landlord. Therefore, before you take the plunge, you may want to read the following guide on how to rent out your first home.

Understand your responsibility as a landlord

First, you should determine whether you can handle the obligations of a landlord. There are several benefits of renting your property, like generating income, deterring vandalism that often happens in empty homes and the ease of tax breaks. However, as a landlord, you have the responsibility to repair and maintain the property, pay your homeowners insurance, collect rent, and screen tenants.

Prepare your home

In the competitive real estate market, you won’t be able to rent out your home as-is. Tenants are choosy and have high expectations. Therefore, you will need to make your home more appealing by deep cleaning your home and ensuring that all appliances are in good working condition. Get electrical installation condition reports to ensure that all electrical appliances, fuse boxes, and wires are working properly.

Decide how much rent you will receive

You can’t just decide how much rent you will charge. Rent is controlled by the market, and the only way to come up with a fair market rent is to do some research. Ideally, you should rent your house for the same amount as other properties in a similar location, condition, and size.

Conduct a background check

There are several ways to run a background check on a potential tenant. Additionally, most property management applications have screening tools that can help you. However, before you even start screening your rental tenants, you should first decide what background and credit information you will allow. Generally, some of the things you should look closely include:

• Prior evictions

• Felonies

• Bankruptcy

• Criminal record

• Bad financial history

After you identify the right tenant, inspect the property and take photos of the house before move-in. Remember to also ask for a reasonable security deposit and agree on the appropriate payment schedule.

Consider hiring a property manager

Do you want to receive calls at 3 a.m about a clogged toilet? If not, you may want to use a property manager.  Your property manager will handle everything from collecting rent to scheduling maintenance and repairs. Although you will have to part with a small fee, you won’t go through the hassles of screening tenants, advertising your property, keeping track of financials, issuing legal notices to tenants, filing evictions, or enforcing rental policies.

Bottom Line

There are several reasons why you should rent out your first home after you buy a new one. Although there’s no format to succeeding as a landlord, taking the time to understand your responsibility as a landlord, preparing your home, deciding how much you should rent, screening tenants, decorating your house, and hiring a property manager will increase your odds.

Top Tips for a Home Gym

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Setting up a gym at home can be a great idea to keep your fitness goals on track. After the initial investment to set it up, it can work out cheaper in the long run than paying for a gym membership. Having the gym at home can also help you to stay committed to an exercise routine and take better care of yourself... If you don’t have to leave the house to hit the gym, it’s much harder to find an excuse not to go.

Invest In Quality Equipment

You want to be sure that the equipment that you buy for your home gym is safe. A lot of equipment like rowing machines, weight racks, and treadmills turn up frequently on local selling sites or auction sites like eBay. This can save you money, but make sure you go and look at any equipment before you buy it. Give anything you buy a thorough check to make sure it’s in suitable condition before you decide. If you buy new, make sure you know how to use everything safely. At home, you won’t have a gym trainer to show how something works, so ask the salesman and get them to show you. Book gym flooring installers to make sure the floor is even and able to support equipment, especially if you’re converting the garage. 

Start Small

Gym equipment is usually not cheap, so make sure you’re going to use it before spending a fortune. Start small with some free weights, a yoga mat, and an exercise ball. If you find you’re keeping up the habit well, then you can slowly add in more pieces of equipment. 

Personalise The Space

Make your home gym a room that you actually like being in. Adding something personal like posters or pictures can help with this. Put in a TV or some speakers to entertain yourself while you work out. 

Get Multipurpose Equipment

Most home gyms are relatively small rooms, so hardworking pieces that have more than use or can be adapted as your fitness levels change are a good option. Choose things like adjustable dumbbells, so you’re set up for different exercises with one piece of equipment. 

Keep It Warm

Lots of people convert their garages into home gyms. This is a great use of space but can mean that the gym gets cold. Don’t give yourself the excuse to dodge a workout because it’s cold, and put in some space heaters to keep it warm. Even with heaters, the bar of your barbell can get very cold, which isn’t pleasant on your hands. Keep equipment like this in the house, and move them to the gym when you’re ready to work out. 

Start Sociable

You might miss the social side of the gym. Sometimes the atmosphere of the gym can help to push you through a challenging workout. If you find your home gym is a bit lonely, why not invite some of your friends to use it too? They can save on their gym memberships, and you’ll have some company while you’re working out. Of course, while there are still national restrictions you won't be able to do that but you could try a Zoom workout together!

Getting Your Garden Ready For Spring And Summer: It's Not as Difficult as You Think

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Spring is bursting into view, and with the arrival of the vaccine for Covid-19 here, it’s an excellent time to get your garden ready for days of celebrating with family and friends, however, that may look.

So, here are a few helpful ideas to help to get your garden ready in 2021:

7 Tips To Get Your Garden Ready For Spring

You may be wondering where to start, especially if you haven’t focused on garden maintenance over the Winter months. Hopefully, the following tips and tricks will help set you on the right track and give you a garden to with a feel-good factor. 

De-Clutter Your Green Space

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and give your garden a pre-spring clean, you’ll need to scoop up the dead leaves, trim back overhanging hedges, remove any winter debris and prevent bacteria that could kill off new plants in your garden. 

Give Your Lawn Some Love

Spring is a great time to feed your garden and rake your lawn to eliminate all of the debris and dead grass. This will help the garden to breathe, ensuring there is less chance of it becoming waterlogged, should there be a sudden downpour.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The spring is an ideal time to turn your compost over; the material accumulated at the bottom of your compost bin will be an excellent source of nutrients for your new plants, and help keep your garden healthy and beautiful.

Create A Kitchen Garden

If you want to create an organic vegetable and fruit garden, now is the right time to start planting seeds and prepare your containers for propagation. You can clean up your old pots or be inventive and create new containers from a newspaper, yoghurt pots or empty food containers. 

Remove Unwanted Pests

Check all of your well-established shrubs, rose bushes and plants for bugs and pests, especially if you are re-stocking and adding new flowers and plants to your garden. This will prevent any disease or nasty unwanted garden pests from moving in, or taking root to destroy all of your garden work.

Rejuvenate Garden Furniture

If your garden furniture is looking a little sad and tired, you could be a little indulgent and buy something new, or you could spruce up plastic, wicker or wooden garden furniture. You can quickly revive plastic furniture with some TLC, some warm soapy water and a sponge. Wooden furniture may need a little more love, with some wood oil or a repaint. 

Create A Garden Haven

To create the perfect haven in your garden, you could add bird boxes, insect boxes, bee boxes and hang bird food around your garden.

Cover delicate fruit plants with netting to protect them from birds and garden visitors. 

Add a little colour and a lot of sunshine by adding fairy lights or garden lighting, invest in some garden textiles such as throws, blankets, cushions, anything that will make you and your visitors smile or could be a natural talking point. 

Renovating Your Whole Home? The Areas to Focus On

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Renovating your home is fast becoming a more popular choice than moving. I think the hassle of selling a property is beginning to put people off, and they are looking at alternatives. Sometimes making little improvements means you can stay in a house you love or an area you adore much longer. With that in mind, here are some of the essential jobs you could tackle first when it comes to renovating.

The garage

A garage is a real usable space. Some of us use it differently to others. However you decide to make use of this space, be it storage of your car or other items. Maybe even as a workshop. One of the things you may need to think about is the flooring, and using companies like Fusion Coatings could be an option. A good door is always going to be an essential to keeping things in check. Which is why the garage should be high on your renovation list. It could be the place that houses everything you need to complete your property renovations. 

The garden

A garden is a great place to consider renovating. This is because you can get so much use out of your outside space with a bit of tweaking here and there. You may want to add a lovely decked area that would be perfect for eating or relaxing in. You might want to consider maintaining your lawn a little better or adding some color in the flower beds. However you choose to landscape the garden, make sure you consider what you want out of it. To make sure you get as much value as possible. 

The loft space

The loft space is a workable area that could be used better. You could decide to do a loft conversion where you create a new room. This could be a study or a further bedroom if property deeds allow. Not only will this transform your home space, but it could add an immense bit of funds to your property value. 

Tackle the bathroom and kitchen

No home renovations would be complete without remodelling the kitchen and bathroom to your tastes and standards. They can be quite pricey jobs to take on, but the end result can add value as well. So it can be a worthy investment to make. Renovating the kitchen might   mean you start from scratch and completely rip out the old one. It means you may want to design the layout and where things are. It's a great opportunity to make it a space that works for you. The same could be said for the bathroom. You may want to rip it out and start again, or save a few key pieces if they can work well with your plans. All of which could save you a little money overall. 

Consider an extension

Finally, a big decision for renovations to your property could be to consider an extension. This could change your whole home completely. Giving you that extra bedroom you need or the extra living space you crave. They can again be a pricey thing to do, but in the end, could add considerable value to your home. 

Let’s hope these essential home renovations have inspired you to look at your home in a new light.