Buy-to-Let (An Infographic) - Which Street Are You On?
Looking to become a landlord and want a few pointers? What does it take to be a great landlord and what does it mean to fail? We've taken some time to create an infographic looking at good landlords, bad tenants, picking the right property and choosing the right estate agents to manage each of your projects.
Always Use Local Letting Agents
From personal experience one of the best bits of buy to let advice I would give is to always use a letting agent where possible.
Better letting agents will not only be able to help find good suitable, long-term tenants, but they will also be able to advise on how to make sure you miss the bad tenants.
By choosing a local letting agent you will be able to benefit from their on-the-ground experience and knowledge on which tenants to steer clear of with your lettings.
This advice is invaluable, and we have dodged a bullet a few times with our buy-to-lets when we have started marketing the property ourselves and then used to a letting agent to do the referencing.
In the end, we found that it's just not worth the hassle of self-managing if you have the contacts of a good letting agent.
Pick The Right Properties Early On
As well as choosing a good letting agent to manage your buy-to-let properties for you so you can be a hands-off landlord, it's also important you find the right properties early on in your search.
Because being able to offer the right properties, will attract much better tenants and will make your buy-to-let landlord journey much smoother.
When it comes to picking the right properties, take a look at our 7 Golden Property Investment Rules.
If you wanted to have a look at some more buy-to-let advice, take a peek at our blog, which covers everything from choosing the right property investment areas, what to look out for when renovating Edwardian properties, how to correctly calculate rental yield and more...