What else can I do to protect my investment?
There are lots of ways to protect your investment that also make your landlord life easier. We’ll break down the best ways to protect yourself and your property.
Do your homework on new tenants
Make sure you know who your tenants are. At Mashroom, we make it easier for landlords to self-manage and we really encourage you to build a relationship with your tenants and meet them before you agree to take them on. This way, you know exactly who is moving into your property and reassure yourself that you feel comfortable with who will be living there.
Taking this a step further, we really encourage you to get tenant referencing on everyone who will be living in your property. Meeting people in person and going on your own good judgement is great, but nothing beats a full reference to give you additional information and peace of mind.
It’s also important to get official tenant referencing if you want to get Rent Guarantee Insurance, you can’t get RGI without it!
Full suit of insurance
Don’t rely on good luck and savings! When it comes to your property, you should definitely hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. You’ve done your homework to confirm you’ve got the best tenants, but make sure you’ve got a full suite of insurance behind you as well.
Home Emergency Insurance will cover you in the event of – you guessed it! – home emergencies. If there’s a fire, or a flood, an infestation, a boiler breakdown or just a set of lost keys – HEI will save you from dipping into your pocket.
Of course, you might have HEI and never need to touch it, but it’s there if you need it, so you don’t need to worry about how you’d pay a tradesperson if the heating suddenly stopped working in the middle of winter!
We’ve talked about RGI already, but it’s a really important string to the landlord bow, ensuring that you are covered in the event of missed rent and eviction needs.
Finally, make sure you have buildings insurance too. Most lenders won’t allow you to take out a mortgage without buildings insurance and life insurance, so make sure you’re covered!
If you’ve got all the necessary insurance, you know your property and your pocket are protected.
Gear the asset
While this may sound counterintuitive, consider growing your portfolio. The larger your portfolio, the safer you are.
When a property falls into a void period, this will hit you in the pocket. But if you have a couple of other properties, then the profit from them will help you cover the mortgage on your empty property.
Be sure to speak with a mortgage specialist before taking the leap, but this is one way to protect yourself.