Tips to Expand Your Real Estate Portfolio

It seems like everyone’s advice on investments is to expand your real estate portfolio. However, this is one of those easier-said-than-done situations where expanding a portfolio can require a lot of work. Here are the best tips available to build your portfolio and grow your investments.

Invest in Temporary Properties

House flipping loans are easier to acquire than most people are led to believe. When you’re looking for homes to flip you should direct your focus to buy in up-and-coming areas. Cities that have revitalization projects are full of flip-and-fix investment properties.

While the idea of a flipping a house is to sell it as quickly as possible afterward, many property investors will keep one or two on their portfolios as rentals.

Marketing

Let’s say you already have a rental property. It doesn’t matter if it’s a traditional house, duplex or apartment complex, if it’s empty, you’re losing money. Fortunately, marketing has never been easier, and a few tricks with social media planning can make it inexpensive also.

The big ad space currently is Facebook, and the scale of the results are outstanding. Market with your ideal renter in mind. Facebook will help you attract more applicants but also allow you to vet you applicants more thoroughly than a craigslist ad would.

Marketing is about increasing visibility of both you and your properties. Good ads will help you obtain more applicants and keep your properties full.

Communication

Communication with renters is a tricky subject because people prefer different methods and levels of communication with their landlords. When you’re expanding your real estate portfolio, you might consider your apartments geographic location and tenants to determine how and when you communicate.

For example, an apartment complex with a rec room or large lobby you could invite tenants to regularly scheduled meetings. Those interested can attend. Otherwise, your renters are the quiet type. But, hosting just one get together can help you get ahead in understanding what your renters want and need.

Communication will help you build your portfolio by giving your renters a voice. You may learn about the steady increase in renters purchasing window air conditioners. When you buy future rentals to add to your portfolio a central A/C unit would make the property attractive to potential renters who wouldn’t need to use a window unit any longer.

Collections

There is no more significant threat to your investment portfolio than late payments. Hopefully, you have a safety net to ensure that your loan and vendor payments don’t go unpaid when someone misses their rent payment.

To improve your collections, you must start at the beginning with selecting your tenants. You can use services for the credit bureaus for a rent payment history report, but many tenants have lived with relatives and won’t have a rental credit history.

Statistics show that renters are stretching their budgets further to pay rent every month, and that means you should expect late payments. To build your investment portfolio, you should provide time frames with different terms for late fees. This solution gives your renters the opportunity to recover after making a late payment and increases the odds of you getting regular payments.