Buying and letting property without worries as a savings and investment alternative… How do you do it in practice? What are your options and how do you limit the stress and headaches associated with a traditional role as landlord? Find out more on this page!
Paying attention to the impact of investment property on your mental health is at least as important as looking for the best performing physical property investment.
If you understand what factors you perceive as stressful and create a plan to reduce or eliminate these factors, you can build a successful career as a property investor/landlord and enjoy what you do!
Table of Contents
- 1 Major causes of stress for property investors
- 2 Tips for overcoming stress: Buying and letting property without worries
- 3 Enjoy what you do as a private investor – Buying and letting property without worries
Major causes of stress for property investors
Your personality and numerous external and situational factors determine the level of stress you experience as a property owner.
If you are like most other people, you will probably have to deal with the following:
- Poor, stagnant cash flow. Nothing is more stressful than having to deal with cash flow problems and wondering if you can pay the mortgage, taxes and bills to keep the income property above water and cash flow positive.
- Late payments. One of the biggest frustrations of landlords is late and/or irregular payments. Not only does it affect cash flow, but it also makes you, as a landlord, waste time and energy trying to bring in the money. Non-paying tenants are a real plague and can cause packs of frustration and stress.
- Legal issues. Real estate can be complex and complicated in terms of regulations. If you are not careful, you can get into legal trouble for the simplest errors or mistakes.
- Unreliable tenants. Bad tenants tend to deal irresponsibly with a rental property. This can cause damage or fundamental problems that persist long after the tenants have gone.
These are some of the common sticking points for landlords. Being able to identify and analyse these bottlenecks of real estate letting is a good starting point to choose the right real estate strategy.
Tips for overcoming stress: Buying and letting property without worries
Once you know what makes you stressed, you can develop a proactive plan to overcome these problems (if you are already letting out) or avoid them (if you are still buying property to let out) and find peace of mind.
By the way, did you know that information overload and a feeling of being overwhelmed makes new property investors give up before they have even started?
Here are some suggestions on how to avoid stress and headaches:
Hire a property manager
There are certain relationships in life and business that work best when there is a third party acting as an intermediary.
The relationship between a property lessor and a tenant is one of those relationships that can run more smoothly through a professional intermediary.
A real estate mediator can separate the emotions of both parties and eliminate pitfalls that can occur when the two parties work together directly.
If you want to avoid some of the friction that comes with interacting directly with tenants, hire a property manager. Such a steward is usually worth every penny.
And even if it reduces your net return, the headaches and stress are largely gone. And buying and letting property without worries is worth money.
Careful screening of tenants
Good tenants equal stress-free letting. If you want your property letting experience to be a positive one, it all starts with a thoughtful and smart selection process.
Screening your tenant means looking at the information provided by prospective tenants themselves, as well as analysing external information to which you have access.
Based on this, you can come to a reasonable estimate of what kind of tenant the person in question will be.
We say “reasonable estimate” for a reason! There are no 100% accurate ways to predict the future quality and reliability of a tenant.
As a landlord, it is your job to screen easily and effectively to choose the best possible tenant for the rental house or flat.
Try to look for tenants with six specific qualities:
- The ability to pay the rent,
- Willingness to pay on time,
- Stable job,
- Cleanliness and housekeeping skills,
- Aversion to drugs and criminal activities,
- Low stress factor (a low stress quotient is important, you want a tenant who will cause you as little stress as possible.
Also try to avoid certain types of prospective tenants immediately through early identification. Read more about it on Become a landlord: 7 types of tenants to avoid like the plague.
Automate the collection of rental income
Don’t feel like following up with defaulting tenants by phone? Well, you can minimise the loss of time and frustration by getting the tenant to agree to a direct debit.
This is also known as standing order or automatic payment order.
Manual rent collection, as was often the case in the past (in person or by post) is slow, inefficient and cumbersome.
If you want to reduce the amount of effort involved in collecting rent (and lower the stress quotient), try to collect the rent automatically via an automatic payment order.
The tenant can have this set up at their bank, so that money is consistently transferred to your account. In this way, the tenant can no longer hide behind forgetfulness or other excuses!
By having your tenant(s) set up a consistent and periodic deposit with their bank, you are safe as a landlord.
A non-payment in this case is by no means the result of lax planning on the part of your tenant (but rather of an insufficient balance on the account).
As a landlord of buy-to-let properties, collecting rental income is important to secure your return on investment.
Without rental income, you cannot meet mortgage payments (capital repayments and interest payments), annual property taxes, insurance and other expenses.
Simply put, you need to receive rental income consistently to convert your assets into properties that generate positive cash flow, right?
Having your tenant set up an automatic payment order can solve many problems and delays in payment.
Set up an emergency fund – Buying and letting property without worries
In an effort to avoid money-related stress, you should set up an emergency fund for each rental property you own.
The fund should essentially be a special savings account that holds enough money to finance your property for two to six months. This gives you something to fall back on in case of a worst-case scenario.
This also provides extra peace of mind because in the back of your mind you know that the loan will continue to be repaid as there is enough buffer.
Creating and maintaining a financial buffer is a sensible way of dealing with external factors that you can never fully control.
Some things, unfortunately, you have to endure, and then it is nice to have a solid buffer for emergencies.
Active or passive letting of property: Make the right choice
Buying and letting property without worries can be done in different ways.
You could opt for a do-it-yourself approach, taking care of everything yourself, from purchase and renovation to tenant selection, maintenance, collection of rents, and so on.
Or you could opt for a completely passive property investment where you acquire full ownership and collect monthly rents. Without any more obligations or requirements.
The issue of passive property investor or active property lessor: What type are you? is one that can only be answered correctly by yourself.
Analyse your profile and requirements objectively – Active versus passive buying and letting property without worries
With some self-knowledge, you can very well evaluate which investment strategy best suits your character and profile.
For example, do you get furious and crazy when you are promised things or told things, but the promises are never kept or the claims turn out to be pure lies?
What about a scenario where the tenant claims to have transferred the rent money the day before yesterday (on a working day), while you just don’t see anything appearing on your e-banking app? Will you then explode, like the young gentleman below?
Or are you a kind-hearted person and have a lot of patience, even with people who sometimes lie?
It is very important to consider the advantages of passive income earning with real estate.
If you have a demanding job with many responsibilities, and also a family, then actively investing in real estate and becoming a landlord yourself is probably not the best idea!
And don’t forget that physical real estate can be used to passively build up an additional pension.
In other words, investing in property to let can be done in different ways: active or passive property investment.
Passive investment in real estate with rental guarantee can also provide for even less worries
Suppose you are attracted to a passive way of investing in real estate.
Then we would like to point out that you can go one step further and be completely carefree as an investor…
You can invest in real estate with a rental guarantee. In this way, you enjoy a passive investment that, moreover, provides guaranteed rental income and thus a secure annual return!
So you are also sure of your return, which takes away a lot of worry as the risk is reduced to an absolute minimum.
The extent to which the risk of collection of rental income, vacancy and non-payment is covered depends on the type of rental guarantee that you enter into and sign.
Passive investment properties with rental guarantee in the spotlight
- Buying a holiday home in France as an investment – Buying and letting property without worries is possible in this luxury resort with spa and golf at a top yield and with a fantastic benefit in kind: annual number of weeks free private use possible, both in high and low season. Contractually determined rental yield, investment in full ownership.
- Recreational real estate in France as a liquid investment – Invest in co-ownership, from 17,230 euros you can get in. Liquid investment that you can quickly cash in on. Nice contractually guaranteed entry yield!
- Real estate in Germany as an investment – Carefree purchase of German real estate in full ownership for rental purposes is possible here. Fairly low entry threshold in terms of total purchase amount. As an investor, you can count on a complete service including stewardship and complete rental service. Your rental income will be contractually defined and guaranteed by the promoter.
Enjoy what you do as a private investor – Buying and letting property without worries
The role of a real estate investor need not be daunting, stressful or thankless. If you do it right, it can be fun! So think very carefully about what investing in real estate may or may not look like for you personally!
To enjoy the benefits of real estate as a stable and cash-flow generating investment, you need to address the pain points that often frustrate people in this position.
Implementing the above strategies will hopefully pave the way to greater financial freedom and enjoyment during your career as a passive property investor or active property landlord.