What you should do AFTER you have bought and leased out your property

This blog has gone through in a significant amount of detail all the steps involved in buying and leasing our your property including

• Deciding to invest in real estate
• House hunting
• Deciding how much to pay
• Things you should find out before you negotiate the price
• Negotiating the price
• Getting the finance for your property
• Should you go guarantor for your children?
• Should you invest with family or friends?
• Doing the due diligence on your investment property
• Using a property manager versus self management
• Picking your property manager
• Things you should do before leasing your property
• Getting depreciation reports
• Setting the rent
• How to choose the right tenants
• What insurance you need
• Specialist versus general insurers for investment properties
• How to control your home insurance premium
• What records should you keep

The initial phase of investing in your property is VERY time consuming and is likely to consume all of your investment time and almost all of your free time.  After this process is all done therefore people feel like they should be doing more and should continue to be busy...this could not be further from the truth.

After you have set everything up and everything is in place the key is to do close to nothing!

It feels wrong - it feels like with the amount you have invested in this property that you need to keep doing things - there MUST be something else to do.  In fact if everything is going to plan and you have set up everything correct you do not want to get a call from your property manager telling you that you need to do something.

Really the only things from this point on that you need to do is

1. Keep an eye on your finances to make sure everything is running to plan
• I do this once or twice a month (typically whenever rent is due)
2. Keep on top of repairs and maintenance - especially those requested by the tenants
• There are some things which you have to do (which relate to whether the house can be lived in) and there are something things which can wait until the tenants move out
• Note that maintenance is an expense which comes out of your pocket so if you are not getting these requests then everything is going well
3. Stay on top of your lease arrangements and when you have to renew your leases and possibly increase your rent
• A calendar reminder and a little research once or twice a year is all you need to do this
• It is not particularly time consuming

One of the best things about a real estate investment is that after you have done all the initial work, if you have a property manager, to a large extent you can 'set and forget' it for large periods of time and concentrate on finding new investments.

The temptation to 'do something' wears off after a month or two as you settle into your investment.  It is a great feeling to know that your investment is sitting there trouble free.  That is not to say that you are making a great return (but you cannot control that - that is up to market forces) so sit back, relax and know that you largest investment (probably) is doing fine.