Creative Ways to Earn More from Your Real Estate Property Portfolio
Scaling and diversifying your real estate portfolio are proven ways to bring in passive income. However, maximizing your earnings from your real estate portfolio requires creative strategies and additions. Do you want to know other ways to earn more from real estate property? Here are some ideas on how investors can truly earn top dollar from their real estate portfolio with little additional costs and effort.
6 Ways to Earn More from Real Estate Property
Consider Short Term Rentals
Hotels and hospitality establishments no longer carry the hospitality industry which such a firm grip as the business of short-term rentals continues to carry momentum. Travelers are booking places to stay on sites such as Airbnb and VRBO more often. The idea is renting a space run by locals gives travelers more of an experience of their destination than a large hotel with hundreds of identical rooms. Although these short-term rental platforms offer cheaper rates for the consumer, they offer investors an avenue to maximizing the rent of their investment property.
Listing your property as a space on short term rental platforms gives owners the ability to book several guests for one month, or even in a week, rather than rent to one tenant for a year. Because of the quick turnaround times and the convenience of booking a furnished space designed for visitors, guests pay significantly more per night than a typical tenant. During a busy tourist season, short term rental hosts can make three to four times in rent compared to a long term tenant.
If you decide to list your property as a short term rental, maximize your bookings by listing the property on multiple sites. Airbnb and VRBO are two of the more popular platforms, but there are several platforms available. Often you can sync scheduling calendars to avoid double bookings.
Charge a Higher Cleaning Fee
As a bonus, as a host, you can charge your guests a cleaning fee. Each booking payout will include a cleaning fee amount of your choice. If you hire a cleaner to turn the space between guests, you can select a cleaning fee amount higher than the price of your cleaner and pocket the difference. Better yet, if you can clean the space yourself the entire cleaning fee is yours.
Furnish your Property and Target Transient Tenants
Renting a property on a short term rental site is not for every property owner. However, owners can still maximize the rent of their properties by targeting the transient population. Several groups of people, with little or no household wares, need places to stay for a few months or an indeterminate amount of time: contracted professionals, such as traveling nurses, divorcees, recent college graduates, military personnel waiting for deployment orders, and more. These transient populations are looking for furnished spaces, move-in ready, and are willing to pay a higher price for these conveniences.
Rent Out Parts of your Property
Take an inventory of any unused or under-used spaces around your property and consider renting out these spaces. Not only will renting out multiple spaces in a property maximize your rental income, but also establishes multiple lines of income. For example, if there is a shed in the backyard collecting dust, consider renting only the shed as a workspace or even extra storage.
Offering extra storage space is an excellent way to earn more from your investment properties. You can rent out extra storage space as a monthly fee in addition to rent. You can even rent out your driveway! Vanly is a platform similar to Airbnb; owners can list their space for rent except the space is not a home, but the driveway. Any unused space at your property has the potential to fill a need for someone in your area.
Offer Conveniences and Services
After maximizing the amount of rent you can collect from your rental home and the various unused spaces on your property, you can shift your focus to adding conveniences and services to your properties for an extra charge.
Several desirable amenities can be deal-breakers for tenants; often tenants will pay extra for space with these particular conveniences. If you can make these services available to your tenants, be sure to charge extra fees to maximize your earnings.
In busy areas, such as cities, assigned parking is often a convenience many renters will gladly pay in addition to their monthly rent.
Consider allowing pets in your rental properties. Charging a monthly pet fee, instead of a pet deposit, is additional money paid by your tenant to you. A pet deposit is a larger sum paid at the beginning of the lease but is paid back to the tenants at the end of the lease.
Trash Valet Service
If your property is an apartment, condo, or any space on a higher level of a building that requires occupants to walk their trash to a larger bin a bit of a distance from their space – consider offering trash valet services. For a fee, your tenants can leave their trash outside their front door and someone else will take the trash down to the larger dumpster. Professional valet trash services do exist, but if you have the time and are a local landlord, you can take this service on yourself and pocket the fee.
Laundry Service
Onsite laundry is a luxury renter often consider before signing a lease and is an opportunity for you to make additional profit. By providing onsite laundry services, typically a coin-operated washing machine and dryer, you not only provide a helpful amenity to your tenants, but you also collect all of the coins from the laundry machines. Cha-ching!
Offer access to Exclusive Venue
Other ways to earn more from real estate property which may be particularly appealing to short-term rental hosts is to offer your tenants or guests access to a popular or exclusive venue in your area for a discount. For example, if you have a membership to Top Golf where you can golf an unlimited amount of times per year and can allow guests to golf as well, you can essentially allow your guests to use your membership and any perks for a fee. The fee is additional income for you, but also a convenience for your tenants.
Avoid Overpaying
Although these next two options do bring you extra earnings, they do help you maximize your investments and your net profits.
Avoid professional property management companies. Take advantage of the cost savings by managing your rental properties yourself, if possible. Avoiding property management companies also means avoiding their fees and having complete control over the upkeep of your property, selection of tenants, etc.
Do not include utilities in your rent. Landlords often use utilities included in monthly rent to entice potential tenants. However, when tenants do not pay for the utilities, the landlord often ends up overpaying for this particular utility due to overuse.
Finally, be sure to visit your rental properties regularly! Identifying and fixing any damage to your property is paramount to avoid any larger costs down the road.