They say being a landlord is the easiest way to generate passive income on a month-to-month basis. But is there any landlord on the planet who actually believes owning rental properties is utterly passive?
Sure, there might be some facets that require little or no effort, but the reality is that it consumes your time. Typically, landlording requires substantially more hours than most people anticipate.
Between late-night repair requests to chasing down rent checks, an array of responsibilities compete for your time. And though it’s not realistic to expect you could remove every duty and obligation, there are ways to reduce the amount of time you have to give up to mundane tasks.
In fact, it’s totally reasonable that you could trim your time commitment down to just a few hours per month. Here are a few of our favorite time-saving tactics that landlords use to recalibrate their schedule and become more efficient.
- Hire a Professional Property Manager
This first tip is probably the most important. If you implement this, you’ll save hundreds of hours per year.
In many cases, you’ll no longer have to address some of the tips that follow. A property manager will handle them for you.
When you hire a property management company, you’ll want a company that’s local, experienced, and full-service. By full-service, we mean they offer comprehensive resources like tenant screening, property marketing, rental collection, photography, repair and maintenance coordination, eviction services, 24-hour repair support line, and so on.
- Switch to Online Rent Collection
When you’re a landlord, few tasks are more frustrating than having to chase down rent checks. Not only is this a pain in the rear, but it sucks up a lot of time and mental energy.
One simple way to cut down on late rent payments is to switch to online rent collection. This gives tenants the option to pay online.
And if you encourage automated withdrawals, they won’t even have to press any buttons. The transaction is simply processed at the same time and on the same day every month.
- Use Standard Finishes Throughout Your Units
If you have multiple units, we highly recommend that you use standard paint colors, lighting fixtures, faucets, carpet, etc. This makes it extremely easy to make repairs and updates when they’re needed. It also means you’ll have less to have to keep track of, which is another plus!
- Keep Meticulous Records
Speaking of keeping track of things, you can save a lot of time if you’re a meticulous record keeper. Cloud folders and spreadsheets are your friends!
We recommend making a folder for every single property you own. Inside of it, you should keep all paperwork, receipts, and information that relate to that unit.
Then, whenever you need something related to that property, you simply go to the folder and it’s waiting for you. No more tracking down emails, texts, or bank statements.
- Simplify Landscaping
For properties that have landscaping, you can save time by cutting down on the need to perform extensive yard work such as mowing the lawn, pulling weeds, planting flowers, or mulching beds. Do this by opting for hardscaping whenever possible and by planting native plants that require less water.
- Provide Extra Smoke Detector Batteries
It’s extremely frustrating for a landlord to receive a call from a tenant every single time a smoke detector starts chirping. One way to avoid this time-consuming event is always to keep extra batteries stocked at each of your rentals. Then, any time a tenant calls, you can just direct him or her to the appropriate drawer or cabinet.
- Invest in More Thorough Tenant Screening
Having good tenants living in your properties will save you a ton of time. That’s why we recommend spending more time on tenant screening up front. Even if the effort slows you down by a few days, performing more thorough due diligence will enable you to weed out potentially bad tenants who can waste many, many more hours of your time down the road.
Bringing it All Together
Being a real estate investor is one of the quickest paths to amassing significant wealth without having to exchange time for money directly. On its own, though, landlording can be a fairly time-consuming investment.
The key is to identify where you’re wasting the most time and to neutralize these problem areas with quicker, more efficient solutions. We hope this article has given you a decent head start as you streamline your rental property management and use your time more efficiently. Good luck!
Disclaimer: This content does not necessarily represent the views of IWB.