The Greenville rental market is thriving right now, with rental prices surging since 2022.
As a new real estate investor, the rental market growth - which is among the fastest growing in the country - should pique your interest. When you're buying your first rental property, you want to do it in an up-and-coming market like Greenville.
Even in a good market, there's a lot more to being a landlord than purchasing a good rental property. In today's post, we'll give you a short guide for success as a real estate investor. Keep reading and you'll start making money on your Greenville property before you know it.
Perform Property Maintenance
When you take possession of your rental property, you need to prepare it to be a rental. This might involve minor property maintenance to take care of old windows, roof tiles, or appliances. It could also involve full-scale renovations to turn a single-family home into multiple rental units.
Property Marketing
Once your rental is ready to show to tenants, you can start with property marketing. With a rental property, it all hinges on your property listing and where you put it.
A good rental listing will have plenty of professional-quality photographs showing the unit in the best possible light. You'll also need a thorough description of the unit, the amenities inside the unit, and the surrounding neighborhood and its amenities.
Place your listing on all relevant rental listing sites and wait for applications to come in. You can even utilize digital marketing practices to get more eyes on the listing.
Tenant Screening
If you've marketed your listing well, you'll receive lots of interest. Make all interested tenants fill out an application, then use that application to perform thorough tenant screening.
Tenant screening is essential to the success of your investment property. If you have good tenants, your rental will always be lucrative. Poor tenants will cause you stress and cost you money.
To screen tenants, you need to look into their financial and personal backgrounds. A credit check will tell you plenty about their financial responsibility over time. A criminal background check verifies an applicant's character.
Tenant Management
Using all of this information, as well as reference statements, you can choose the perfect tenant. Once you have a great tenant, the ball is back in your court to make sure they're happy.
The other thing essential to your success as a landlord is tenant management. Make it easy for tenants to pay rent and make sure to promptly respond to their requests for maintenance. If you build good tenant relationships, your tenant retention will remain high and vacancy rates will drop.
How Property Managers Help a Real Estate Investor
These tips can help every new real estate investor get on their feet with a rental property. As you get better and better at managing your rental, you may grow your investment portfolio. At a certain point, you'll need to outsource your landlord duties to a property manager.
PMI Upstate SC is Greenville's top property management company. We offer comprehensive services for landlords across Greenville, including everything discussed here and more. Contact us today to learn how we can help you maximize your rental property.
