5 Tips to Help You Maintain Your Vacant Property

September 29, 2015 Guest Post

Property is always a good investment. It’s like Mark Twain once said, “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore”. However, owning multiple properties can also be a burden. Maintaining one house is difficult, how do you think it is maintaining two? Your investment in real estate doesn’t just double overnight. You need to hold onto it for a while. During that period your property must be kept in perfect order. Otherwise, you’ll lose money when the market recovers and it’s time to sell. Here are 5 tips to help you maintain your vacant property.

Find a Tenant
The easiest way to maintain your property is to find someone else to do it. And instead of paying him money for his services, you can collect money from him. Finding a tenant is an easy solution to a difficult problem. However, it’s not always as easy as it sounds. Placing your property in the hands of a stranger requires trust and trust is hard to come by these days. You need to find the right person to put your trust in, someone who will look after your property like you would. Renting out your property also generates income, which is a whole lot better than leaving it vacant.

Live There On Weekends
Until you can find the right tenant, you need to fulfill the responsibility of maintaining your own property. I know you can’t live in two different houses at the same time, but you can shift between them from time to time. That way both properties will be in a habitable condition. Spend your weekends at your vacant property and do some cleaning while you’re there. You’ll get a change of scenery and both your properties will be maintained. That’s two birds with one stone, or so they say.

Invite Friends & Family
If you can’t fulfill the responsibility of maintaining your property, then you should enlist the help of your friends and family. Invite them to come over and stay at your vacant property for a couple of weeks. It’ll be like house sitting, but on rotation. Your friends and family can take turns house sitting for you. I’m pretty sure you know enough people to keep this going for a year. And it’s not even a favor that you’d be asking. Most people would welcome a change of scenery and jump at the opportunity to spend a few weeks away from their home. It’s not a vacation, but I still think they’d go for it.

Periodical Inspection & Maintenance
If none of the above tips work for you, then you’ll have to leave your property vacant for some time. Just don’t forget to conduct periodical inspections every few months to make sure things are in order. You can hire a plant & facilities maintenance service to conduct the inspections and provide maintenance if necessary. Tackling repairs as and when they appear should be enough to keep your property well maintained. And since there’s nobody occupying your property, there won’t be many repairs to begin with.

Insure the Property
If all else fails, there’s insurance. To guarantee that your real estate investment doesn’t go to waste, insure your property. This way even if your property is destroyed in a fire or blown away by a hurricane your investment will be safe. You should always have a plan B in place, just to be sure. Research different insurance policies and see the kind of cover they give. Always read the fine print, because insurance companies have a way of weaseling their way out of paying your settlement due to some obscure clause in their contract.

The main reason why people shy away from real estate investment is because they’re worried about maintaining their vacant properties. Using the tips mentioned here those worries can be put to rest. Every investment carries with itself certain risks. That doesn’t mean it’s going to go south for sure. You need to analyze every aspect of the investment and then decide whether or not you want to put your money in it. If you go by what Mark Twain said, then real estate investment is quite a safe bet. And with these tips it becomes much safer.

Leslie Kramer, the author of this post, is a freelance blogger, who is currently writing for Centrals specializes in ground and underground construction. Leslie is a big time foodie and she often spends her weekends in watching movies and trying new eating joints in the city.