Читать книгу Property Management Kit For Dummies - Robert S. Griswold - Страница 41

Owning and maintaining your home is good experience for many aspects of rental property management. You may be very handy at fixing leaky faucets and painting cabinets, for example, but owning a home doesn’t give you all the skills needed to become a successful residential rental property owner. The main difference you need to remember is that a rental property is an investment — nothing more, nothing less. Although in a perfect world, you’d find your rental property personally appealing, ultimately. it’s just an income-producing investment.

In your own home, you’re in full control of making sure that you have money to pay the debt service on the property, and you take a serious interest in addressing small maintenance problems while they’re still low-cost items. As a homeowner, you also probably have experience in trying to live on a budget.

When managing rental property, you must be able to put your personal tastes and style aside in favor of what keeps your tenants happy and your costs reasonable. Because you don’t live in your rental property, you need to make sure that the furnishings and the property’s condition appeal to the broadest number of potential renters, even if you’d rather decorate it like the Palace of Versailles. You also have to be practical, thinking about the long-term implications of your management decisions. You may prefer drapes for window coverings in your own home, for example, but cordless vertical blinds are more practical for a rental property. Although they may not be as luxurious as drapes, vertical blinds are more durable and much easier to clean, and a broken or bent individual slat is easy to replace.