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Advice and Tips for Your Rental Property
Buying Questions - FAQ Guide PART 1

Investing in a new rental property is an important decision and it's only natural to have rental property buying questions. Uncover the answers to your common and important rental property buying questions with our rental property buying guide here.

Should I Park My Money in Rental Properties or Other Investments?

Buying rental property tends to be more hands-on which can be a good or bad thing depending on what type of investor you are.

Being a landlord often involves having to manage your tenants and rental property. On the bright side, it's usually worth the extra effort because it is those tenants who will be paying for your monthly mortgage payments.

If you enjoy hanging out with other people and working on home improvement projects, then you may even enjoy being a rental property owner. Otherwise our rental property buying advice for you is to leave the running of your rental property to a trusted property manager or turn to paper assets like shares and bonds.

Is it Risky to Invest My Money in Rental Properties?

Just like most types of investments, there is always a certain risk involved when it comes to rental property investing. The good news is that rental properties are generally considered more safe than other popular investments such as shares, derivatives or currency.

The reason for this lower risk is due to slow moving and less volatile real estate market. On top of that, property investing often comes with generous tax breaks which helps to minimise any potential losses. Click here for more benefits of rental property investing in our rental property buying questions.

How do I Compare the Returns of Different Rental Properties?

Rental yield is widely used by rental property investors to compare the value and returns across different rental properties. It's basically the ratio of annual rent of a rental property versus its total property cost. Naturally a higher rental yield will be better because you can recover your investment capital sooner.

If you want a more accurate estimate, it's important to calculate net rental yield instead of the more popular (and simplistic) gross rental yield. Click for more details on calculating your rental yield in our guide to rental property invesment analysis.

How Can I Tell if a Rental Property will be Profitable?

This has to be one of the most important and commonly asked rental property buying questions. While every rental property investor has his own methods and rental property buying tips for judging the profitability of a rental property, calculating the property's net cash flow still remains one of the most reliable and time tested ways to tell if it will be profitable.

When choosing your rental property, it's highly recommended to go for one that generates a positive cash flow. This means finding a rental property where the rent from tenants is more than your total rental expenses which includes the mortgage payments, property repairs and other bills.

How Much Rent Can I Ask for this Rental Property?

If you are wondering how much rent a rental property can fetch, you can arrive at a rough estimate by looking at its home value. As a general rule of thumb, the monthly rent should be equal to 0.8% to 1.1% of your home value.

Another more tedious but reliable method to estimate the rent is to compare it with the recent rent prices charged by similar rental properties in the same neighbourhood. To find out the asking rent of comparable rental properties, Click here for our landlord tenant guide on how much rent to charge.

Are you ready for even more riveting rental property buying questions such as, "The real estate prices in my area are skyrocketing! Should I buy now?":



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