As a real estate investor in Chesapeake, you understand keenly that your investment properties are the engine of your financial growth. Without a well-maintained engine, your business goals get stranded on the roadside.
Property managers in Chesapeake are like your trusted mechanic: we know how to care for and maintain every detail about your growing investment portfolio. We know how to nurture it into its full potential—and how to help it grow in strength again when it seems like it's losing steam.
One of the ways we do this is through some hard research into the market surrounding your investment properties in Chesapeake when determining how—and at what rate—to price your rentals. Expert property managers in Chesapeake know that the pricing of your rental actually depends on some serious investigation—not a "gut feeling" about what your property is worth.
As an investor, you can also utilize this kind of thinking and apply it to each of your properties to increase your long-term wealth and reduce vacancy. Read on to learn about some of the crucial components involved in determining the "bullseye" price for your Chesapeake investment properties!
Conduct a Customized Market Analysis
The first step to correctly pricing your rentals in the Chesapeake area is to conduct a market analysis. A market analysis relies on hard data, and investigates several crucial pricing elements that can be delineated through a thorough analysis of your property's surroundings, as well as of comparable properties, known as "comps."
Dive into the Surroundings
The success of your investment portfolio hinges on more than the properties you've chosen to add. Do some digging into their surroundings to get a clearer picture of the going rate. Look at features like:
- What's the total volume of rental homes available in the area?
- How many of those rentals are single-family units versus multi-family units?
- Of that composition, how many of these units are occupied or vacant?
- Are there highly-rated schools nearby?
- How close are your Chesapeake investment properties to amenities like shopping and highways?
Exploring these metrics is crucial to successfully price your property: if your neighborhood is dominated by multi-family units, you'll have a hard time keeping your single-family unit competitive. On the reverse, prospective tenants looking for a renting experience more akin to traditional home ownership will embrace a single-family unit.
The vacancy rate can also give you a hint about what rental rate to expect for your properties: if available units disappear quickly, the market is hungry for rentals—and you'll be able to ask top dollar.
Once you've done your research on the "big picture," it's time to look a little closer to home.
Investigate Comparable Properties
Appropriate pricing for your investment portfolio also depends on the competition. If your pricing is too far below what your competitors are charging for comparable properties, you're missing out on the income you should be gaining to grow your wealth through Rent Estate™.
Some key traits to look at when comparing properties are:
- The average rent per square foot
- The number of bedrooms and bathrooms
- The going rate for various fees, including those associated with pets
- Time spent on the market
- The available amenities, including parking.
Once you've fleshed out what you can expect from your closest competitors—and what they're charging for their units—you can muscle into the market with the data you need at your fingertips. Zillow and Trulia are fantastic sources to data-mine when it comes to these metrics.
Research Has Long-Lasting Benefits
Beyond benefiting the investment properties in Chesapeake that you currently have, reliable market research has far-reaching perks to sustain and mature your property investment portfolio.
When you seek to acquire new properties, the techniques and skills you develop from researching the "bullseye" price for your current rentals can be applied to properties you're considering—before you ever leap into investing outright. This kind of foresight through the numbers can spare you from onboarding a property that might seem like a gem—but is actually an investing lemon.
A Property Manager With Chesapeake Expertise Is Your Golden Ticket
The saying "time is money" is a truism that will forever hold relevance when it comes to investing in real estate. While this kind of research-based approach to setting your rent rate is a must to remain competitive—it also demands a significant investment in time on your part.
When you decide to bring in a property manager in Chesapeake to help maximize the value of your rental portfolio, you not only gain an incredible asset when it comes to pricing; you gain all the skills and expertise that go with it. High-quality property management companies like Renters Warehouse Hampton Roads even offer our potential partners a FREE rental analysis: we know that when your properties are priced correctly, they succeed. We also know you don't have time to waste experimenting with the pricing on your units.
Whether you work alone or with a property manager in Chesapeake to price your units, your rental property's "life cycle" is just beginning. Pricing your rental is pointless if nobody sees that it's available to rent; this is where your property listing comes in.
While your Chesapeake investment properties are unique, there are certain facets of a rental listing that should be applied on a "global" scale. That's why Renters Warehouse Hampton Roads is proud to offer our FREE Property Listing Checklist for investors who want to craft a listing that works hard for you—rather than the other way around. Download your copy today, and let's get started on growing your wealth through Rent Estate™.
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