Best practice tips from successful property investors
Successful property investors treat their assets like a business and like all successful businesses, they have developed systems and procedures that allow them to make informed decisions and optimise income generation.
Some of the systems that successful property investors use are:
- Employ direct debits and offset accounts. This ensures all payments are made automatically on time from your offset account which can also be used as a savings account to lower the net interest you pay on debt
- Separate email inbox for all things property. This allows you to focus and keeps business separated from your personal life
- Reviewing your portfolio, once a week (doesn't have to be more than 15 minutes) to keep track of your property rental incomes, expenses and loans
- Use a tracking software or a detailed excel spreadsheet to track your cash flow
- Evaluate the performance of each purchase in terms of capital growth, cashflow and time to manage the property
- Review rent, property condition and interest rates charged by banks every year to ensure they're in line with what you and your tenant expect
- Manage your risk by having cash buffers. Property might be a safe asset class but with leverage, things start to become risky. Make you sure have buffers in place
- Plan and set long term goals with at least 15 years in mind
- Build your team of professionals to advise and help you during your journey (e.g. investment saavy mortgage brokers, accountants, tradesmen)