The spring can be a time of looking at your property portfolio and reassessing your investment strategy, with the longer evenings, brighter weather and warmer days providing excellent opportunities for sprucing up your property collection and starting the year the way you mean to carry on.
Read on for some tips on how to rejig your property investment strategy for 2014.
Look at your current portfolio
When the evenings are still cold and dark and the enthusiasm to begin new ventures is waning, this is the best occasion to spend time looking at your current portfolio of assets. It is easy to continue doing as you have been doing, and you might not have any real incentive to change your status quo if you’re still earning a profit from your assets.
However, there is likely to be plenty more you could gain if you gave your portfolio a shake-up; this might involve looking at renovating some properties, charging more rent for others or selling some on if they’re not making enough money.
Clear unprofitable assets
Indeed, it is important that every asset is worthwhile when you’re an investor. Not only will it mean you don’t have any weak links to your collection, but it also makes a difference to your reputation if every product you have on your books is cost-effective and appealing.
If you have a property that isn’t earning a high enough rental income to cover the buy-to-let mortgage because it is the wrong location or aimed at the wrong target market for the area, this could reflect badly on your ability to choose profitable assets. This may affect your credit rating with mortgage providers and your standing with vendors or buyers.
Giving your properties a spring clean
Looking at your portfolio, you might discover your properties aren’t performing well; however, everything points to them being successful on paper. For instance, they’re in the right place, there is a ready-made tenancy market and the average rental income in the area is high. Despite this, you might find your property isn’t earning you a high enough return or your asset is standing empty as you can’t attract tenants.
If this is the case, it is time to look at the property and see how it can perform better. It might be that, while the location is ideal, the flat or house itself is not attractive to tenants and, therefore, needs to be renovated to bring it up to current standards in the area. Alternatively, you might simply want to reconsider which lettings agents market your property and how much you charge for monthly rent.
Simple changes could make a huge amount of difference, so it is worth really looking at your properties to see ways in which you could improve your profit on each asset.
Research new opportunities
Of course, the spring could present the ideal time not only to look at your old assets but think about new opportunities in the property market.
You might have always traditionally invested in buy-to-let residential properties; however, other investment types have been making waves in the industry in recent years. For instance, student property has been named by Knight Frank as the “top asset class” since 2010, offering investors far higher returns than residential real estate.
Therefore, you may be interested in diversifying your portfolio and stretching out into this sector in order to earn a higher profit on your investment. While it can be daunting trying something new, you might find it presents great opportunities in the future, as you may be inclined to buy multiple student properties if they are particularly profitable for you.
This is why it is a very good idea to really examine your collection of properties and how you look after your assets every spring, so you can make sure you make the best decisions depending on the state of the market that year.