How to organize property rentals in South Africa

If you have recently purchased a home in South Africa or are thinking about investing for the pure reason of giving your property to rent, be sure to follow these few hints and pieces of advice.

First of all, you will need to make sure you advertise property.  Of course no one will even know about your home or flat unless you tell them. Make sure you say whether it is a private property rental or through a real estate agent. This does make a difference to some people. With houses for sale, there is always the chance that it needs some fixing up, so before you hand it over to the realtor or invite tenants to view the property be sure it looks great. Fix little cracks and paint it out properly.

The next thing you need to do is find the perfect tenants. You must decide if you want your property to rent put for a short period of time or if it must be long term. In South Africa you have plenty of people that are willing to rent for 6 month and for 12 months because many people here cannot afford to buy houses. The housing market and homes for sale in recent years is catered for overseas buyers only and this is why many locals, even though they earn good money, cannot buy their own property.

When you have property to rent, be sure to get it rented. Do not let it stand for too long, because you are just letting it become more expensive for you. The mortgage payments will be earning interest and you will not be getting any income to pay that off. Remember that the sooner you pay off the amount you owe in mortgages, the sooner you can start to earn profits for yourself and make your property sale work for you.

What some people do when they have earned enough from the rental property they have, is that they use that money to buy another home. You find fabulous homes all over South Africa and with the soccer world cup coming here in 2010, now is the perfect time to invest in flats and vacation homes here. You may have to pay some extra taxes if you won more than one property here, but it is still minimal. Another great way to take the pressure off and enjoy the money you earn from your rental property here is to hand it over to the realtors. They will handle every aspect of finding quality tenants, doping background and credit check, assessing the property before and after each tenant moves on and making sure that you get your money every month. They will also handle the contracts and make sure they are all legal and that you are covered.

If you want to continue to rent out your property privately, be sure you have a solid contract in place that has been check over and approved by your lawyer. The last things you want are loopholes when you are in another country and dealing with locals tenants. It is safest to manage your rental property professionally and in the same manner as you would if you were organizing a house sale.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 5:41 am and is filed under Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.