Property Investment

With the unpredictable nature of the West Australian property market, many investors are faced with the situation where their ROI is dropping with increased pressure to lower rental prices.

There are a lot of factors for you to consider as a property investor, which can have a dramatic effect on your budget and ROI. The standard considerations will see you researching what and where you buy, looking for growth suburbs and aiming for a decent rental yield. Finding a property with wide appeal to avoid getting stuck with a vacant home and keeping costs down with a low maintenance property, will also be forefront in your mind.

Property management is another important concern which can see your budget and returns dwindling. Most investors compare the percentage the property managers charge and choose the cheapest. This may be false economy if you are saving in this area but incurring large losses in other areas where inexperienced Property Managers make inefficient spending decisions. One of these we see repeatedly is in the area of repairs and maintenance.

Andrew recently discovered the cause of several roof leaks in a home. These had all been addressed by various trades with Band-Aid fixes, not addressing the actual cause of the problem. This cost the owner over $5000 and he still had a leak problem which needed fixing.

That is FIVE THOUSAND dollars of someone’s investment completely wasted. Not to even mention the grievance and disruption for the tenant.

With an expert opinion sought when the water ingress was first discovered, Andrew could have immediately found the real cause of the problems and advised the correct way to fix it, at a fraction of the cost of the ineffective repairs which have been implemented. As it remains now, the damage is considerably worse than it would have been, and the roof still needs to be fixed.

Whether you are managing your investment property yourself, or leaving it in the hands of a Property Manager, having a qualified Building Inspector establish the root cause of maintenance issues, can save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

That’s all money in your pocket, which is the ultimate goal when investing in property.