Top Tips For Renting An Overseas Property Investment

If you are planning to invest in a second holiday home to lease out, it is important that you learn how to maximise your properties rental potential.

To do this, remember to take the following into consideration:

1. What is the properties price vs. its rent?

The value of your property investment will determine your rental yield. Meaning the less you pay in terms of running costs, the higher your yield will be.

2. Short-term vs. long term rentals

The shorter your tenancy agreement, the higher the running costs after paying for utilities, cleaning, property management and making sure it is fully furnished.
Long term rentals on the other hand can be left unfurnished so your tenant can use their own furniture. In addition they will have to cover the cost of cleaning and utilities.

3. Location

Where you choose to buy your overseas property investment is important. Aside from ensuring that the property location has got a strong demand, you need to consider if there are already too many property lets in the area.

4. Property type

Certain property types will do better in certain locations. Property owners usually go to suburban areas looking for condos and houses where they can get a long term lease.

Approach property letting companies and find out what property types they are letting, where, and the length of the tenancies and the size of their rental income.

5. Competition

For the best results you’ll ideally want to invest in a property where tenancy demand is strong but competition is little. If you are interested in offering short term property lets, you need to invest in a property location that hasn’t got many hotels or short term condos, and vice versa for long term leases.

It is important to be thorough when doing this and that you look at the property market as a whole, including properties for sale.

6. Occupancy

Now this we don’t mean the total number of tourists coming to the area, to get a more accurate account of the occupancy rate of the area check out hotel occupancy rates to work out how popular a property location is.

7. Property management

Unless you are planning to live near your overseas property investment you may need to hire a bilingual property manager who can care for your property, find tenants and deal with tenant problems on your behalf.

8. Can you rent?

Before you invest in an overseas property investment, especially if you plan to lease it out, get a solicitor to check whether you are allowed to rent out your property in that area.

In some countries you will find that you are restricted to short term rentals of less than 30 days for residential properties.