Real Estate

How to Protect Your Buy-to-Let Property

Protect Your Buy to Let Property

When you own a property that you want to let out to a tenant, you want to protect it at all times. Here’s how you can make sure that it doesn’t get damaged by any of the threats it faces.

Find a Good Tenant

One of the best things you can do to keep your home in good condition is find a good tenant. Problem tenants are not very common, but they are out there, and you should do everything you can to avoid them. You don’t want to have to deal with the problems that come with tenants who create a mess and don’t respect the home. Once a tenant is in the home, it is very difficult to evict them, so you won’t be able to do so just because they don’t clean up as much as you’d like. That’s why it’s so important to do the right checks before you let them move into the home. You should get tenants from their past landlords and make sure that everything adds up as it should do.

Follow All the Fire Safety Laws

As a landlord, it’s up to you to make sure that you look after all the fire safety issues. It’s written in law that the property has to be safe, and fire safety is a big part of this. This is not just something that will keep your property secure; it will also ensure that the people you rent the property to are kept safe. So, you can’t afford to skimp when it comes to putting the correct measures in place. For a start, you need to create a fire safety plan that is given to the tenant. Then you should install a fully functioning and tested smoke alarm, as well as a fire extinguisher that the tenant can use in emergencies. Check what the exact laws around buy-to-let fire safety protections are, and then make the relevant steps.

Seal Your Drive

Before winter starts, you should seal your drive. You can do this by adding sealant to around the edge of the drive. You simply have to mix the sealant solution together and then use a paintbrush to apply it to the driveway. It’s not something that you have to do very often. Doing it once a year should be enough to make sure that this doesn’t cause you any major problems. So, why do you have to do it in the first place? Well, concrete tends to expand when the weather is cold and then contract during the heat. So, when the season changes, and it starts to get cold, cracks can appear if you’re not careful. Not many people think to do this, but those who do will avoid big problems.

Prepare Your Home’s Exterior for Bad Weather

Bad weather can be the biggest problem that your home faces. The way in which you prepare your property for the challenges that will presented to it by the weather will depend on what kind of property it is. If the home has trees nearby, you should think about removing them so that they don’t get blown over and damage the house during a storm. And if you live in a log home, you should finish the wood with a protective coating. Sites like www.MoutainHomeBuildingProducts.com/sustain-log-home-stain/ offer those products. There are plenty of other things you can do to prepare your home for the worst too. Simple things like fitting window shutters to your property if you’re in a location that is hit by a lot of storms can help a lot.

Keep Your Gutters Clean

This might seem like a relatively small thing to mention, but it’s actually more important than you might realise. Something as simple as some leaves blocking your gutters can lead to some pretty serious problems for your home. First of all, if the gutters freeze or get blocked, then it can cause an overflow later on, and that can damage the roof of your home. You don’t want water to start leaking through the roof. And even if that doesn’t happen, that water will be deposited around the outside of the home, meaning it could flood the foundations. This is even more serious because your whole home is supported by its foundations, so you don’t want them to be eroded in any way.

Make Sure the Home Always Looks Occupied

You also need to think about what the chances are of your home being broken into. This is a real risk, and it’s an even bigger risk for buy-to-let properties. That’s because the home might be left unoccupied when you are looking for a tenant to move into the property. Homes are always more vulnerable to burglaries when there is no one living in the home. It makes it an easy target for criminals. So, when no one is living in the home, you should make an effort to make it look like it is occupied. This can be done by spending some time there, taking away leaflets that are pushed through the door or even parking your car in the drive. It’s a small effort to make in order to keep the home safe and secure.

Install the Best Alarm Possible

Even if you do the things I mentioned above though, there is still a real chance that the home might be broken into. You can’t really predict the logic that goes through the mind of a criminal. Therefore, you need to make sure that the home is installed with one of the best burglar alarms you can find on the market. Even the sight of a burglar alarm on the front of the house could be enough to deter anyone who is thinking about breaking into the home. If not, at least it will be there to alert anyone in the home or nearby if a break-in does start to take place. It’s one of those small investments that is really worth making when you are a landlord. Websites like http://www.screwfix.com/c/security-ironmongery/burglar-alarms/cat810260 sell alarms.

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