The Five Biggest Headaches of Managing Property

1. That sinking feeling come 31 January.

In 2015 there were 500,000 UK tax payers registered with the HMRC as second home owners while their official estimates suggest as many as 1.5 million landlords in the UK. As you can imagine, this has led to a clamp down on those failing to provide self-assessment tax returns in relation to their property gains.

And so, every year, 31 January rolls around and you suddenly realise the completion date is upon you and you don’t have all the information you need. It’s difficult to keep track of all elements of your rental expenses and income and with other priorities in your life, even that predictable filing date becomes easy to miss.

2. Repairs seem to cost more and more every time.

The Citizens Advice Bureau suggests getting three written quotes for work to be carried out in or on a property. It’s sensible and means you really can be sure you’re paying a reasonable rate. But when it comes to second properties or a property portfolio, your time can be pulled in so many directions you may end up forging ahead with work having only a verbal estimate from your friendly tradesman.

This means you could be paying over the odds and minimising your return on investment for your buy-to-let property. And in turn it leads to a general fear of things going wrong if only due to the time you’ll need to invest to get it all fixed in a timely fashion.

3. Emotion is the buy-to-let investors worst enemy.

It can be very difficult to separate head and heart at the best of times but when buying property it can be even harder. This is Money reports that buying a property is the most stressful life event with the exception of divorce. Now this may relate more to buying your own home but sometimes it’s hard to remain objective when you are considering buy-to-let properties.

Have you ever found yourself thinking, “I really don’t like that worktop.” Or “That kitchen layout wouldn’t work for me.” Only to try and remind yourself that what you’re looking for is a functional, high-yielding property for tenants? (We’ve written a 3-step guide to choosing buy-to-let here if this rings a little true for you.)

4. Investing in professional services doesn’t always mean 2+2 = 4.

Making an investment into finding accountants or lawyers who can help you maintain your buy-to-let business is often a good idea. Indeed, there are also tax benefits with accountant fees to prepare your self-assessment return deductible.

But finding the best people who meet your needs and don’t cost you your monthly rental income can be difficult. They can also often only be as good as the records and information you supply and if that’s scattered around or wrongly filed, that investment either grows or returns bad results.

5. Google as lawyer. Discuss.

Google does many things very well – ComScore published figures showing Google’s percentage of search traffic in the US last February as close to 65% – but perhaps acting as a lawyer isn’t one of them. Google keyword data suggests up to 1000 searches a month for ‘rental agreement template’ (or variants) in the UK alone but this can be a risky strategy.

As we’ve written about in our blog legislation is changing rapidly (including this piece on tenant fees being abolished) in the buy-to-let sector and this means that templates which may have been relevant last year may not contain elements now required by law or simply leave you open to disputes with tenants through unclear terminology.

But remember: 

If these issues resonate (and you haven’t already), why not consider a trial with yourbuy2let.com? We’re buy-to-let investors who faced these very issues and built a product to get us back on track. In 2014 we took this to market to help others like us.

The online system is available on any device at any time, provides you with an at-a-glance P&L and yield expectations, a reminder system for annual services, tax returns, contract renewals or any other item you’d like to track. You can export your management reporting in one click ready to send to your accountant and access a list of peer-rated tradesmen and business advisors when you need some outside help.