Tips For Buying a Rental Property

Bigger is not always better

As your property size and square footage help to determine your tax rate, an acre or more of land really isn’t necessary. You’ll mow it (or pay to mow it) and pay extra taxes for it, but beyond increasing overall property value, it won’t do much as far as rental income goes unless you have plans to build an addition or another rentable structure on the lot.

Neither will room size. As long as you meet the minimum bedroom requirements required by the township or city, more square footage per room doesn’t necessarily help. 4 small- to medium-sized bedrooms may actually produce better income than 3 large bedrooms.

One of our rental properties featured a lovely but immense bar in its finished basement, which we immediately earmarked for removal. The small extra initial cost has paid off in the long run, especially when we decided to rent to college students. If our goal was to flip the house, we might have left it, but for our intended use it was more of a liability.