Making Money Through Leasing

If you’re looking for different ways to invest or grow your money, or if you’re looking at focusing on a new way of making money, you may be considering the property market. Now, there are countless ways to invest in this area, but one particularly enjoyable and potentially prosperous method is leasing. Of course, this is complex ground when you first wade into it, but with the right information, you could find yourself on track to make a lot of money and generate an impressive property portfolio. Here are some of the basics of leasing, as well as a few challenges to expect, should you decide to pursue this venture!

What Is a Lease?

Let’s start out by defining what leasing actually is. A lease is a contract that outlines the terms under which one party agrees to rent an asset owned by another party. In regards to property, a lease involves the person who owns the property allowing another person to use that property for an agreed sum of money and an agreed period of time. Of course, there are finances involved in this. Generally, the lessor will attach a price to their property and the lessee will agree to pay this sum, usually in monthly installments. The contract between these two parties will have terms and conditions, detailing responsibilities on both sides. It will also detail the consequences of either the lessee or the lessor breaching the terms of the contract.

Residential vs. Commercial

When you choose to get involved in property for financial gain, you have two key areas that you can get involved in. You can lease residential properties or commercial properties. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from engaging in both, but often, people like to stick to one or the other, either through personal preference or simply to organize things more easily. There are different rules and laws applying to these different types of property, so generally, it’s better to specialize in one or the other. Whether residential or commercial leasing will best benefit you is dependent on your individual preferences.

• Residential leases – these are leases intended to provide property rights for daily living. When you lease a residential property, the leasees will actually live in the property, making it their home for the contracted time.
• Commercial leasing – commercial leases are intended for business use. This means that the lessee will run a business from the property, rather than living in it. Usually, you will create a contract that outlines the specific business types and practices that can operate from your property.

Organization

Now, the majority of people will start out by leasing one property. However, if you get a hang of it and find that this is a way that you enjoy generating money, you may start to invest in more properties to lease out, creating an impressive portfolio. Of course, this can be difficult to manage. You need to keep in-depth records about each property, the finances tied to it, the contracts associated with it, contact details of those leasing it and more. Sure, paper files can work. But these are easily prone to loss and damage and, in the wrong hands, could lead to data breaches. Instead, you may want to use lease management software. This can help organize your portfolio and ensure that you are managing everything properly in a way that you can safely store and recover the data and documents that are vital to your investments.

Management

Of course, if you have people in your properties, you need to make sure that you’re managing the properties properly. As the leaseholder, you have a number of responsibilities that can revolve around the health and safety of those in the spaces you’re leasing out. You may be responsible for the maintenance of certain elements of the building or certain systems within the building. You also need to make sure that the tenants, or lessees, are treating the property properly. Sure, most people will take some sort of deposit to cover any potential damage, but it’s still good to check in so that you can resolve any minor issues that could lead to more costly and serious damage down the line. If you don’t have time to manage all of this yourself, you may want to entail the help of a property management company.

Sure, leasing is going to be a steep learning curve for anyone taking their first forays into the area. But at the end of the day, it can prove more than worth the investment of your time, effort and money. Leasing can help you to generate a high, passive income. Give it a go and see how you get on!