Many landlords and property owners seek out ways to make their investments return more to them in the long run. It’s easy to see a low annual return on investment on your units if you don’t do the proper research before buying or if you don’t add certain amenities to keep your tenants putting cash into your pockets. There’s a lot of different ways that you can improve the cash flow of your apartment complex, duplex, fourplex, or any other property that you might own. All you need is a little bit of know-how and some creativity and you can make even your most lucrative properties generate even more passive income for you.

Make Sure to Have Laundry Rooms On-Site

Onsite laundry rooms are incredibly popular in apartment complexes, and they also happen to be a great way to maximize the amount of money that you have coming in. It comes out to being a win-win for both you and your tenants. Your tenants will be happy because they have somewhere on-site that they can do their laundry without having to go to a laundromat or a family member’s or friend’s house to wash their clothes. You also win because you can charge for use of these washers and dryers. Many owners will even have a system set up so that tenants can load up a card with their funds and do their laundry at their leisure. That means that you get all of the money that your tenant will be spending on laundry upfront instead of having to wait for it to come to you.

Vending Machines are Your Best Friend

Vending machines are worth their weight in gold, especially if you place them in your laundry room. Whether your tenants are couch potatoes or health nuts, they probably want a snack sometimes. All you need to do to capitalize on this is to have a vending machine around. Many people will buy all of the snacks to stock up the machine from somewhere like Costco and mark up the prices for individual units. Because it’s your machine, you can easily stock it up with whatever is best, and market research is a breeze when your biggest client base is your tenants. Vending machines can be very lucrative when done correctly, your biggest challenge will simply be making sure that it stays stocked at all times.

Invest in Modern Amenities

It’s the year 2021, and technology has improved significantly. With the kinds of improvements that we’ve seen even just in the last ten years you can add a lot of new, modern things to your properties. For instance, many fourplexes that have a common front door will add an electric front door lock system that uses a keycode instead of keys. Implementing technology like this into your properties makes your property more attractive to tenants, and might even help them justify spending more on rent to live in your property.

That’s just the beginning of the things that you can add to your property to make it more attractive to potential new tenants. In fact, many properties already have some sort of Amazon Locker installed on their property. These lockers allow for tenants to have their packages delivered to a secure locker instead of just being dropped on their front porch, where they may fall victim to a porch pirate looking for their next come up.

Most businesses in the world already take advantage of the technology available, and landlords should definitely do the same. It’s an incredibly easy way to ensure that your tenants feel that you’re up-to-date on what they need, and that can definitely affect your pocketbook positively.

Look Into Storage Solutions for Your Property

Most people have a very similar issue in common, not enough space to store everything. Of course, many people will either buy a storage unit or just accept that they have to live in clutter if they want to keep all of their stuff. If you want your property to appear even more attractive to tenants, you’ll want to find  a way to solve this issue. Many potential tenants would pay extra money if it meant that they could have some sort of on-site storage, rather than having to find an alternative.

If you decide to go this route, make sure that you spend plenty of time doing your homework. There are a lot of options on the market, but you want to make sure that you’re getting the best bang for your buck. It’s often recommended that you get something that’s about the size of a small storage unit at a place like U-Haul. On top of that, you want to be sure that whatever you’re picking out is going to be hard for a potential thief to break into. Nobody wants to come outside one morning to find out that their valuable belongings were stolen, and because the storage units that were used were lacking.

What’s even better about using these kinds of storage solutions is that you can even charge an extra fee for your tenants to use them, which opens the door for non-tenants as well. That kind of extra cashflow can really improve your annual return on investment, which can really make sure that your accountant will be impressed by the way that you handle your properties when tax season comes around.

Make Sure to Do Lots of Research Before Buying any Property

It’s especially common for beginners to make the mistake of assuming that any given property will net them profit if they buy it and rent it out, but this simply isn’t always the case. It’s important to do your homework to find out how much property taxes are, your monthly mortgage payment will be and any other sorts of costs associated with that property. That means that you’ll need to budget out lawn care, snow removal if you happen to live somewhere that gets snow, and general maintenance to the property.

Once you have all of that, add up how much you’ll be charging for rent in total, you can get a good estimate of how much you can expect to get for rent by looking at the prices of similar units in your area. Once you’ve done all of this you’ll really be able to see how profitable any given property will be. Most properties will turn a profit, but if you’re looking to generate a good deal of passive income you always want to take a look at your annual return on investment. In some cases, owning a multi-family home or apartment complex can even end up costing you money at the end of the year because of all of the expenses, so make sure that you’re always playing it smart and doing your due diligence before making any big decisions.

Beautify Your Property

We’ve all been in apartment complexes that are droll and bland. Maybe they just have that standard beige color for the outer walls, and the whole vibe of the complex is just kind of depressing. Potential tenants will also see that the complex is boring and may have second thoughts about renting there, especially if the rent is too high. That’s why it’s important to always make sure that your property is beautiful.

There are a lot of ways tha you can go about this. You can paint gutters and trims, plant lots of trees and flowers, add ponds if it’s within your budget. Really, the sky is the limit as long as you can afford it. Most people will be more likely to shell out the big bucks for rent if the property is pretty. It makes things feel more peaceful, and will likely make your tenants feel more at home when they are at home. It’s really the little things that you can do that go a long way, and your future tenants will thank you for your consideration.

Increase Security

One way that many properties have been able to increase the price of their rent is by adding more security features. One easy way to do this is with a gate with an access code or a key. Gates make it a lot harder for people that don’t belong on your property to get in, while making your tenants feel a little safer at night. Many rental properties have already installed gates, but you can easily go above and beyond by adding cameras, security systems, and even security guards to keep an eye on the property.

Make Sure Your Investment is Getting a Good Return

No one wants to spend a bunch of money on a rental property just for it to eat up their cash. Fortunately, there are a lot of steps that you can take to ensure that you’re getting the highest return possible on any given real estate investment, regardless of the number of units you have on your property. People have been renting out rooms for hundreds of years, and even in the modern day it’s a viable way to make money. In fact, some of the richest people keep a good deal of their money in real estate because of exactly this.