As a landlord, generating revenue is one of your top priorities for your rental business. 

Without sufficient revenue, you can’t continue to support your tenants, make renovations, and care for your rentals.

On the other hand, reliable revenue helps you sustain a high-quality experience for your tenants and make a steady profit.

So how can you generate more revenue? It’s not always feasible to add more units and tenants. Instead, you can work with what you already have to maximize efficiency and vary revenue sources where you can.

Here are a few tips and ideas for generating more revenue without adding more units.

Limit Hiring Help

If your rental responsibilities are not your only ones, you might have considered hiring help. Additional team members make managing a rental business a little easier as you can delegate various tasks. 

However, you’ll save money if you can avoid hiring an accountant, property manager, or maintenance staff. If you want to keep more of your revenue, this is one way to do so.

It is possible to manage your rental business independently—especially if you use property management software. With software, you can leverage accounting, communication, and maintenance features to manage your business entirely on your own. 

Do Your Own Maintenance

Speaking of maintenance, you can also save money by learning some basic rental maintenance skills. With minimal training and knowledge, you can minimize the need to hire expensive maintenance professionals for simple tasks.

For instance, you might learn basic plumbing tasks like fixing leaky faucets, cleaning shower drains, repairing outlets, and troubleshooting broken appliances.

If you don’t have much experience or aren’t very handy, you can still learn basic maintenance. YouTube has many DIY videos you can watch to teach yourself simple repairs and common problems. 

With a little time and dedication, you can easily learn how to tackle some of the most common maintenance issues and avoid calling the professionals. The money you save will increase your overall take-home revenue and help your rental business grow.

Limit Tenant Turnover

Tenant turnover can also strain your finances. When your units lie vacant, you aren’t generating steady revenue. You’ll also likely need to spend some money developing new ads, finding a new tenant, and screening them. By the time a new tenant finally moves in, you’ve already lost a sizable portion of revenue.

Prevent vacancies from draining your wallet by getting as many early renewals as possible.

Add a Secondary Revenue Source

If rent revenue just isn’t cutting it, you may consider adding a secondary revenue source. 

With a little creativity and preparation, you can implement secondary revenue sources in your rental business. For instance, you could offer cleaning services, satellite TV, or rent parking or storage spaces.

While rent will still be your primary revenue, secondary revenue sources can increase your profits and give you extra funds to work with.

Charge Application, Holding, or Lease Termination Fees

While no tenant likes to be charged a fee, sometimes fees are warranted.

For instance, if a tenant wishes to terminate their lease earlier than the initial agreement, this constitutes a significant inconvenience for you. It’s more than reasonable to charge a termination fee so you don’t lose quite as much revenue.

You can also charge prospective tenants a small application fee or holding fee (deposit) while you conduct a background check. Since background checks usually cost money and take some time per tenant, it’s reasonable to ask applicants to pay a deposit. This way, if the renter fails the background check, you are reimbursed. If they pass, you can refund this fee or apply it to the first month’s rent.

If you’re looking for a little bit of extra revenue and aren’t already charging these fees, you may want to start here. 

Increase Rent

When all else fails, it may be time to consider increasing rent.

Before you do so, however, be sure to do appropriate market research. How much are your local competitors charging for rent? If your prices are significantly lower, this is a reasonable justification for increasing rent. 

Increase Revenue with Property Management Software

With best rental property management software, increasing revenue can be flexible and intuitive. Whether you decide to manage your business independently, add additional revenue sources, or increase rent, property management software helps you track and manage your revenue no matter what kind of rental business you own.

click here for more articles.