Investing your money in real estate is a sensible move, but a lot of novice investors are unprepared for the ongoing costs involved. People have this misconception that you can simply buy a property and then wait for the tenants to come flooding in without any effort on the part of the landlord. If only it were that easy.

In reality, you will need to spend a good amount of money renovating a home, and you need to handle all of the maintenance while the tenants are living there. When you change tenants, you will need to decorate the property again and fix any problems. A lot of real estate investors find that these costs eat into their profits in a big way and they don’t make as much money as they first hoped. But if you can find ways to cut back on these costs, you can increase your profit margins. These are the best ways for real estate investors to save money on renovation and maintenance costs.

Buy a New Property

When you are deciding on a property to buy, you have to make a choice between a new build and an older property. You will be able to get a better price on older properties, but that will come back to bite you later on because there will be a lot more maintenance issues. However, if you buy a new build, it will be ready to move in right away so you won’t need to do any renovations. It will be in much better condition as well, so as long as the home is well built, you should save money on maintenance costs. Just have an inspection carried out so you can be sure that the quality of workmanship on the property is good and you should be fine.

Pick the Right Maintenance Workers

When work does need to be done, you can save a lot of money by hiring the right people. You need to find somebody that won’t charge you over the odds, but you also need to find somebody that will do a good job so the repairs do not need to be repeated in 6 months. There is a great app called takl, which is billed as the Uber for handywork. You’ll have a much better experience using takl to find workers than you would trying to find them on your own. You can put up the job that you need doing and specify a price range, and then people will contact you. It’s also easy to browse through lists of available workers to compare prices.

Do the Work Yourself

The easiest way to save money is to do the work yourself. There are certain repairs that you can do on your own, without the need to pay somebody else. However, you need to know what your limitations are and call in a professional for the jobs that are out of your league. Destroying your own property because you tried to repair the plumbing and caused a flood is not a good investment strategy.

If you can find ways to cut back on your renovation and maintenance costs, you will earn a lot more money from your real estate investments.