To make your income real estate property earn a profit for you, take these easy steps:

1)   Take immediate action to clean up the public areas – lobby, halls, yard, etc. Unkempt and neglected public areas will turn off prospective tenants and may cause your present tenants to move elsewhere. Most public areas can be cleaned up for $100 or so.

2)   Have a contractor paint the exterior of the building, where needed. It is amazing how cheaply a building can be made to look new, neat, and clean by simply applying one coat of a good grade of paint. Many owners report that painting the exterior can halve your vacancy rate.

3)   Clean and paint the interior halls of your building, if paint needed. Use a bright color so you do not have to use large elect bulbs to light the halls. Switching the paint color can reduce your electric bill. And a light-colored paint does not cost any more than a dark-colored one! (Many 100 percent occupied buildings are painted a light color on both the inside and outside. Lots of owners find this really pays off.)

4)   Visit and inspect each apartment in your building; offer the tenants in the apartments that need work the right to do minor cosmetic repairs with materials supplied by you. Using this approach, you will often find that tenants are delighted to clean up their apartments using your materials. Since the materials normally cost only about one-third of the total job of painting, carpentry, repairs, etc., you will be saving two-thirds of the cost. Meanwhile, you will find that most of your tenants happily accept your offer to supply the materials.

5)   Inspect the other parts of your building that may need work – roof, basement, windows, wiring, etc. I suggest that you employ off-duty police officers and fire department personnel for these jobs. You will find they do good, honest work for about half the usual cost.

Increase Your Profits from Every Property
Having made the improvements suggested above, you are ready to raise the rents in your building. Here a few guidelines I find work well in all types of apartment houses:

· Tune in to today’s economy by ridding your mid of ancient rent guidelines. Rents have risen enormously! Be sure you raise your rents to reflect the increases that have taken place.

· Never be afraid of losing tenants. You can always rent an apartment to someone else.

· The bottom line always is: you must make money on the property; otherwise you will have to get rid of it. So you must take action to raise the rents as soon as possible.

·  Your tenants will usually be willing to pay higher rents if you improve the property. Thus, their sympathies will be with you when you take steps to improve your building.

· Be certain you know the numbers (income, expenses, profit) of your buildings before you raise any rents.

·  Make careful computations so you’re sure that the increases cover all your expenses and give you a profit and positive cash flow. Never support a building by putting cash into it each month.