What exactly are owners’ associations and management companies? When you buy a house things are simple. The building and the land are yours to do with as you please. However, when you buy a unit in a building, things get more complicated. If buying a unit in a larger building, you decide what to do [...]
Owning a house can be different from owning an apartment because apartments always have common areas. Common areas often include hallways, stairs, a laundry area, a front entrance, gardens, parking, etc. These common areas belong to all the unit owners collectively. Managing these common areas is the responsibility of the whole community, not just any [...]
A famous idiom goes “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. To apply this to real estate, if you have a tenant who is paying rent, then the property is just fine and does not require you to have someone refurbish it. However, if the real estate is vacant, or the only way you have [...]
Investors have a number of ways to help them measure the value and profitability of rental income property. The most popular metric for investors is the capitalisation rate, or cap rate. The cap rate in real estate is simply the yield, or rate of return, on a property. The cap rate is calculated by dividing [...]