Just wondered with a tenant with a lease in place, if you buy the property, how easy is it to increase the rent. It is about $80pw under suburb usual rent.
If lease is expired, you can increase the rent and tenant has the choice to accept it or find another property. Be ready to give some supporting evidence such as rent listings of comparable houses as $80 per week is a very substantial increase ($350pm) and no tenants is going to like it.
He said lease in place in his post. Buying a property (in any state of Aus) inherits the tenant and their lease as is. So you'll only be able to increase it inline with that. Rules for increasing the rent vary per state. Eg here in SA increases have to be 12 months apart (usually done at same time as renewals), whereas ACT you can only increase by a CPI amount, and others have other rules, so knowing which state your property in would help.
The issues surrounding leases and managing tenancies etc may benefit from a PM as DT has demonstrated. Its not unusual to find people think a tenant can pay more "because they want to cover the PM fees" and all sorts of reasons which a local PM might disagree with. They know the market. and property by property condition issues and most will offer advice. If it truly is $80 under it may be time to grit teeth and swap out tenancies and get the PM ready for it. Then the tenant bails without a long gap. Otherwise its vacant X weeks and fees for a new lease, advertising etc. Then a new tenant eventually signs for $15 a week more....was it worth it ?
