By far, the best way to secure financial prosperity for you and your family in the years to come is to start investing in real estate. However, the monetary barrier to entry to buy and start renting out a real estate property is higher than ever. Many would-be rental investors find that they simply don't have enough cash to purchase a traditional rental investment.

Today, let’s break down how you can secure a rental property in 2022 through traditional means and alternative rental pathways, such as vacation rental investments with Here.

Research Local Markets

The first wise thing to do is to research local real estate markets. Make no mistake, what’s affordable in one city could be heavily expensive in another.

Depending on your local real estate market, purchasing a rental real estate property the traditional way may be out of the question. For example, the average price of a single-family home in Dallas is over $329,000 at the time of this writing.

In contrast, the average price of a single-family home in Athens, Georgia is over $293,000. In essence, you should do your market research to determine:

• Whether rental investing is viable in your area
• What kinds of buildings you can afford

Determine Your Budget

Naturally, you’ll need to take a hard look at your budget and determine whether you can afford to enter the rental real estate market in general. Remember, you don’t need just enough money to secure a loan for your rental real estate investment. You also need:

• Enough money to cover closing costs
• Enough money to cover the mortgage while you fill up your rental property with tenants

As you get more tenants, you may also need to hire a property management company to take care of the day-to-day maintenance aspects of your new business. 

Decide What Kind of Building to Purchase

As an aspiring rental real estate investor, you can purchase many different types of buildings. These include:

• Single-family homes. These are attractive since they are relatively low maintenance. However, you can only have one family living in them at a time, so you only have one individual paying you rental income
• Duplexes/multiplexes. These are similar to single-family homes, but many people can live in them at once. You can potentially have several streams of passive income coming to your bank account. Note that these buildings are more expensive up front, however
• Apartment complexes. Apartment complexes are the most expensive type of rental real estate investment, but you can house more people in them. When full, apartment complexes may provide you with over a dozen or more passive income streams, which can help you pay off the higher cost of the building in question

Heavily consider your budget, the types of properties available in your local market, and other aspects before determining which rental property to purchase/get a loan for.

Make an Offer

After identifying the right building and getting your finances in order, make an offer to the building owner. As a new rental investor, you’ll probably have to make an offer with an investment loan. This is alright, provided you can get people in your new rental building and paying you rent quickly. Then you’ll be able to pay off the loan without trouble.

However, remember to account for closing costs and the time it’ll take to acquire tenants for your new rental property!

Consider Alternative Rental Investments

While the above tips are helpful for securing a traditional rental property, there are alternatives if you don’t have the scratch to buy a building yourself (or even to purchase a duplex and rent out the other half of the building).

For example, here is a unique investment opportunity that allows regular Americans to invest in vacation rentals like stock. For a very small price per share, Americans can start their rental property investing from the ground up.

In exchange for holding these “shares”, Here investors receive dividends roughly every quarter. Over time, you can build up your nest egg and your passive income and, in the future, potentially even buy a traditional rental real estate property.

There may be other opportunities for alternative rental investments as well. Do some research and take a look around the market; people are always looking for new ways to break into rental real estate investing!

Summary

Without a doubt, getting started with rental property investing can be tough. But if you can get over the initial hurdle, you can enjoy passive income for the rest of your life, as well as set yourself up for future financial endeavors and greater monetary security for years to come.

This is even truer if you take advantage of alternative rental investment opportunities like Here. Check out Here today, and consider getting in on rental real estate investing without having to purchase a full property yourself!

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