Your investment property is likely to be one of the biggest assets you own, so it’s important to keep an eye on its value. Why? The market is constantly shifting, and the value of your investment is only as high as what a buyer is willing to pay for it at any point in time.  

There are many reasons to have updated knowledge on the value of your property, here are the four major ones.  

Insurance  

You need to make sure your property is insured for its current value. For example, if your property is worth 5% more than what you have it insured for then you wouldn’t be covered for the full value if anything happened and you needed to claim.  

Equity

By getting a real time view of the value of your property, you know what your options are. If the value of your property has increased, you may be able to use your equity to upgrade to a new home, do some renovations to your current home or to grow your property portfolio. You may even be able to buy another investment property without dipping into your savings at all for a deposit.  

Retirement

If your retirement plan involves or relies on your investment property, then as you get closer to retirement age it is increasingly important to know its value. Understanding its value will mean you can optimise it to work in your favour for retirement.

Selling  

Keeping on top of the value of your property will help you be able to identify short- and long-term trends, which may help with finding the best time to sell. After all the goal is to get the most value from your property - making a profit, not a loss and timing could mean the difference between the two.  

Want to find out what your property would sell for in this market? Take the 7-minute survey to get started, or get straight onto to chatting with one of our estate agents.  

Take the survey | Chat to an agent

All the leaves have well and truly fallen from the tress by now, and if they have landed somewhere its likely to be in your property’s gutters and outdoor drains.  

A clogged-up drain may seem to be an obvious issue for tenants to spot, but they may not recognise that a few leaves piled up over a drain could cause damage to the property. And let’s face it, most of us Canberrans rarely make use of outdoor living areas through our freezing cold winters. The gutters (if your property has them) will also go unnoticed by your tenant simply because they are unlikely to be able to see them.  

We’ve seen landlords pay thousands of dollars fixing leaks and flooding caused by leaves that have clogged up gutters and drains left unaddressed. Often landlords’ insurance won’t cover the costs for this kind of damage if you can’t demonstrate that you have been maintaining the property adequately.  

If you want to avoid costly repairs, you should get the gutters and/or outdoor drains cleaned out annually. Contact your property manager and we’ll arrange this for you. We’ll get in touch with one of our preferred suppliers who we know will do a great job and make sure there will be no nasty and avoidable post leak / flooding maintenance bills coming your way.