Personal Finance Guide

Renting out a fully furnished place is a great thing to do, particularly for owners of small apartments or condos. This kind of rent is great for people who, regarding their predominant lifestyle, mostly need a home ready to be occupied, so that they don’t have to buy any home equipment. Nevertheless, first there are a lot of details to consider and decide, before you will be able to earn some extra money by renting your place.

How much will it cost you?

The first step is to find out all the expenses involved in setting everything up beforehand. A good idea is to go through the listings of other fully furnished apartments available in your area. Try to find some apartments that are close to yours - in size, location and furnishing. Once you have a pretty good idea of the rent that’s usually charged for a fully furnished place such as yours, list everything that you would have to purchase in order to fall into the category of ‘fully furnished’. Not only all furniture, but also utilities such as gas, electricity, water, phone, cable, wireless World wide web or security services, and all kitchen ware, plus towels, bed linen and cleaning supplies - all of this is expected from you to provide nowadays, if you are renting out your property as fully furnished.

Secondly, you’ve to work out whether fully furnishing your place to the extent described above is financially feasible for you. There are certainly some items you would have to purchase to fully furnish your place - make a list of all of them. It is also possible that you might have more tenants over a number of years with some periods when your property would be unoccupied between some tenants. If you decide that offering your place as fully furnished is too much hassle for you at the moment then the solution might be to list your property as ‘part-furnished’. This possibility may not be as lucrative as fully furnished, but if you want an easier life, then part-furnished is likely the way to go.

Documenting the provided facilities and setting up a deposit

First take away all your private things, e.g. family photographs and so on, just everything that you take into account as only yours - mainly if you have lived in the flat yourself. The next thing to do is to make an inventory of all items in the flat. You should go through the inventory along with the tenant, walking through the flat and seeing everything provided by you together. Also don’t forget to count things such as spoons, forks, knives, towels or linen and other individual items. Have also your rental agent to be there when you’re doing the inventory. Once you all concur on the list, it should be signed by all the parties involved. When the contract expires, it is time to go through the place with the inventory again, noting down all items. All items that the tenant has damaged or lost will have to be replaced and paid for from the deposit that you concurred on at the beginning.

As the winter Olympic games are coming soon, more and more Vancouver citizens are thinking about renting out their fully furnished places to take advantage of this unique opportunity. While this might be the case if you already have a convenient unit, it could become a nightmare if you have to start from scratch. It is always superior to plan the return on investment for rental properties over the long period and not only as a quick way to get rich.

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