Apartment

If the only time your property manager calls is when something has gone wrong, you may not be seeing the full job. Property management is often reduced to collecting rent, responding to tenants and calling a contractor when something breaks. Those are part of the work, but they do not tell you whether a property is being properly managed. Good property management is a continuous operation. It...

You can decide not to sell a property. The harder question is what you do with it while you wait. An owner may have good reasons for keeping a property for now. You may have relocated and expect to return. You may have inherited a property and not yet decided what comes next. You may be waiting for a particular point in the market, holding the property for future use, or simply not be ready to make a...

Your short-let can look perfect in the listing and still disappoint the guest in the first hour. With more guests coming into Accra during December, short-lets can face heavier use, tighter turnaround times and more pressure on the systems behind the property. Preparing for that period means looking beyond how the property photographs. Before the December bookings begin, prepare the property in...

A refurbishment can improve a property without changing everything in it. A property can have dated finishes and still have a perfectly good layout. Its floors may have years of life left in them. Its original doors or windows may be worth keeping. Yet during refurbishment, it is easy to look at the property as a list of things to replace. That approach can lead to unnecessary work, higher costs...

The price you put on your property can determine who never calls you. Price it above what buyers are prepared to consider, and your listing can be ignored before anyone sees its value. Price it below what the property could command, and you may lose money simply because you got the number wrong. The difficult part is finding the point between the two. Buyers are comparing your property with...

A property can be fully occupied and still be a bad investment. Rent coming in every month does not tell you whether the property is performing well. What you paid for it, who wants to rent it, what it costs to keep, and how it holds up over time all matter. Before buying a rental property, look at these four things. The Purchase Price Leaves Room for a Return A property does not become a...

The property with the higher rent is not necessarily the better investment. Residential and commercial properties make money differently, carry different responsibilities and appeal to different markets. Before choosing one, look beyond the price tag and ask what you actually want from the investment. Here are five things to consider. What Are You Trying to Achieve? Start with the outcome...

Two properties can be the same age and look completely different. One may still feel functional, well-kept and relevant years after it was built. Another may already look tired, require constant attention and feel poorly suited to the way people live today. Age alone does not explain the difference. How a property is built, what goes into it, how it is maintained and whether it can adapt over time...

The property you love living in may not be the property tenants want to rent. Buying with the possibility of renting the property out later requires you to think beyond your own preferences. A home that works perfectly for you may have a layout, location or running cost that makes it less practical for someone else. That does not mean you have to choose a property without considering your own needs....

You don't need to gut an old property to make it feel new. Some older properties have layouts, proportions and architectural features worth keeping. The problem is often not the age of the property itself, but the fact that parts of it no longer work for the way people live. A successful refurbishment starts by identifying what is outdated, what is still useful and what needs to change. The aim is...