Making the sale
The most traditionally common way to make your money back on a property is, of course, to sell it back on the market. However, if you want to maximize your potential profits, then you should be looking at more than simply reselling the home as-is. As well as waiting for the right timing on the market, when you’re likely to make more, you should look at the little and large ways you can improve the value of the property. You don’t want to invest more than you will get back, so look at the average selling price of homes that are roughly equivalent to see what you should be aiming for.
Rent it out
This is a different kind of property investment, but one that might have just as much place in your portfolio as owning and selling property. If you’re not living in the property yourself or you have multiple, then renting them out is a great way to get help in paying the mortgage. It doesn’t come for free, of course, you will need to run your properties as a business, managing them to meet the needs of your tenants, but a property management company can help out with that if you prefer to be more hands-off. Just expect it to come at a price.
Unlocking your equity
For most people, when buying a home you go through the traditional steps of taking out a mortgage, gaining more equity in the home as you pay it off. However, as you get a little older and think about retirement, you may not have as much of a need for equity. To that end, you can turn the process around with a reverse mortgage. Effectively, you can reduce your equity in the home bit by bit, allowing you to gain a retirement income or to get a lump sum in cash as you do.
Make it the perfect getaway
A somewhat different proposal than turning the home into a long-term rental, your ability to make a vacation rental of your home may depend largely on its location. Airbnb and similar services are making it easier to set up a rental anywhere in the world, but if you seek to make a regular annual income out of it, then you should be considering this option for well-situated properties above all else.
There are more ways to make use of the value trapped in your properties than you might think. The above tips can help you unlock it, whether it’s for a lump sum, for a retirement income, or otherwise.