1. Shop Around

You should be doing this anyway, but in tougher market conditions, it becomes even more important to shop around for all your products and services relating to the ongoing upkeep and management of property. Review everything from your Buildings Insurance to services and utilities and if necessary switch provider. Do read the small print though, and make sure that just because another company’s product is much cheaper than your current cover, that it isn’t massively inferior. A bit of time invested shopping around when it comes to the renewal date, could save you £££ over the year. The biggest expense is usually your mortgage, so keep abreast of the rate and type of deal that you are on and if necessary consider switching to another lender if you can get a lower interest rate. Of course, you will need to weigh up the annual savings that you will make against the costs of switching but, unbelievably, many home owners could be paying less on their mortgage each month, simply be switching to another deal on offer by their existing lender. Banks and Building societies won’t generally come to you to say ‘Do you want to change to another product and reduce your mortgage’, they will wait for you to threaten to move your business elsewhere before they recommend other deals in their product range to you. Diarise a review of your mortgage every 6 months, and contact them as your first port of call.

2. Get help from the Taxman

All the repair and maintenance work that you carry out on your properties can be written down as tax-deductible expenses, so for the sake of keeping decent records and filing receipts and paperwork, you could save yourself money on your tax bill. A good accountant will be invaluable in this respect.

3. Go Interest Only

If your mortgage isn’t already on an Interest Only basis, consider switching to this type of deal. The monthly repayments will be lower than with a capital repayment mortgage (although you won’t actually be paying back any of the loan itself) and this could help you during tighter times. Don’t forget that the interest element of your mortgage repayments can also be offset against your rental income on your tax return.

4. Review Agency Fees

You may have to take on more administration yourself, but if you can go without your rental agent charging you a proportion of each months rent for property management, then you could make a big saving. Most lettings agents offer a service where they find the tenants, reference them, sort out the tenancy agreement and compile the list of contents of the property for an up-front fee. Once all this has been sorted out and the tenant is in place, you may find you can manage things quite happily from there on.

5. Reduce your Rent

You may have to accept that to reduce voids in a crowded rental market, you have to reduce your rent to become more competitive. If you cut £50 per month off the rent that you have been charging and which comparable properties are achieving, you are taking a hit but if this means that you avoid a long void period where you could be benefiting from £600 per month rent, then the financial case for doing so stacks up.

6. Stand out from the Crowd

 When the market is going through a difficult phase, it is more important for you to differentiate your properties from others that would-be tenants could rent or from others that are on sale. At the very least, make sure they are well maintained and everything is in good working order, but equally a small investment into replacing old white goods with new shiny ones could pay you back in making your property more attractive. Likewise, adopt all the principles in other chapters of this book to help create a property that stands out from the crowd.

7. Get organised

If you haven’t already done so,when tough markets conditions arrive this is the time to start keeping proper records. The last thing you want to do is to pay tax unnecessarily, and by keeping proper accounts allows you to keep a close eye on budgets. By keeping proper updated records, you might also spot areas where you can save money.

8. Have an Emergency Fund

Again, this is something that in an ideal world you will have in place anyway, but during difficult market conditions, it is more likely that you have to cover void periods or take a ‘hit’ on the rent. By keeping an emergency fund of money set aside, an unexpected expense won’t break the bank. It’s worth making a point of taking a small percentage of the rent each month and putting it into a savings account for this reason – this way you won’t notice the small amount that you siphon off, and you could be glad of this buffer. An amount equal to 3-4 months rent is a sensible figure to have as a contingency fund.

9. Cut outgoings

Analyse your own spending. Aside from reducing your outgoings associated with your buy to let properties, there may be ways of saving within your own home. By curbing your spending, you may be able to take the heat off any deficit in your property investments.

10. Don’t Panic

When there is a downturn in the market, it is absolutely not the time to panic and sell up. Remember that even if house prices fall, you haven’t actually made a loss until such times as you sell. Investing in property should be for the long term and you are far better off hanging in there and riding out the storm than cashing in. By employing some cost saving strategies, hopefully you will be able to afford to stay invested and this is by far the best way thing to do in the long run.

For more information on this topic, please visit the site store to order your SIGNED copy of Martin's book, 'Teach Yourself: Making Money From Property' available for just £9.99 plus P+P.

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