Don’t strive for but influence your real estate goal.

Written by: Maarten van Duijn

In a world that is constantly changing, real estate investments remain a tangible asset. Many people choose to invest their wealth and retirement in real estate not only for passive income but also because of the long-term appreciation in value.

When building your portfolio, you have to make many choices, and it is important to take a structural approach to your investment policy. How do you know if your portfolio is yielding optimal returns, and how do you ensure that you actually realize the increase in value? These are crucial questions you need to ask yourself regularly as a real estate investor. Ultimately, you want to achieve a better return than any real estate fund you might invest in as well.

It is therefore essential to collect the right data from your portfolio in a structured way. Regularly do a thorough analysis of your real estate investments and portfolio and translate this data into a clear dashboard. This way you can easily convert the data into a valuation of your portfolio. Both of the individual properties as well as the portfolio as a whole.

This does require you to familiarize yourself with the valuation models used by appraisers and real estate funds. By combining the knowledge of these models with your own data, you can really measure whether you are achieving your goals. It also gives you insight into the knobs you can turn to improve your portfolio. This allows you not only to track your goals, but also to influence them. In this way, you can realize long-term value growth.

From my experience, people who work on this structurally make improvements and make better investment decisions and manage to achieve higher sustainable returns in the long run.

This column appeared in the Autumn edition of INTO business Alkmaar.