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Improvement Additions To Add To Your Home With An Income Suite Apartment

As a property owner, you have the potential to rent out a space within the property to generate an income and help pay for the property's costs. When you live in the property and make it your home, you may not be able to rent out the entire place to a tenant, but you can turn the basement, upstairs, or garage into a separate apartment unit. In addition to making sure your rental suite has its own entrance, here are some improvements you should consider making to your property when you add in an income suite apartment.

Pave a Parking Area

Your property likely already has an area in which you park your personal vehicles, such as a driveway with a garage, a carport, or parking pad. However, when you add in a rental apartment, it can be helpful to add in a separate parking area. A parking area for your tenants boosts the property's rental potential and makes it more attractive to renters. And often any benefits you can add to your rental property, such as on-site laundry or free WiFi, will boost your rental over any other competitors in the area to help you find and keep great renters.

Look for a site on your property where you can add in an additional parking area, and hire a professional paving company to install it properly. Asphalt pavement needs the soil below its top layers to be compact with good drainage properties. A paving crew should also install the asphalt at a slight slope to allow water to drain from its surface. Ponding and pooling water on asphalt can lead to cracking and deterioration of your asphalt parking pad. 

Consider also what type of edging you want to install around the paved parking pad. Asphalt pavement is flexible in its natural form, but the edges of the pavement need support, either from brick or concrete edging or with slope-formed edges to minimize side pressure.

Install a Walkway

A paved walkway from your tenant parking area and the door to your rental suite is also another important addition. Having a paved walkway for your tenants provides convenience to them, but it also protects you from liability against injuries. If, for example, your tenant does not have a walkway and needs to travel over a dirt and weed-filled space, they are at risk of slipping or tripping over the terrain. But if you install a paved sidewalk, you can keep it swept clean in the summer and free of snow and ice during the winter.

Your paving professional can also add in a walkway up to the entrance of your rental unit. They can provide an installation of asphalt or poured concrete on the site. Keep in mind, concrete will need to take time to cure properly and can be more costly, but an asphalt surface provides almost immediate usage and costs less to install. Contact a company like Circle Asphalt Paving to get started.