There is more to being a professional landlord than acquiring a buy-to-let property and filling it with a tenant.

Your involvement in your rental property – though not a full time job – will require time, patience and good communication skills. After all, one of your key responsibilities as a landlord will be to key your tenants happy, and if they are not happy, your property will stay empty.

So ask yourself this – have you got what it takes to be a professional landlord? Not sure? Try answering the following questions and see how well you do:

ONE: Are you willing to work with people?

Investing in property is anything but a solo journey.

To get your properties up to scratch you will need to work alongside plumbers, electricians, builders and many other services. You need to be able to communicate effectively what you want and how you want it, whilst building up a strong relationship. Get it right the first time, and you will have connections for life.

Then there is the next point. Once you have found a tenant, not only will you have to meet and agree on a contract with them. You will also have to work alongside a solicitor to help get your contracts written up and properly organised.

So can you work well with others? To succeed in property investment, you will need to learn how.

TWO: Can you stick to a long term plan?

A common mistake many investors make is believing that property investment is a quick fix solution. It is no where close.

With the right tools and strategies, yes it is possible to start accumulating a £500+ income from your properties in your first month, but there is the preparation to consider.

From researching, stacking, getting a broker, signing the contract and getting your properties filled with tenants - it takes time.

But once you have achieved that you will have access to an ever appreciating asset that will keep on feeding your funds for many years to come.

So it is important that you are able to think ahead, and plan for the future. Especially when you consider the current economic crisis.

With most properties falling into negative equity, it can feel tempting to sell your properties and get out while you can. But this would be a big mistake. Why? Because properties will rise again, and when they do you will be benefiting from a bigger positive cash glow as well as capital growth.

THREE: Can you communicate?

In this kind of role you will need to be able to effectively communicate with an assortment of people, in all different kinds of scenarios: from meetings to selling your property plans to a broker, to friendly chats with your tenants, your approach to each of these discussions will be different. And you’ll need to be confident in each of them.

So ask yourself – are you a good communicator?

FOUR: Can you diffuse situations?

Not all your tenants are going to be easy to work with. In fact, there will be times where you will have to assert your authority or diffuse a volatile situation.

A prime example of this is evicting a tenant or calming neighbourly disputes. In situations like these you – yourself - need to remain calm, and not rise to their abusive behaviour. All this could do is make the situation worse.

So assess your tenant – what type of person are they? If you can tell they are of the aggressive sort, you need to be wary of how you approach them. The last thing you’ll want to do is come off as aggressive too. Instead you’ll need to calmly diffuse the situation until they are ready to talk. The question is: can you do that?

FIVE: Are you decisive?

Either you are or you are not. You either know what you want or you can’t decide.

Being a professional landlord there will be times when you are faced with an important decision. For example, do you or don’t you evict a tenant?

Now of course for this scenario you need to have grounds for wanting to evict them, but when you have, can you confidently say that you will be able to go through with it? Can you?

The Result

So how did you do? Okay? Some of these questions are easier than others, but they do help to paint a clearer picture of what type of landlord you’ll be.

The question is: are you prepared to fulfil this role and turn your properties into a lucrative investment?

If you are still not sure make sure you take the time to research property investment properly and learn everything you need to know about researching, buying, renovating and renting out your properties.

Learn this, and when you are ready, try to ask yourself these questions again.