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How to Make Your Rental Look New Every Time You Turn Tenants

 

Turning around rental units for new tenants is a pivotal part of being a successful and profitable landlord. If you are too slow, and don’t maximize the opportunities, it can ruin your business and crush your returns. On the other hand, it can be a chance to write a great new lease, and increase your tenant quality and income.

Creating that new look and feel can really make a big difference in the number of prospective tenants you get to choose from, how fast it will be occupied, and what renters are willing to pay. Below are some tips for making those units look new every time you turn them.

Landscaping

For an immediate and powerful impression you need to ace this right at the curb appeal. Trim and clean up, put down new stones or fresh mulch, and plant plants and flowers that really look vibrant and alive. While this fix may be a bit of a labor intensive job, it is a relatively cheap improvement you can make to your rental property.  

New Mailboxes

Renters and home buyers can instantly spot the difference between an old neglected unit, and one which was just rehabbed by the mailbox. This won’t cost you much, and won’t take more than a few minutes to install, but it will make a big difference in sending the right message to prospective tenants. 

Front Door Hardware

New kick plates, door knockers, and locks make a great impression. Obviously, when tenant are searching for a new place to live, one of the first things they take into mind is safety. Replacing or improving front door hardware can make them feel safe and sense the pride in living there, and has some of the best ROI on anything you can do.

Paint

Get in and freshen up the paint. It is an easy solution that many landlords tend to get lazy about or easily overlook. Touch up walls, go over it with current trending color schemes, and you’ll be surprised at how much difference just a couple cans of paint can make. Tenants love to walk into a rental and smell fresh paint. It makes a great first impression and can go a long way when it comes to scoring the perfect tenant. 

Deep Cleaning

Do the hard work! Don’t skimp on the cleaning. Get the dust off of ceiling fans and vents, wash the windows, deep clean the carpet, and maybe even refinish other flooring. Make it smell great.

Touch Up Cabinets

Touch up or repaint kitchen and bathroom cabinets to make them look new. Make sure hinges and knobs are all working smoothly. Consider new hardware to update the look every few years. A kitchen is one of the most important parts to anyone’s home, and your perspective tenants want to be proud to show off a clean kitchen with fresh looking cabinets.  

New Window Coverings

Blinds and curtains can get dingy, dusty, and damaged fast. Some tenant may take your window coverings down to add ones of their choice, and that is fine. While you may get away with nothing at all, you might also score extra points for new blinds too. Feel free to leave the tags on so they know they are new. Take the time to add this value to your rental.  

Appliances

Nothing dates a rental like old appliances. Even if you won’t be including appliances in the lease, you can use new ones to stage the home or apartment for showings and photos. This could be new kitchen appliances, washer and dryer, big screen 3D TVs, and more.

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Jacob Blackett

Originally from Reno, Nevada, Jacob began his real estate career in 2010 as a sophomore at the University of Nevada, Reno, when he bought and sold his first two residential “fix and flip” properties in Southern California.

In 2014 Jacob founded Holdfolio and by the end of 2019, Holdfolio had amassed a rental portfolio of 141 single-family homes and 412 apartment units. At this time Holdfolio was fully vertically integrated, meaning they were operating every aspect of the investment cycle which included acquisitions, procuring bank loans, raising capital from investors, running a full-service property management company, a licensed construction company, and performing their own asset management.

Fueled by low interest rates and strong rent growth, real estate values increased steadily and dramatically between 2010 and 2020, and by early 2020 Holdfolio could not pay as much as other firms on new acquisitions. Jacob took this as an opportunity to sell all of Holdfolio’s holdings and pivot the business model to see more deal flow and invest with much larger and more experienced firms, which is how Holdfolio operates today.

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Ready to invest in real estate?

We make real estate investing simpler, more transparent, and accessible to individual investors.