Real Estate Investor Articles

Vacancies are costly. Likely you are paying a mortgage on your property and certainly you're paying taxes and insurance while your property is unoccupied and not producing income. Additionally, you have marketing costs to get your unit rented, or you are anticipating paying a portion of the first month's rent to your property manager or a tenant placement service. Bottom-line: money is tight when you have a vacant unit and you may be tempted to cut corners on the fix-up work to get your place rented.

This is almost always a mistake. A property in poor condition is going to sit on the market for much longer. If you are in a slow rental market with lots of competition, then it's even more important to make your property stand out as a desirable dwelling by paying attention to the major areas that will attract or repel potential tenants. The primary areas that you should focus on are:

Follow up:

Clean or Replace the Carpet

The basic rule for carpet is this: if you wouldn't want your own children to get down on the floor and wrestle around on the carpet, then it needs to be cleaned or replaced. Typically you'll want to defer to an expert to determine whether the carpet can be cleaned or if it needs to be replaced. Cleaning the carpet is relatively inexpensive when you consider the vastly improved appearance of your property when you show it to potential tenants.

Freshly Paint the Walls

If the walls are in really bad shape, then you should completely repaint them. Otherwise, you can probably get away with just patching any holes and spot painting. The point is, things should look clean and fresh, inviting your prospective tenants to want to call your property home.

Clean Kitchens and Bathrooms

Spend the extra time and effort to get these areas really clean. Besides a thorough cleaning, it's amazing the difference that replacing relatively inexpensive fixtures can make. A new toilet seat that replaces a stained and cracked seat may only cost you $35, but it will make the bathroom look much more appealing. Likewise, new faucet handles and other simple fixtures may be cheap, but if they are replacing old, moldy ones, they will make a much improved impression of the overall cleanliness of the bathrooms/kitchen.

Common sense dictates that a clean, appealing unit will rent faster than a dingier, dirtier dwelling. If your rental market is moving slowly, then having your unit in top condition is a must. The money you save by not repainting, cleaning the carpets and replacing some of the bathroom fixtures may quickly get eaten up in holding costs as your property languishes on the market for several months.