Owning and managing rental properties is one of the best investments you can make for your long-term financial health. Not only do rent payments make you a little bit of money every month, you also overtime increase your equity in the property, until one day you own it outright and all of the rent goes directly into your pocket. But owning rental properties also comes with some maintenance that you need to keep up in order to keep your tenants safe, happy, and your property worth the rent. Here are the top renovations you should look to complete between tenants at your rental properties.
Renovations to Complete: Make Critical Repairs
There is no better time to do critical repairs and maintenance on your rental property than in between tenants. When there are no tenants living in your property, it is much easier to send work crews into the space to do their work at any time that you want. Critical repairs are repairs and maintenance that must be done to maintain the livability of the space. If your property doesn’t meet livable conditions, then you cannot legally charge rent. Take the time between tenants as an opportunity to update and repair your electrical systems and plumbing to ensure that your units are livable for your next tenants.
Clean the Floors
Floors get dirty, and they get dirty pretty quickly. Fully cleaning the floors of an apartment requires some pretty serious work and can be best accomplished when there is no furniture or other items in the apartment taking up floor space. You are required to provide your new tenants with a clean apartment to move in, so cleaning the floors is an essential in between tenants. Doing a major deep clean allows you to know that you delivered your unit to your new tenants in perfectly clean condition, which can help save a headache when dealing with security deposits at move out.
Renovations to Complete: Paint the Walls
When tenants occupy a space, they likely do some form of damage to the walls. Hanging paintings and other artwork, curtains, and day-to-day wear and tear can take a toll on your walls. There is no better time to paint your units than when there is not a tenant actively living in the space, as painting can be a very disruptive renovation to complete when you need to live in a space that is being painted. Having freshly painted walls for your new tenants also allows you to know exactly in what condition you are delivering your unit to your new tenants, which, as mentioned earlier, is super helpful to figure out security deposits down the road.
Add New Kitchen Finishes
The kitchen is one of the best-selling points of any apartment or home that you are renting out. People are willing to shell out good money to live in a unit that has a nice, modern, and updated kitchen space. And like the other renovations on this list, kitchen renovations are very disruptive to daily life in the unit. Updating your kitchen with custom finishes and features specifically designed for your unit is one of the best renovations to do while you are between tenants. A custom kitchen adds value that can’t be achieved with stock features. Updating your kitchen can allow you to charge more, sometimes a lot more, in rent for your unit. For that reason, this renovation practically pays for itself.
Renovations to Complete: Bathroom Updates
Just like the kitchen, the bathrooms are one of the most important spaces in a rental unit to potential tenants. Updating your bathrooms is a great way to increase the value of your property while you are in between tenants in your property. Bathroom renovations can be particularly disruptive in apartments or house rentals that only have one bathroom, so accomplishing this update between renters is a great way to get it done most effectively. Having modern bathrooms can increase the value of your properties and help the renovation pay for itself in increased rent prices.
Install New Appliances
The age of the appliances in your rental property is also a huge signal to tenants and potential tenants of the value of your rental property. Older appliances can make nice apartments feel otherwise less valuable, and new appliances raise the opinions of older units. Replacing appliances when there are not tenants actively living in the space is a great option as there will be no one needing to use the appliances while they are being delivered and installed. New appliances are also more energy efficient which can save money on electric bills if you pay the utilities on the unit you rent.
Renovations to Complete: Change the Locks
Your rental property has to change locks in between tenants. This is a safety measure to ensure that the previous tenants have not duplicated the keys in any way to protect the security of your unit for the next tenants. You should change the locks as soon as your old tenant has moved out to make sure that there are no extra keys to your unit floating around that you don’t know about. You can also upgrade to newer smart locks that can be wonderful safety features to show off to potential new tenants.
Overhaul the Landscaping
There is no better time to overhaul your unit’s landscaping than in between tenants. For multi unit buildings, this approach gets more difficult as it works best when there is no one living in the property at the time of landscaping. This is simply because landscaping work is noisy, and often requires full days of work from your crew to complete. Doing this work while tenants are gone reduces the likelihood of complaints and allows you to beautify your property so that your new tenants have a lovely place to call home for a while.
There are a lot of benefits to owning rental properties. But one of the downsides is the need to do renovations. There are a lot of renovations you can do while tenants are living in your units. But there are some renovations that must happen in between tenants. Make sure to complete these eight renovations in between tenants to ensure that your rental properties are in good condition for your future tenants.
Read this next: How to Expand Your Pool of Potential Tenants
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