Spend enough time in a home improvement store, and you'll start getting bright ideas for upgrades you can make to your rental property - it's just natural! Upgrading your property can give you access to a wider pool of interested renters or the opportunity to raise your rental rates a bit. However, the price tags on some of those improvements and the benefits you can gain from them may not end up being that good of a deal.
Franklin property management companies would definitely counsel you to think carefully about what upgrades are worthwhile and which ones just won't pay you back. Here are some things to consider as you are looking at potential upgrades.
Effective Upgrades Pay You Back
Trendy changes to a building may seem like good investments at first when having them might fetch you higher rent rates. But if they are the kinds of styles that will go out of fashion or seem dated in only a couple of years, then you can't count on them as benefits for the long haul.
Instead of stylish improvements, consider how your improvements can yield tangible benefits to you or your renters. A big example is energy-efficiency improvements: when your new windows, water heater, or other appliances are both nicer and come with an Energy Star or other designation that shows they save money, you'll be passively saving yourself and your renters money over time. With more millennials and Gen Z renters entering the market all the time, generations where environmental consciousness is higher than in the past, Franklin property management would tell you that you may get some interest simply by creating a rental with a lower carbon footprint. They won't mind the lower utility bills either!
Classic and Durable Is Better Than Trendy In Many Cases
If you are opting for upgrades, try to aim for things that last a long time, have stood the test of trends (still are well-liked even decades after their heyday), and are specifically designed to withstand wear and tear. If a countertop is beautiful but gets scuffed up within only one year, it may be worth it to pick a simpler countertop if it means that it will remain reasonably good-looking for many years to come. This is a good benchmark by which to judge an upgrade; you can put much more money into nice improvements if they are likely to last for many years since you'll see the return over a much longer time horizon.
Use Best Practices to Create Easy Maintenance
Your maintenance team and your renters themselves want the rental to be easy to clean and easy to maintain. Paying attention to things like unnecessarily deep grout grooves or weirdly located and hard-to-reach access points for repair is key. If you are going to do an improvement regardless, consider one that makes it easier to access and manage the home's systems or easier for the renter to keep it clean during their time there. Anything that makes cleaning harder is likely to make cleaning less frequent, resulting in more than average wear and tear over the years.
Average Renters Want a Clean Space, So Make it Easy
That being said, your renters mostly want to live in spaces that are hygienic and comfortable, so the easier you make it to keep things clean, the better! If you have, for instance, a pet-friendly rental, consider finding flooring that doesn't scuff easily but isn't carpeting since cat and dog claws can get caught and tear parts of the carpet.
If you discover that particular cleaning products work well and don't damage the rental, consider gifting trial size or even full-size bottles of the products to the renters as part of a welcome-home gift. This kind of gift gives them a simple roadmap to keep the space comfortably clean, all while not making them do the trial-and-error work of finding a cleaner that works particularly well on the rental's surfaces.
Property Managers Have Insight to Share!
When you are considering a Franklin property management company, talk to them about how they can assist you with choosing upgrades. If they are instantly interested in talking about what they've seen renters respond well to, you might have a winner! Renters Warehouse Hampton Roads really enjoys getting to help rental owners choose small, strategic improvements that pay off quickly rather than letting them invest in costly renovations that may not raise the rental rate very much.
We want to be part of keeping your prospective renters thrilled with what is on offer, all while keeping prices affordable so that your property is within their budgets. Protecting your rental property like an investment, starts with getting great, experienced help; download our guide today to learn how!
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