Details Spruce Up Your Rental Property
Are you hands on with your rental property? Do you end up going in, doing some painting, changing light fixtures and doing other minor repairs? If you do, then you’re just like me, if you don’t, then you might just be smarter than me!
Just to explain that, if you’re not careful, your rental properties can have you working for at only a couple dollars per hour and if that’s the case, you might be wasting your time and your money! I’m going a bit off topic with this, but it’s important, we’ll get to the details in a minute.
Story Time – Flashback To Our Early Days
When my wife and I first started out in Real Estate many years ago, we started as rehabbers, or flippers. We were both fairly handy and like many others out there who were doing the same thing, we rationalized that if we did the majority of the labour and renovations ourselves, we could save thousands in labor costs. We also both tended to pay a lot of attention to the details as we wanted to get the property just right and obviously, the details help spruce up the property. This just made things worse.
The problem with our math is, we didn’t take into account the time factor. It actually took another mentor friend of ours to point out the obvious. Any money we saved in labour costs was quickly eaten up with our extended carrying costs because it took us longer to get projects done. what could have been completed in a week or two by having three separate teams in to do everything (a painting crew, a flooring crew and a general handymen crew), we did it on our own in two months, and sometimes longer! But boy did it look good!
Time is money when it comes to flipping properties and that extra month meant another large mortgage/carrying payment before we could start selling it. It was early lessons like this that we also carried over to the rental side of our business. The big factor being time versus money saved.
So while we still do many of the updates ourselves, we also now take into consideration the time involved. If a project would take us a week to get done due to all of our other commitments, if we can get someone else in to get it done in a day or two, it’s worth the expense. However, it still doesn’t leave us out when it comes to catching the details, which brings us full circle back to the point of this article.
Details Make Your Rental Property Stand Out
The inspiration for this bit of information was actually my mother-in-law. We are actually just putting the finishing touches on a rental property we just had painted and we stopped in to work on some of the details and since mom was along for the ride, she pitched in.
We had just had the property painted from top to bottom and it had been a couple days since the painting was done, so now it was time to put the electrical covers back on. This was a perfect task for her and incredibly helpful for us, so away she went putting the plates back up and the screws in to hold them in place.
This is where the details show up and it will be interesting to find out how many of you are aware of this next part, as my mother in law wasn’t. You probably don’t pay much attention to this, but do you know what direction the screw heads line up on an electrical cover, or a switch on the wall? Did you even notice the screws? We do and that’s part of the details. It’s also why you will want to go check the switches around you now.
If you guessed the screws heads line up in a line from top to bottom, you win (look closely at the top picture to see what I mean). Now there are a couple reasons for this, first aesthetically it just looks nicer. When the screws are lined up it just flows a bit better versus having them at all different angles. Secondly, it makes them easier to keep clean. If they were lined up horizontally, dust would collect on the flat edge and build up much quicker.
It’s knowing the little details like this that can help set your property out from the crowd. When I glanced over at the plates that mom had already installed, they were at various angles and to my eye, it looked disjointed. After a quick explanation and a few adjustments, the screws were all properly lined up and it just looked right.
Learning little tips and tricks like this can help set your rental property apart from the competition. Do you have any handy tips you can share with landlords? If so leave us a comment below. Also, let us know if you knew about the cover screws!
Wall-plate screws aligned vertically – yes! Also, when I rehab properties, the plate covers get washed (or replaced). I also tighten cabinet knobs and bifold door handles if needed. Looking down, floor heat vent covers get washed or replaced. Looking up, light fixtures are cleaned and bulbs replaced if missing or burned out. Outside, the steps get swept, mailbox gets dusted and the siding gets washed around the front entrance. First impressions count!
Great advice Laura, but do you also take the plastic film off the vent covers! That is a must!
Bill