Renting a renovated condo in the dead winter months

[Stephen E.]

Six other condos are leased just fine but right now I am busy trying to lease a seventh in the dead winter months. The weather is cold and I don't think the Olympics are helping either, people are sat at home watching TV.

We are leasing a great condo in a prime location, near two major hospitals (many people work there and want to live nearby), near a major shopping mall and by major highways. The corporate landlord next door offers fully renovated two bedroom suites for $1,050 and they are all full. We had been planning to fully renovate ours but calls have been slow. In our market kijiji is the key advertising resource and the contacts just have not been coming in.

Before renovations the unit was leased at $890. We are presently advertising the unit for $975 (down from $1,050) with new kitchen cabinets, countertops, etc., new ceramic tile in the hallway, kitchen and bathroom, and bathroom completely redone (new bath and surround, new vanity, new ceramic floor, new toilet) all at a cost of some $10,000. We believe these improvements would help get a long term lease from a medical professional in the hospitals next door. The one thing we are thinking of scaling back is new carpet, which when installed in our area runs close to $3,000 for decent carpet in a large condo. We have been thinking of holding because we got worried about overbuilding given the lack of calls. We have been thinking we might wait a tenant or two before doing this, so rents will have risen some more.

The possibilities for the lack of calls are either that the unit is priced too high for the neighbourhood or that the dead months of winter are at work. Given what the corporate landlord is able to do we don't think it is overpriced.

Any ideas on handling this? Should we go and do the carpet and get everything done now while the unit is vacant and just wait for a hopefully long term tenant? Or hold back on carpet as we are thinking of doing and keep marketing? We have always got a tenant before and we will do now, it is just that things are so very slow. I read the bigger pockets article from 2012 on ideas to move things along. It just seems that we need more to get interest. Ideas and comments welcome!