WWYD: refinish hardwood and take a vacancy or put in laminate?

[Brie Schmidt]

What would you do: refinish hardwood and take a vacancy or put in laminate?

The properties I manage locally have nice, dark hardwood floors.  

After a few years or wear and tear, they are going to need to be refinished.  We have only done this at our personal residence and we used a commercial grade poly, but couldn't move furniture on it for weeks.

Our apartments rent for $1300 - $1600 per month and we have never had a vacancy, we always show and rent it while occupied and have the new tenants move in the day after the other tenants leave.  So if we refinish the hardwood we would have to have a vacancy in each unit to do so.  

My solution is to install the Allure resistance vinyl planks.  We have these in our out of state rentals and they durable and look nice IMO.  

The advantage to doing this is they are a peel and stick installation (over a plastic underlayment) and can be easily cut to size.  So we could have a crew come after the tenant moves and work through the night to have them done before the next day when the new tenant moves in.  

We wouldn't need to take a vacancy and they have a 25 year warranty and are more durable for tenants.  My husband thinks the don't look nice and it would deter the high quality tenants we attract because we don't have hardwood.

What would you do?

Take a $1300 - $1600 vacancy every 5 years to keep the hardwood?

OR

Install the vinyl planks and risk turning off tenants?