Carpet or woodfloor for rentals?

[Ed Perez]

Hello, I just evicted my tenants who stayed in my property for only 11 months. Unfortunately, they left my property with damaged carpet, holes on the walls,  in additional to leaving behind their filthy belongings.  Now, I'm torn between getting new carpeting or just refinish the existing beautiful woodfloor. I can save money on new carpeting compare to refinishing the woodfloor, but there's this possibility that my next tenants may do the same thing.  So, it better not to install new carpeting and just refinish the woodfloor? Any thoughts you may share is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. 

[Kelly N.]

Hello Ed,

We've decided to never buy carpet for rentals.  yes, it may be the cheaper option NOW, but  it doesn't last long and costs more to clean properly.  I have an Oreck Carpet scrubber that does a decent job on normal amounts of soil, and we rely on a local carpet cleaning company for anything beyond that, so either way we've got more time or money wrapped into clean carpets than we would in clean hard surface floors.

So far, we haven't removed carpet and found wood floors worth finishing, but if we did that is the route I would take.  We've been putting in laminate floors and vinyl floors and have been very happy so far.  They make turnover time much faster, and current and prospective tenants seem to really like them as well.  Tile is great too, but for us in MI (and you in OH) it is generally only expected in bathrooms and kitchens.