Hi all,
New landlord here again...
So what do you normally do between tenants besides change the locks? I'm talking in an ideal world, where the tenant has left the unit reasonably clean and there are no outstanding maintenance issues...
Do you paint? Have the carpets cleaned? Windows?
Sorry if this has been covered before, I couldn't find it.
Kelly
in additon to the above, couple things I get on is: replace the air filter & the range hood filter; empty the gutters.
As a matter of fact, whenever I'm at a property for a repair, I make it a habit to always check for these things.
Hi Kelly,
I only paint if it needs it. Often just a wall or two need it, not the whole place. I always clean the carpet. I don't usually have the windows cleaned. It is listed as something the tenant is supposed to do upon move out. If they don't do it, I have the housekeeper go in and do a quick clean, not a super duper job, but decent. I pretty much always have to have the housekeeper go in anyway to clean the place. I have never seen anyone leave it in move-in condition. Michelle
Hi Kelly,
Even the best of tenants will leave the the unit in less than perfect condition. Sometimes they've let small maintenance issues go; we find out after they move that a closet door is off the track, the garbage disposal doesn't work, some of the window blinds are broken or jammed, light bulbs not working, holes in the walls from picture frames, tub stoppers missing, smoke detector batteries dead. We usually have to touch up the paint, as Michelle mentioned, and we always have a cleaning person go in and scrub down the whole place, including the inside of the refrigerator and stove and wipe down the cabinets. We do clean the carpets if necessary.
Budget at least $500 to turn over a unit. It's occasionally less, but usually more, and normal wear and tear can't come out of their security deposit.
Cleaners go in, touch up paint as needed, have carpet cleaned (usually), replace any broken or too-dusty-to-clean blinds. Usually a couple of hundred buck max unless it's just time to re-paint.
In a perfect world like you mentioned where there is no maintenance issues and pretty clean I would go in an spend about an hour making sure stove, fridge, tubs, sinks etc were really clean and looking good. I don't put carpet in my rentals so I just sweep the floor.
In reality like others have said I usually find a couple little maintenance issues and junk left behind that needs thrown away. Normal wear and tear does not come out of deposit, but anything worse than the condition it was when they moved in I do not consider it normal wear and tear.
In Illinois I am able to charge a "reasonable" amount for my labor. So if I have to fix or clean anything beyond normal wear and tear I consider my time "reasonably" valuable so it hits the security deposit pretty hard. It is all spelled out in the lease and I make sure to point it out and have them initial it when they sign the lease.
I'm not going to get into everything but if we turn a unit there is a 90% chance it will be painted.
There is a list of updates we complete on a unit if its been rented for a few years. These include things we have learned from the other units. Both cosmetic and ways to avoid problems and future phone calls.
I love the $500 budget too Andrea M. Helps make the place attractive for new tenants and hopefully shorten any vacancy time.
Just had this come up with another member. Provided the house was rehabbed right and there are no glaring things that weren't updated (I'm just about caught up on a couple of my early rehabs when I didn't know what I was doing), I'd say that $500 number is about right.
My wife and I (well, mostly the wife) does the touch up painting and sometimes we need to do whole rooms. Its amazing how bad some rooms can be and others can be near perfect. Then there are usually a couple of minor fixes and a carpet cleaning.
I'd say the $500 number is about right. I actually have one crazy village that requires me to get an occupancy permit every time the renter changes. The kicker to that though is that they no longer have a village inspector to do the inspections. Instead, I need to pay each of the trades to come out and do the inspections:
roof, plumbing, electrical, and hvac.
Its ridiculous.
Its ridiculous.
How do they know its empty?
Thanks for the replies everyone!
Mike H.- that is crazy! We have to pass rental inspections every two years, and have the HVAC certified every 4 and I thought that was on the strict side! Like Ryan asked, how do they know when you switch tenants, especially since it doesn't sound like they have staff to look for changes?
Kelly
Thats where they really get you. They know we would love nothing better than to avoid the nonsense. But they get you because of the water and parking stickers.
The tenant has to go to the village to get the water turned on in their name and to get parking stickers for their vehicles. If they see a new name on the house, they gotcha.
I thought I was really smart last time and put the water in my name and had the tenant reimburse us. Then we still get caught because the tenant had to go in for parking stickers. No way around it.
Its really shady over there. I complained that an inspection should last long than however long a tenant lives there. What if the tenant bolts after 6 mos?
Come on. Its always fascinating to me to see how these villages are always so concerned about landlords when it comes to inspections and tenant safety - and collecting the fees.
But when it comes to helping me out with a non-paying tenant, then they've got a million and one excuses why that has to be done with a sherriff's office and its not under their jurisdiction, and on and on and on.
How does it make any sense that a village gets to regulate the landlord rules in the town but the evictions have to be at the county level? And only the sherriff's office can do the actual eviction.
Wouldn't it be great if I could get a court decree giving me the rights to the premises and then be able to pay the local police dept $300 to have the tenant removed the next week?
The tenants would all be up to speed on the rules in no time
and they'd find another place to go. Better still, the tenants would figure out they're not getting a free ride for 5 months and will simply pay the rent. :-)
If only I could be governor for the day in this crazy liberal state.
Come on. Its always fascinating to me to see how these villages are always so concerned about landlords when it comes to inspections and tenant safety - and collecting the fees.
...
Mike H. - you are an experienced landlord, so you know that there are some tenants out there who could totally wreck a place in far less time than 6 months. You probably know that there are tenants out there who bypass the utility meters to get free utilities - whether it's for gas or electric; I can tell you that I've seen both of those being bypassed in properties I was looking at buying over the years. Neither of which could be done safely of course.
So, the municipality has no way of knowing whether a unit was returned to the landlord in a safe and sanitary and habitable condition, short of performing inspections after any change in occupants. And they will charge for that (I get hit with those too BTW). But I would be peeved that they don't have their own inspector; the fee should be minimal in that case because you're just paying for a clerk to file papers, and not for somebody who has some training and thus gets paid a bit more.
New landlord here again...
So what do you normally do between tenants besides change the locks? I'm talking in an ideal world, where the tenant has left the unit reasonably clean and there are no outstanding maintenance issues...
Do you paint? Have the carpets cleaned? Windows?
Sorry if this has been covered before, I couldn't find it.
Kelly
Kelly,
Not to sound flippant, but we do what needs to be done ;)
We have been fortunate recently to have our units re-leased prior to their coming vacant - we've have very cooperative tenants which has enabled us to show the units as soon as we receive notice (3-months) the current tenants are leaving. This also gives us an idea of what needs to be done to the unit prior to the new tenants taking residence.
As an example, we just had two units come available at the end of April - both term leases, so we knew they were coming.
1) In one instance we had significant renovation planned - finishing the basement into livable space - and have signed new tenants for August to allow the time to get everything done.
These tenants hired their own cleaner and returned the place to us in excellent condition.
2) The second unit was coming free for the first time since we purchased the building. We had planned to repaint in our standard colours, re-grout the bathroom and replace the refrigerator. When I did the exit inspection with "the boys" there was junk left everywhere, the hardwood floors in the main hallway and living room were damaged {couldn't see the damage before due to area rugs} and need refinished and the fridge, which we had planned on replacing anyway, turned out to be {basically} ruined. On top of that they left a dozen bags of garbage on the back porch.
I took pictures, we both signed the exit inspection report, and I advised them not to expect to see much of their security deposit returned.
We then had to call our new tenant, who was due to move-in for June 01 and see if we could push her tenancy back until July ... fortunately she was able to accommodate this ... especially since we are going to refinish all the hardwood floors throughout the apartment.
This was an example of where a basic turnover: rekeyed locks; new/touch-up paint; and a thorough scrub turned into a mini-renovation and the loss of a month's rent :(
Kelly N. I like your question. Good way to tap the collective smarts of your BP family. I agree with the $500 budget. Count yourself blessed if you come in under that.
Let me switch lens on you. You want a fast lease up and hopefully higher rents. This is your window to optimize. Take a minute to consider opportunities that go along with changing tenants.
Don't let yourself get complacent - find and exploit the silver lining. Best to you!
in additon to the above, couple things I get on is: replace the air filter & the range hood filter; empty the gutters.
As a matter of fact, whenever I'm at a property for a repair, I make it a habit to always check for these things.
Roy N.- that didn't sound flippant. I figured most things that needed to be done would be obvious, but things like painting between tenants might not be. I am hoping to not have any costly surprises when my tenants vacate, but aren't we all :)
Al Williamson- I like your challenge! I am changing a few things up with my new tenants- rents are rising just a little and for some reason the tenants at one of my properties weren't paying for their gas, that is changing :) (The PM had leased it that way for all three units even though they are separately metered, I figure it was a marketing thing. One unit has heat runs for the common area and pays for the gas for the common dryer and hot water for the washer, so I think this was why they set it up like that initially)
Future projects include making one of my one bedrooms into a 2 bedroom to generate higher rent- just needs a door and a closet. At another property I am looking into egress windows and fire escapes to utilize the third floor better- currently two units have their own space up there but can't be sleeping area per city code due to the lack of escape form the third floor. Once I add those, I can charge a little more for the units :)
Scott W.- good things to keep in mind! I am trying to give myself a little time between tenants so that I can address anything like that that I hadn't planned on.
Kelly N.:
In all out units we have a binder with all the pertinent information the tenant may need (operator manuals for appliances, list of local amenities, a little history on the property, house rules, etc) and a list of "numbers to call" velcro'd on the inside of one of the kitchen cupboard doors. We check and update/replace this information between tenants. {Just this spring, we started adding a CD with soft copies of all this information to each binder} Once I get time, we'll put all of this on-line.
We also provide a new toilet brush (I buy them by the case when they are on-sale for $2.99 each), a plunger, shower curtain, and a tray of cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink whenever a new tenant moves in.
This costs us around $30 per turnover.
My last turnover cost $126.21 for materials (2012) and the turnover before that cost $167.82 in materials (2011). The turnover before that (also in 2011) was just some light cleaning; I used some supplies on-hand and didn't have to buy any materials. This was still when I was doing most everything myself.
Yes you can charge them for cleaning the property after they move out.
Its legal to charge for cleaning if they leave their trash. Normal wear and tear doesn't include cleaning up their junk. But usually what I find is that the people that are leaving on good terms and are paid up do a pretty good job of leaving the house in good condition. Couple of broken items here or there and maybe a couple of walls that need to be repainted and some touchup.
Bhe ones that leave the place needing a good cleaning are the ones that didn't pay the last month's rent and are "using" the security deposit to cover it. I could file the eviction but why bother? It would cost me more in legal fees than it would just to pay the cleaning company.
Had a young couple just this month that the husband/wife split up. They didn't pay the rent and I just pushed them through the process. I held the eviction filing over their head to get them out before the end of the month so I could clean(i.e. If you don't get out now, I'm filing the eviction and it'll be on your record).
But they had some real issues with putting in any effort to get their stuff out. I had a tenant already lined up to move in on the first so I really needed them out. I finally just told the couple moving to leave anything they didn't want and I'd take care of it.
It was an absolute disaster. Its amazing when you see all the clothes that people will leave behind. Don't they need those? And all the kid stuff too.
The worst part was when the cleaning company showed up, I went into the disaster area with them and the couple's dog was still there. Talk about sad. The dog (chocolate lab) went into this cat kennel and wouldn't come out. No food anywhere in the house. So I bought some food and a bone to try to get him out. But he wouldn't budge. I was going to call the humane society but the tenant came and picked him up that night.
But this cleaning company did a tremendous job. In one day, it went from disaster to move in ready.
The place had hardwood and tile throughout except for a room in the back (office/den type room). I'm replacing that with a nice laminate because it was damaged so bad.
New tenant looked at it the next day after the cleaning (they saw it with the trash still in it too). They loved it. I think the fact they saw how bad it looked before and how spotless it looked after helped some too. And I bumped the rent up $50 a month in the process (I was well under market before - even for me).
So I used the couple's security deposit to cover this month's rent.
I'm going to spend about 1200 in turnover costs (cleaning, laminate, and I'm putting some lava rock in the front). But I had no vacancy so I'm happy.
Essentially, when I have turnover I always figure one month of vacancy on it plus $500 in turnover costs. In this case, I came in about 400 under my normal turnover plus I was able to upgrade the carpet to a nice laminate and get some landscaping done in the front. And I got a $50 a bump in rent to boot.
Its not perfect (perfect would be no turnover at all). But given the situation, I'm happy enough. Oh, btw, I had the rekeyable locks put in when I rehabbed this (been using those for the last 3 years now) so it didn't cost me a penny to change the locks and I don't need a handyman to do it (normally I do because I have zero skill). :-)
I like to provide new doormats as a kind of housewarming gift, plus a fire extinguisher and any specialized floor cleaner. And a roll of TP hanging up. We clean the carpets (and charge them) if they don't leave a receipt proving they did, assuming we didn't tell them we'd be replacing the carpet so they don't need to. I consider 4 hours of cleaning for one year of tenancy to be the expected level, and charge them for anything above that.
As stated, do what needs to be done. At a minimum clean top to bottom, clean the carpet and touch up the paint, replace furnace filters after the cleanup.
I would strongly recommend building a checklist to run through each time and stick to your scope of work. I also have a long term improvement checklist and fund. If funds are available, I improve on those items as well.
Also track what you have to replace on each turnover. There may be ways to minimize that cost. For instance, I replace my high traffic area carpet with allure flooring to minimize my long term cost. An old dishwasher may get replaced as opposed to repairing or even cleaning. (I can get a new one installed for under $200).
As Al mentioned, look at ways to improve the property. We took a rental in a 3 out of 10 neighborhood, improved the quality greatly, and drew better tenants at $300 more per month. We will see a payback fairly quickly.
So what do you normally do between tenants besides change the locks? I'm talking in an ideal world, where the tenant has left the unit reasonably clean and there are no outstanding maintenance issues...
Do you paint? Have the carpets cleaned? Windows?
Sorry if this has been covered before, I couldn't find it.
Kelly