Why We Don’t Show Rental Properties Before They’re Move-In Ready

[Maranda Tucker]

Hey BP community,

I wanted to share a lesson from the trenches of property management that might save some of you a big headache—especially those of you trying to reduce days on market by showing properties early.

We usually never show a property until it’s 100% move-in ready. That means: all repairs complete, cleaned, and ready for someone to walk in with a suitcase. But recently, we made an exception—and we paid the price.

We had a townhome turning over that was almost there—just needed some minor paint touch-ups. The property showed well, so we thought: Let’s go ahead and show it, get a jump on leasing. A tenant toured it, applied right away, got approved, and was excited to move in.

Fast forward to post-repair walk-through... and suddenly the tenant is unhappy.
Turns out, their expectations for what those "paint touch-ups" would look like didn’t align with what was agreed upon between us and the owner. They wanted a full repaint in certain areas, and weren’t happy with what was done—even though, from our perspective, it was perfectly reasonable for a rental in this price range.

We managed the situation, but it created unnecessary friction before the lease even began.

And honestly, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this play out. Anytime we’ve shown a property before it’s fully move-in ready, there’s a higher chance for tenant misalignment, complaints, or second-guessing—sometimes even lease break requests.

So here’s what we do instead:

✅ Minimize turnaround time as much as possible
✅ Start advertising about 2 weeks in advance to build an interest list
✅ Once the property is fully ready, we blast that list to schedule showings quickly

It might seem like waiting delays your leasing process—but in reality, it prevents unnecessary conflict and helps start the landlord-tenant relationship off on the right foot.

Curious to hear from other investors or PMs—do you show properties before they’re move-in ready? Have you run into similar situations? I know some markets are more centered around student housing and has the ability to pre-lease (I am envious)