How to make your rental property more attractive

Have you ever thought about how to make your rental property more attractive? You are leaving a lot of money on the table if you don’t take care of your properties. We decided to write this article to show you practical ways to increase the value of your rental property.

Repairs and improvements

This is the most basic way to increase the value of the property – update it!. This is a strategy many real estate investors use when they buy older and less appealing properties and then renovate them and either sell them or keep them as rental properties.

Have you ever heard the phrase: “you have one chance at a first impression“? Well, it works not only with people but with properties. Since you never get a second chance to make a first impression, we recommend making exterior improvements to your rental property as well.

Simple improvements such as painting the front door, replacing the mailbox or address numbers, mowing the lawn, trimming the shrubs, adding mulch, etc. All can highly improve the curb appeal of your rental property.

What actual improvements can I make inside the property?

The bathroom and the kitchen

Potential tenants look into many rooms when visiting your property, but the two most important rooms every potential tenant checks are the bathroom and kitchen. The kitchen is the room people spend the most time in, they don’t want it to feel like a dump!

Focus on investing in these rooms to make sure that they make a great impression on potential tenants. Granite is about $15-20 more per square foot than laminate. It helps get your property rented. Don’t use bathroom tub surrounds, they’re garbage. Tile it. A few extra expenses now lead to a smooth running rental property later on and more importantly makes it more attractive!

Keep it clean

As we already mentioned with the bathroom and kitchen, keeping your property clean is a must since it also plays a role on first impression. This can be challenging if you have a filthy tenant. That’s why we do quarterly inspections with the rental properties we manage here in NJ. If we feel the tenants are going to attract vermin we will hire an exterminator and bill them for that service (this is written into their lease). Make sure you check the property if it’s clean before showing it to potential tenants. Pull weeds or pick up any trash that is out front, it matters, trust me.

Quality pictures

The way you take your pictures of your property can be the difference between finding a tenant and not finding one. We recommend you invest in a camera or one of the newer smart phones. It could indeed cost a few hundred dollars, but it can make your property look exponentially more attractive.

To summarize: update, clean, pictures. That is the formula for attracting renters to your rental property, getting it filled and keeping tenants happy. That is what we recommend to our clients when we manage their property or when we are helping them lease their rental properties. Don’t skip out on quality!