Do You Make Every BRRRR Look Basically the Same?

Question

I’ve seen investors use the same paint, flooring, fixtures, cabinet colors, even faucets across every rental they own.

At first that sounded boring to me. But then if a tenant damages the flooring three years later, you already know what to buy. Contractors know the finishes. You’re not picking everything from scratch on every rehab.

For people with multiple BRRRRs, do you basically have one standard “rental package” you reuse every time?

Or do you still change the finishes depending on the house and neighborhood?

Alex Bekeza · Answer

Personally, I've watched South City St. Louis get absolutely saturated with agreeable gray paint and gray vinyl plank.  That being said, we look for other finish qualities to make our units stand out as unique.

Brook Davenport · Answer

Hey Ali! Great question—one we’re actually working through right now with our small SFR portfolio.

My friends who have much larger portfolios have really standardized their “rental package.” One of them has even purchased a storage facility to house all of his extra materials. Apparently, the storage costs actually justified doing that, haha!

Depending on where the property is located, that will determine what fixtures we use. I wouldn’t put the same fixtures in a 3/2 brick ranch in the country that I would in a loft downtown, but they typically all come from the same vendor. We’ve started getting wholesale pricing from some local vendors, which has helped justify standardizing our purchasing.

I’d say pricing drives our uniformity more than the actual market does. That being said, I’d probably have the opposite approach if it were a fix-and-flip.