Homeowners will spend months beautifying their houses for sale, but for some reason, that attention to detail doesn’t translate to rental properties. I’ve heard horror stories from tenants who have looked at rental properties where the counters were covered with dirt and no one had even bothered to mop the floors! If you want to attract desirable tenants, however, here are nine inexpensive ways to spruce up your rental property.
1. Front Door
This will be a slightly more expensive way to spruce up your rental property, but a new front door can do wonders for curb appeal. If you don’t want to buy an entirely new door—which, on the cheap side, will run you $130—you can paint the existing door a new color. Use a sprayer to avoid having to apply multiple coats.
2. Tile Entryway
If your entryway is currently a drab linoleum or carpet, you might want to replace just that small area with tile. It will run you between $75 and $100 for materials, and you can lay the actual tile yourself. Or, if you want something a little more rugged, go with a laminate hard-wood that you can install yourself to spruce up your rental property.
3. Electrical Switch Plates
Very few landlords consider this comparatively minor detail on their rental properties, but it can work wonders for aesthetics. Don’t paint over them with you do the walls, and don’t let old yellowing switch plates remain. Instead, spring for new ones (at fifty cents a pop) to touch up the joint.
4. Interior Doors
Hollow interior doors cost around twenty dollars at your local hardware store, and are well worth the expense, especially if the current doors are old. You can spruce up your rental property simply by exchanging ugly brown or yellowed doors for plain white ones. Painting existing ones will cost you more in paint.
5. Door Handles
Plain Jane door handles covered with flecks of paint can ruin the ambiance you want to create in your rental property. To spruce it up, buy new door handles for around ten dollars each, and install them yourself. Brass lever-action door handles might cost five dollars more, but they’re even fancier.
6. Paint Trim
It can be expensive to paint an entire rental property before each new tenant moves in, but you can spruce it up by painting the trim alone. For example, if the walls are a pale green or light blue, white trim will set off the colors and create a classier look. You can also replace cracked trim for less than a dollar per foot.
7. Shower Curtains
Admit it: Your bathrooms would look far nicer with brand new shower curtains and fancy rods. Shower curtains will make prospective tenants feel more at home, and will also add depth to your bathrooms. This will only cost around $40 per bathroom to spruce up your rental property.
8. Kitchen Cabinets
You don’t have to buy (or build) new kitchen cabinets to improve the look of your rental property, but you can repaint them. And if that doesn’t do the trick, simply replace the doors and hinges.
9. Window Shutters
Bare windows on the exterior of a house can look drab and even tacky. Spruce them up on your rental property with pairs of wooden shutters. You can find them pre-made at your hardware store, and it will only run you about $60 per set.
One more tip that will gain points with your new tenant: Clean the backyard!