People purchase homes for a myriad of reasons, but they all fall somewhere on the spectrum between living in the home year-round on one end, and a pure investment property on the other. If you are looking at a property as an investment, that purpose falls on yet another spectrum, with consistent income (rental property) at one end, and a quick profit (flipping houses) at the other end. If you want to maximize your consistent income, it is necessary to make the property a little more appealing to renters (the more appealing a property is, the more you can charge in rent). Rental values in Studio City, Sherman Oaks, Encino, and Tarzana typically run at about the cost of a mortgage – if you can pull in a little more money, you’re on a good path. However, you also don’t want to sink a bunch of money into a rental unit when you don’t have to; if you were going to renovate the whole property, you’d probably be better off just flipping it. So where is that magic line, the line where you’ve invested just enough to make the property rent for more, but not so much that it’d be a better idea to flip the property and make a short-term profit? That’s what we’re here for.
Small things make a big difference. For example, a new shower head can go a long way in making a bathroom look clean and updated, and it is a pretty cheap way to make a rental unit more appealing. As a matter of logic, there’s a good chance the shower head is old, at least in relation to any new tenants who are moving in. For the low cost of roughly $30, you can send a signal to potential renters that you are on top of your game; this can be a very valuable thing to tenants (I’m sure we have all had a landlord or two where you had to bug them for months on end to get even the most basic things taken care of).
Next, floor space is always at a premium (rental or not). Anything you can do to give tenants more floor space is a good idea; in this case, consider installing a waste basket in a cabinet. Moreover, trash cans are ugly… really ugly. For about $100 investment, you can create a snazzy cabinet trash can.
Finally, the plates on the outlets and switches need to be changed. The lazy landlord just paints over it, and then paints over it, so on and so forth until you might be able to carbon date when the first tenant moved in if you dig deep enough; that’s not particularly appealing. For roughly $2 per plate, you can send the message that you care about the details; people like “new” looking things, and for the low cost of 200 pennies a plate, you can convey loud and clear that you know what tenants want. As mentioned above, that’s a very strong selling point.
At the Chernov Team we understand that knowledge is power and knowledge of how to maximize rental income from rental properties with minimal investment is powerful knowledge indeed. At the Chernov Team we know that whoever comes to the table most prepared leaves with the most, and the Chernov Team always leaves the table with the most.