Preparing Your Home for Renting

Turning your home into a rental is a little different from preparing it for a sale or simply moving out. Before we begin managing and marketing your property, the home needs to be completely cleared out so we can get it rent ready.

You can do as much or as little of the preparation yourself as you would like. This is REALLY important to clarify. This list may seem  like a lot. If you want to move your things and walk out, that’s 100% ok. We will take care of the rest.

This list is for those owners who are willing to do some of the work themselves in order to save costs in getting the home ready for a renter.

If you’re comfortable handling cleaning, minor repairs or other projects, doing some of the work yourself can be a great way to reduce your turnover costs. If you’d rather hand us the keys and let us take it from there, we can coordinate the work on your behalf.

Start by Removing Everything

The most common issue we encounter when owners turn a home over to us is personal property left behind.

As a general rule, if it isn’t part of the house, it should be removed.

You may be inclined to leave items that may seem useful to the next resident. However, we’ll end up removing all of these and it will cost you mroe. Please remove:

• Food and pantry items
• Cleaning products and supplies
• Hand soap and toiletries
• Towels and hand towels
• Shower curtains and liners
• Window curtains (more on that later)
• Hoses and other yard care items
• Fertilizer, weed killer, pesticides and other lawn or pest products
• Patio furniture and outdoor decorations
• Tools and miscellaneous garage items
• Caulk, grout and small leftover maintenance supplies
• Other personal belongings or household supplies

This is the easiest way to save money on getting your home ready. It’s startling how much it costs to haul away personal items. In addition, it’s expected all personal items are removed from a home prior to Iron Creek taking over. Our rent-ready services do not include our time gathering all the personal items and staging them for pick up which is billed at an additional hourly rate stated in your contract. A few trash bins of personal items can easily be hundreds of dollars to stage and haul away.

The big takeaway here is that whether you remove it or we do, all personal items will be disposed of as part of the rent ready process.

What Can Stay?

Property specific materials that may be useful for future repairs can remain, including:

• Matching interior or exterior paint
• Replacement flooring
• Tile
• Other significant construction materials specific to the home

Please keep these items organized and clearly identifiable.

Want to Do Some of the Work Yourself?

You are welcome to complete cleaning and minor handyman work before turning the property over to us. This can be a good way to reduce your initial costs if you’re comfortable doing the work.

Some relatively straightforward items owners may want to handle. Here’s a high level summary which we’ll add more details to below.

• Replacing HVAC filters
• Replacing burned out light bulbs with matching bulbs
• Testing smoke and carbon monoxide detectors
• Completing minor repairs
• Cleaning
• Yard cleanup and weeding
• Trimming trees and shrubs
• Confirming the sprinkler system is operational

If you would rather not handle these items yourself, that’s okay too. We can identify needed work and coordinate vendors on your behalf.

Smoke & Carbon Monoxide Detectors

If you’re trying to reduce rent-ready costs, check the age and operation of all smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

Our standard is:

• One smoke detector in each bedroom
• At least one smoke/carbon monoxide combination detector per floor, located in a hallway. We do not use Co2 detectors that plug into the wall as they’re very easily removed. It needs to be a smoke/co combo detector mounted on the ceiling.
• All detectors must be operational and less than 10 years old.

Detectors expire after 10 years. Any detector that is 10 years old or older should be replaced. If a detector is already approaching that point, such as nine years old, we recommend replacing it now rather than paying for another service call in the near future.

Lights & Light Bulbs

Check every interior and exterior light to make sure it is working.

You can replace burned out bulbs yourself, but bulbs within the same fixture should match. Avoid mixing warm and cool bulbs, different brightness levels or visibly different bulb styles within a fixture.

Curtains & Window Coverings

If a window already has blinds, please remove any additional curtains, curtain rods and decorative window coverings.

If a window does not have blinds, a standard, neutral curtain rod may remain. Decorative or highly customized rods should be removed. Curtains should always be removed.

Paint & Wall Repairs

Touch up painting can save money when it’s done correctly. It can also create more work when the existing paint has faded or the wrong paint is used.

If you’re completing wall repairs yourself:

• Properly patch and texture damaged areas
• Match the existing wall texture
• Confirm the paint actually matches the current wall color before applying it
• Don’t assume leftover paint stored at the property will still blend with an older, faded wall

A poorly matched touch up can be more noticeable than the original mark and may ultimately require repainting a larger area.

Locks, Keys & Remotes

Please provide us with all property access items, including:

• House keys
• Mailbox keys
• Garage door remotes
• Gate or community access remotes
• Pool or amenity fobs, if applicable
• Any other keys or access devices associated with the property

If the home does not currently have Kwikset door locks, we will recommend changing the locks to Kwikset so they can be easily rekeyed between residents. These are not ‘smart’ locks, and look just like a standard door lock. They have a small hole next to the key insert that, with the key and property tool, allow us to rekey at a minimal cost relative to calling a locksmith.

Yard & Sprinklers

The exterior should be ready for a new resident to maintain.

Before turnover:

• Remove weeds
• Mow and clean up lawn areas as needed
• Trim trees and shrubs
• Remove hoses, gardening supplies, chemicals, furniture and decorations
• Confirm sprinklers are operational

If you know of a problem with the sprinkler system, let us know.

Keep the Utilities On

Please keep all utilities active and in your name while we prepare and market the property.

We need working utilities to properly inspect the home, complete cleaning and repairs, test systems, show the property and document its condition before a resident moves in.

Forward Mail & Change your Online Shopping Defaults

We don’t forward or go through mail at properties, so you’ll want to be sure to set up a mail forward. You’ll also want to update your default mailing address on Amazon and other favorite online shopping platforms. Picking up and forwarding packages is not included in our rent-ready services and will incur an additional cost to cover our time in getting your package to you. Similarly, if you left items at the house unintentionally and want us to mail it to you we will bill for our time.

Before You Spend Money, Ask Us

If you’re considering a larger repair or improvement specifically because the home is becoming a rental, talk to us first.

Owners sometimes spend money on upgrades they personally value that have little or no impact on rental value or marketability. In other situations, a relatively inexpensive improvement may make a meaningful difference.

Before replacing flooring, repainting the entire home, changing fixtures or completing other larger projects, send us photos or give us a call. We can help you prioritize the work that’s likely to matter to prospective residents and avoid spending money where it isn’t necessary.

You Don’t Have to Make It Perfect Before Calling Us

The goal isn’t for you to become a professional cleaner, handyman or rental property expert before turning over your home.

If you want to handle some of the work yourself to reduce costs, we’re happy to help you identify the items that make sense to tackle. If you’d rather move your belongings out, hand us the keys and have us coordinate the rest, we can do that too.

Once we have access to the property, we’ll evaluate its condition and identify any remaining items needed to get it ready for the rental market.

Let’s Connect!

Video Transcript:

What does it mean to get your home rent ready?

What do you need to do to get it ready for his next tenant?

I’m Kylie with Iron Creek Property Management, we manage single family homes across the Treasure Valley. That’s Boise, Eagle, Meridian, Star, Nampa, Kuna and Middleton. We focus on three things. First is professionalism, transparency and excellent communication.

All right let’s jump into rent ready. Here’s how we approach it and the why behind it because the why is always important. Our approach is we want the home to be in excellent condition when we hand it over to the new tenant to help set the expectation that outside of normal wear and tear, that’s the condition we expect to get it back in. That’s kind of our approach. It doesn’t matter, maybe your home’s in the North End and it was built in the 20’s. Maybe it’s a new build out in Star or Eagle. Any home of any age can meet these guidelines.

The first thing is re-key. We re-key all of our homes when we take them over and between tenants. Safety and Security purposes. We want to be sure that the neighbor doesn’t have a key, the guy who watched the dog doesn’t have a key, that other person who came by your house once and dropped off mail doesn’t have a key. Right, it’s easy to lose track of keys and who has them so we always re-key when we take a property over so that we can be sure the home is secure.

The second thing is, we’ll call it like the handyman umbrella. Maybe there’s been a to-do list of things that needed to happen, preventative maintenance to save you money down the road, everything should work as it’s intended. If you have a stove it should work. If you have a faucet, it should work right, it shouldn’t be leaking. So making sure everything is working as intended.

The next component is cleaning. We want it to be really clean. Inside and outside of Appliances are clean, bathroom scrubbed, carpets professionally cleaned. We want the home in really clean condition when we hand it over. Again, because if you hand the home over and it’s dirty, you’re going to get it back dirty and you’re not going to charge for that because that wasn’t like a tenant caused issue above wear and tear. They got it dirty. So we want to make sure that it’s really clean when we hand it over to tenants.

The next component is personal property. Part of our job as a property manager is to minimize your risk as much as possible and your exposure as an owner. We want all personal property out of the property. Think about it, you leave a mower there a tenant gets hurt using it, that could be potential liability. Clean everything out. The other thing is it costs a lot to haul away stuff. If there’s no personal property when the tenant moves in, then if there’s personal property left there when they move out, then that’s typically above we and tear and something that we could use when processing the security deposit. So it wouldn’t be an owner expense. If you leave personal property there and then more personal property gets left and more personal property, eventually you’re going to have to pay as an owner to get that all cleaned out and it’s not necessarily cheap.

The last thing which is a not as fun to talk about is pet droppings in the yard. Nobody wants to move in into a house and have to clean up somebody else’s pet droppings, and again upon move out we set that expectation that there’s no pet droppings there. It’s just one of those things, people are moving into a new home they’re excited about it they don’t want to have to deal with somebody else’s stuff like that.

So making sure the home’s in a good condition, clean, ready to hand over. Any home can meet these criteria it doesn’t matter the age. Its things work, it’s clean, it’s a good home for a tenant to move into. That’s really what we’re going for.