Getting Your Home Rent Ready
The condition of your home at move in will set the stage for the tenancy. Handing over a clean home with everything in working order creates an expectation for the condition at move-out.
Any home has the ability to meet these standards, whether it was built in the 1940’s or 2020’s. Any home, regardless of age, can be clean and well-maintained in order to attract high-quality renters.
We will coordinate all the make-ready activities for you.
- Rekey – We rekey when we take over a home and between each renter. This allows us to secure the home and is a safety and security measure for the new residents. By rekeying everyone can be confident only authorized parties have access to the home.
- Deep Clean – Handing over the home as clean as possible sets the expectation that it is returned in similar condition upon move out. Examples of what we look for are appliances cleaned inside and out, drawers are wiped clean, blinds and fans are dusted, bathrooms are thoroughly cleaned.
- Carpets Professionally Cleaned – Our professional carpet cleaning partners not only deep clean the carpets, they note any existing stains, tears and issues to support our move in and move out processes.
- Safety Items Checked – We require smoke/Co2 combo detectors and smoke detectors to code.
- All mechanical components work as designed – Everything from appliances to gas fire places should work as designed. If something isn’t working, we’ll have a trusted vendor address it.
- No Personal Property Left at the Home– This includes items left by a previous resident or owners. The new residents should move in with a clean slate.
- All Animal Feces Removed from Yard – By ensuing and documenting there’s no animal droppings in the yard when a resident moves in we can accurately process any expenses for pet clean up upon move out.
- Lawn mowed, garden beds tidy and maintained
- Caulking in kitchen and bathrooms clean – Caulking in good condition helps prevent future water damage, especially around the base of tubs and showers.
- Doors, locks and windows function property. Screens in good condition
- Paint is consistent, no mis-match touch ups
- No exterior debris
- HVAC serviced as needed.
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.