Unit Functionality over Appearance Story!

[Kyle Curtin]

Good morning everyone! I just wanted to share a small piece of advice that I have experienced personally very recently.

So a little bit of background, I have a 3 family property in Leominster, MA that is laid out in an “L” shape. There is a two story structure in the front of the property facing the street with units 1 & 2 on top of each other, and the other part of the house (an addition) is perpendicular to that with 2 stories. This entire structure by itself is unit 3. 

So Unit 3 has the kitchen, bathroom, & living room on the first floor, and the bedrooms above that are all on the second floor. The way that the bedrooms are structured, you have to walk through them to get to the next one and it is a little quirky. 

Well I had a few contractors out and one of them ended up also being a pretty established investor in central MA that has been in the game for a while. He was extremely familiar with househacking and my plan etc. When he took a look at it, he mentioned that his advice was to try to rent it as is, and worst case scenario if it doesn’t rent then you have to address putting up a few walls and putting hallways in to separate the bedrooms. I liked this advice, and paid a contractor to put in new floors and spruce up the unit and when it came to rent, I had a surprise….

After pre screening many folks, I had a few showings with very qualified potential tenants, and they really liked the first floor, but when they saw the way the bedrooms were laid out upstairs, it was a dealbreaker every time. 

I ended up talking to a few other investors, and one mentioned to try renting it as a very large 2br unit and drop the price a few hundred dollars to attract a different pool, and I found a qualified tenant within a day. 

My lesson that I learned from this experience, is to always make sure that a unit functions properly/normally before making it “look pretty” because even if it is very nice, if it does not work, it can potentially be VERY difficult to rent out, even in a market with a heavy rental demand. When that unit turns over in the future, the first thing I am doing is paying a contractor to fix those bedrooms to be able to “normalize” the space and be able to achieve top market rent for it :) 

You live and you learn! I would love to hear about your experiences below!

#Worcester #Lowell #Fitchburg #Leominster #Boston #Gardner