Flooring - What is the very best to use for lots of rentals?

[Ian Dyer]

What hard flooring do you recommend? 

We'd like to find one SPC or better product and color that will be available for hopefully 8 to 15 years or more. Any suggestions?

We manage 150+ units. We use only hard flooring throughout, no carpet. We want to use the SAME flooring in all. The problem is that flooring manufacturers change what they offer, every few years. We'd rather use the same product and color for many years, so that, on move-outs, if a small area or one room needs replaced, it matches. We've done that for years with Home Depot laminate. But we switched to SPC because it's waterproof. It has held up way better than laminate. But, our supplier just stopped offering the color we've been using. 

We switched to SPC because we wanted to get away from the Home Depot low end laminate, because it failed when it got wet, such as by exterior doors and in kitchens/baths (we didn't use it in kitchens/baths at all because of that). We'd used it for years, and put vinyl in the K/BA. 

After laminate and before SPC, 5 years or so ago, we tried Home Depot's Trafficmaster Cherry LVT, because we'd seen a bunch of recommendations for it from landlords. It didn't turn out well. It had to sit in the home for 24 hours before being installed, to get to the proper temperature/humidity. Then, once installed, there was shrinkage/expansion in hotter and colder times when homes were vacant or unheated/cooled, creating gaps. So we know that Home Depot TrafficMaster LVT is not the solution we want. 

We then went to SPC, which stands for "Stone Plastic Composite", also called "Stone Polymer Composite". https://www.flooringinc.com/bu... (That's a link to the definition/comparison. It's not where we buy it). We pay $1.29/sf plus tax & delivery to an independant supplier in SoCal, and it doesn't need underlayment. We're happy with it, but they just changed the product and color after two years and can't get the one we've been buying. We need one where the produce and color won't change, so we can use it for many years on all move-outs.

Home Depot and Lowes don't have a reasonably priced good quality SPC, nor do they seem to have one that will be in stock in the same product and color long term.

I know that flooring manufacturers are always changing their products, because that's best for sales. But I also know there's a huge market of landlords who would love to have access to a good product that doesn't change in color or type over time.

Who has an SPC or other hard flooring they like, that is likely to be available long term?

[Ned J.]

We use LVP

Unless you want to buy a ton and store it for decades as you use it, you will never find ANY product like this that will stay static in color or design for a LONG time. Just not going to happen.....

When we do it, we buy a couple of extra boxes for that unit to do any swaps/repairs with the hope that we will have enough. If in the event that we cant do that, we have to move on to another plan.

We also try and do the same floor in each place.... so if one place needs another box, we pirate it from another