How Much Should You Spend On A Make Ready?

[Steve Rozenberg]

How much should you spend on a Make Ready. Most owners would like to have a good ball park number, depending on the property they are buying. Everybody obviously has different opinions or thoughts of what they should do in a make ready. Remember it is a business and you are not living in the property, make sure that as much money you are putting into the property, you’re going to receive the same in return. If you are going to put $10,000 - $40,000 into a property are you going to want get that much money back out of it. It should be based on making the property clean and functional, and making the property fit the area. You want to make sure that the house you are buying is going to fit with the rest of the neighborhood. You don’t want the ugliest house on the street and you don’t want the most updated on the street, because that will not fit and if you should ever want to sell the property that could come back to affect you.

All trash should be removed from the inside and outside of the house. If the house needs any type of paint you’re better off just repainting house. Paint and the carpet are the best things that sell. If you don’t think you could clean the carpet, you’re probably better off just replacing the carpet..

Landscaping is very inexpensive. It is the first thing that people see when they drive up to the house, make it very colorful and very inviting. You can go to the local home improvement store and pick up some mulch and colorful plants that will go a long way when they drive up.

Make sure the house is very clean. People do not like to see dirt in the house when they are imagining their stuff in it. If you follow those rules and you make sure that it’s painted or the paint looks good, make sure the carpet is clean or replaced, never show up with dirty carpets, and fix the landscaping in the front so when they do come up to the property it looks very inviting, it will go a long way. When you are getting bids from vendors to do jobs, I would get at least a minimum of three bids to make sure that you are getting competitive pricing. If you are going go through several vendors, you are going to get different pricing and you want to make sure that what you are thinking, what you are envisioning matches what they are thinking.

Whoever you are using you should definitely get their license and insurance information. The last thing you want is to get the cheapest bidder only to find out that they don’t have insurance. Then one of their guys slips and falls in your house and now the guy’s family cannot eat because he is not working, that will come back to you. So we have learned that cheaper is not always better, spend a little bit extra money in getting the professionals because if it should ever happen that a person should slip and fall or something should happen to them in your property, it’s not worth the liability. And you have to remember, it is a business and with a business you have certain expenses, this is just one of those expenses.