Letting Tenants Paint?

[Kevin Izquierdo]

In my time as a property manager, the landlord let his tenants paint their units. Obviously I'd go in there and paint it back to its original paint after theyve moved out ( and you can imagine all the layers of paint). I'd like to know what kind of policies everybody else uses when it comes to this situation?

[Roy N.]

We use consistent palettes throughout our properties.  Naturally we are not enthusiastic to paint units in one-off colour schemes.

Usually once or twice a year we get a tenant who asks to paint a room (usually a bedroom) or, occasionally, most of the unit, colours of their choosing.  We never say no, we simply provide them with our policy and process:

• the tenant must use one of our approved painters;
• the tenant is responsible for the cost of materials and labour to paint the spaces to their colours;
• the tenant is responsible for the cost of returning the room(s) to our standard colours when they move out (this includes priming walls to change paint colours as necessary);  

We execute a separate agreement with the tenant and they must put funds in escrow to cover the cost of returning the unit to our colour palette.

This usually tempers the tenant's appetite to repaint the apartment.

Now, for longer term tenants who have been with us a couple of years or more, we will often offer to paint an accent wall or repaint a room and have them help select the paint colours.  We once repainted the second bedroom in one of our flats to turn it into a nursery for the couple who lived there.