To Paint or Not To Paint

[Matthew Mucker]

I recently purchased my first investment SFH. (Hooray!)

The house has lots of equity but will be marginal on cash flow. My plan is to rent the house for a year and then sell it. I want to capture that equity and reduce my tax liability, and that year will get me some good landlording experience.

Here in the Dallas area, our soils tend to expand and contract as moisture changes, so foundation problems are quite common. This house had some major foundation issues, which I had repaired last week.

The question I now face is: should I paint the interior of the home or not?

There's ample evidence of where the drywall had cracked and/or started pulling apart at the seams due to the foundation movement. (Now that the foundation has been fixed, these cracks have closed up, but it's still easy to see where they were.) In addition, the interior is a hideous shade of yellow that's so pale your eye can't really tell at first if you're looking at a yellow wall or a white wall. The walls really are kind of an eyesore right now.

In addition, nice paint might bump up the value of the house a little when I go to refi in six months.

On the other hand, I don't know how sensitive prospective tenants will be to these issues. The house is otherwise a very attractive house. If tenants aren't going to care about the wall color, it may be worth it for me to defer this cost. I also realize that tenants aren't known for taking care of property.

I know I'm going to want to paint the house before I try to sell it.

So... do I paint now, or wait until I'm ready to sell and paint later? I'll do the work myself (with some help from family) and plan on using a taupe color that should hide minor scuffs and smudges.