Raising Rents in a Suburban Town

[Danny Ondik]

Hello All,

1) What are the most common things to rehab a house to maximize rental income? What are the little details that really maximize its potential?

2) What percent of rent have landlords found they are able to raise rents yearly without having them move out?

Thank you for any and all help!

Danny 

[Nicole A.]

Hi Danny!

The most important thing to remember is to not rehab beyond the neighborhood or rehab to the point where your numbers will no longer provide good returns. Stay with a neutral paint scheme that you'll use in all of your properties. This makes is much easier to remember/know what paint color and type to have ready for repainting and touch ups. You can do inexpensive things that make the property really show well such as a nice (neutral!) backsplash in the kitchen. You don't have to dump a bunch of money into features. Mostly just provide a nice clean, safe, well-maintained property that shows well and it'll rent out fast.

If you have all this and it doesn't rent out fast due to no good applicants, your price is too high. Compare yours to similar rental ads on sites such as HotPads and Zillow. Regarding raising the rent, you will want to reassess that value each year. Maybe it's just 1% or more. Maybe it's nothing. If you find yourself raising every year and going outside of the market rent, you may not be keeping tenants for as long. Depending on your market, you may find that you instead should only raise the rent every 2 years or however long seems appropriate.