To Carpet or Not to Carpet. That is the Question.

[Brian Washburn]

I just bought my first rental in Omaha, NE. It's a 3BR 1BA with 1900sqft. I'm putting about $6k into renovations, including rebuilding the bathroom from scratch and new kitchen vinyl floors. The house has about 1000sqft of gross carpet that is probably from the late 80s. A couple people have looked at the house and asked me if I am replacing the carpets. Our plan was to spend our money on the updates we are doing, and replace the carpets in a couple years using cash from rent. Should we stick to our plan and wait a couple years to update the carpet, or spend and extra grand on carpets now?