Renovations/Upgrades to secure a lease?

[Betsy Yang]

My family has been trying to rent out a condo for a few months now. We have an agent helping us but the leads have not been panning out. The agent has advised us repeatedly that the kitchen is lacking and needs to be tidied up for us to have a chance. We're in the process of changing out the appliances, but we have been further advised that the cabinets therein also need attention and that prospective tenants have commented about it. We have a potential applicant, and we're debating whether to use these further renovations as an incentive to get them to apply and lease. The applicant did not ask about the cabinets at first, that only came up later on in the conversation. Also, all of this contact has been through our agent, so we're not sure if the agent is putting words in this person's mouth to try to make us take action. We are pretty certain the cabinet replacement won't be cheap, and we're not sure if it will contribute that much to the overall value of the property. We haven't been all that impressed with the agent's performance either, and are on the fence about finding someone else to represent us. Admittedly, this is a slow time for rentals, so we're not that surprised interest has been low, but is it worth it to put in this kind of effort to convince someone to commit to a lease? We really want to get this property rented out ASAP, it's been laying fallow for a while now, we just want to make sure we're not making impulsive decisions out of desperation or fatigue.

[Steve DellaPelle]

Hi Betsy, it sounds like you need to be more realistic with your rent prices. You may find that your condo is not as up to date as competitors in the area and thus you will need to drop your prices. If you end up doing the renovations then you can again adjust your rent prices.

I believe any apartment/condo can rent...renovations or no renovations...it's just a matter of finding your rentals value.

Good luck!