Advice: Carpet vs. Hardwoods in bedrooms for rental properties?

[Jared Smith]

Recently bought a huge single family built in 1880.  Do you recommend carpet or hardwoods for the bedrooms and why?

[Jim K.]

It depends on a number of things. I'm a DIY landlord. All our rentals are in C/D areas and we do not install carpet under any circumstances. However, I have never had to paid anyone to fix, seal, or refinish a hardwood floor, and most of our rentals (due to the sort of properties I choose to acquire), come to us with the original 3/4 in. oak flooring intact, usually under carpet and padding. It just needs to be refinished, and I've become pretty good at doing that cheaply and with passable results.

Hard surfaces are attractive in our area and we also have a very high percentage of health care professionals on our rent rolls. People who work in health care facilities universally dislike carpet because of its terrible performance in facility infection control.

In your case, it might be more prudent to put in waterproof luxury vinyl plank if someone else is handling the installation and maintenance. Not laminate -- we've seen (cheap) floating plank laminate flooring fail multiple times with fluid spills, humidifier leaks, pet accidents, planks coming apart. I think LVP is a good choice for most people trying to do this with a property manager and flooring contractors. Hardwood flooring is one of the DIYer's unfair advantages in the rental business and should be exploited as such.