Blinds in A Rental House

[Mark Bosworth]

Hi All,

Some friends and I are 99% through with flipping a house and putting it up for rental.  When you flip a house for rental, do you put window coverings/blinds in it?  If so, which ones do you choose?  I'm thinking simple/cheap cordless accordion shades would be best.  But I thought there would be people with lots of experience on Bigger Pockets!  

Thanks for the help!

Mark

[Justin Hoggatt]

I've tried just about everything when it comes to blinds and window coverings.  Some homes I've put in basic Ikea type drapes along living room windows, some of the homes I've put in the faux wood 2" blinds, some the general Home Depot horizontal blinds.  I think there are benefits to each.

The faux wood last longer and generally requires less maintenance on a turnover because I'm not replacing them every time, as long as the tenant didn't have a dog.  I saw that because dogs seem to inevitably jump on a window sill and break anything that is in the window.  These would likely go into a higher end rental.

The drapes I've found are generally only worth it to rent the unit based on a staging approach.  They look good when showing it, however, the tenant will replace them or do whatever they want to do there anyway, so maybe just having a curtain rod there - just know that the rod will likely be pulled out and you'll be fixing holes and replacing brackets.

The lease expensive and often easiest are the cheaper horizontal blinds.  You can get black out versions or light filtering.  I think they generally look decent but they are cheap and most situations I've seen, no matter the tenant, is that you'll be replacing them at almost every turnover - just expect it.  If they aren't broken, then they are probably too dirty to even mess with.  One area of frustration though is that these companies seem to constantly change the brackets and they aren't always that easy to just pop out one for another.

Lastly, if you do nothing, then know that you're leaving it up to the tenants to decide.  I've found that you should do something - and even though you're providing the window covering, it still seems like a tenant will want to do something in addition no matter what - so you really probably can't account for all scenarios.