Rehabbing a Rental Home

[Joseph Sangimino]

All, 

I recently began rehabbing a SFH that I plan to rent. I have a bare bones rehab plan in progress, basically just to fix everything to the point where it will be a good solid rental. However, I'm trying to decide if I want to go a step further and go ahead with some the modifications I think need made to sell at full retail. The full retail rehab plan would include knocking down a few walls to open up the kitchen to the living room, which is currently way too walled off considering how people like open floor plans nowadays. Taking into consideration that I hope to put long term tenants in, my questions are:

1) Should I go ahead and knock down the walls now, or wait until a vacancy or I'm ready to sell to do it? 

2) There are pine floors underneath old carpetting. They seem to be in good condition. Does anyone have recommendations as to whether I should finish the hardwood for this rental, or just lay something like vinyl on top? I'm not 100% sure of the cost to refinish the floors, but am considering it strongly because of the durability and aesthetics of hardwood. 

3) Recommendations on flooring for the kitchen? I've been leaning towards vinyl. My main goal is to have the most durable tenant proof flooring, but also have it look nice. 

Thanks,

Joe

[Ben Lauer]

A lot of these questions are going to depend on the relative condition of the neighborhood.  Make sure you aren't over upgrading and if you're planning on reworking the floorplan a little, it might give you more rent but obviously cosmetic refinements take a beating with most tenants.  

I also like tile in kitchens over vinyl, it's a bit of an upgrade and it's tough for the tenant to screw up the tile.  

Unless you're getting a little more cost effective deal and more rent doing more upgrades now, I would say hold off.  Tenants are generally going to give you enough reason to remodel after a few good years of rental anyways.