Flooring Picks for your Rental from a Flooring Professional

Floor Picks for your Rental from a Flooring Professional

Prior to going full time in Real Estate, I came from a flooring background. I installed gymnasium and weight room flooring as a field worker, then became a project manager before moving to sales. I have been in the flooring business over 12 years. I married into the flooring business and my wife recently became an owner. The cool part about real estate is currently as I write this one of our rental properties is being used as collateral to fund the flooring business. The purpose of this article is to explain some of the flooring we have used in our rental properties and why it has worked for us.

Existing Hardwood Flooring

If hardwood exists and it can be salvaged keep it. Hardwood is desirable, most tenants will appreciate it and it should increase the value of your rental. If you need to sand existing hardwood most residential jobs require 4-5 coats of finish (sealer included). I used 7-9 coats of finish for our rental properties. If Hardwood is in a kitchen space I will do as many as 9 coats of finish. Water is the enemy of hardwood; extra coats will help protect wood. A hack I will use to save on cost is to use a 5-gallon bucket of sealer for all your coats except for the final coat. Sealer is cheaper and 5 gallons depending on product will stretch to over 3,000 sq ft. The reason I recommend 5 gallons is because you will use that much to may as well pay the 5-gallon price rather than the 1 gallon price 5 times.

Partial Hardwood

For our rentals we are appealing to high end tenants so portions of the property that do not have hardwood flooring I installed hardwood in as long as the rooms connected to each other. For example, I have a 2nd and 3rd level apartment. I installed hardwood in the rooms that were missing it on the second level but the third level I installed LVT. There was clear separation between second and third level so it made sense. Hardwood is not cheap and very labor intensive so even in a luxury unit it has to make sense.

No Hardwood

If you acquire a property that has hardwood that is not salvageable or there is no hardwood, I put in LVT. If property has carpet that’s in good condition, I will leave it. It is easy enough to remove carpet and install LVT same day (depending on size of job). But going back to the type of tenant you are trying to attract carpet may not cut it, LVT will if you are using a luxury product. Home Depot and Lowes likely is not the place you want to go for your LVT. I have a local distributor that is selling their product at Home Depot’s price, the product is triple the quality and has a residential life time warranty.

The easy way to say this is keep hardwood if it is in good condition. Install hardwood if the area is small and the intention is to match the rest of the house. Go with LVT if there is no hardwood, your hardwood can’t be saved and you want the best bang for the buck that still attract high level tenants.