Is my home ready for the leasing market?

When making sure your home is rent ready, you need to consider the following to make sure we can get you highest and best pricing with a short market time. If you need assistance Utopia Management, may be able to send plumbers, handyman or landscapers your way.

1. How does it look from the street? If you drove by your house, would you want to go inside? Let us define what “Curb Appeal” is.  Whether you are listing the property for sale or opening your doors to a renters market for an investment, the general attractiveness of a house or other piece of property from the sidewalk would is commonly mentioned as curb appeal . There are many things that can increase the curb appeal of a piece of rental property. A new paint job or power wash, landscaping, removing trash, fixing a broken fence and clearing clutter go a long way towards accomplishing this. Though not as easily measured as something like square footage, curb appeal plays an important role in property valuation.

2. Is it clean, super clean or a WOW clean? This makes a HUGE difference on market time, pictures and videos. Utopia Management prides itself in the quality of living that we strive to provide to your tenants. This all begins at their move in. Presenting the tenants with a clean and sanitized home is essential to the start of a happy tenancy. We suggest that property owners have the home professionally cleaned by a cleaning company that is experienced in vacancy cleaning in anticipation of a new tenant. Some homeowners may have a weekly maid service that tends to their home regularly. In our experience, these weekly services and other like them perform surface cleanings and don’t quite get into the dark corners of the kitchen drawers and closets or the deep recesses of the bathrooms. If you would like to have your maid service handle the cleaning, or if you would like to do it yourself, please refer to the attached checklist for a list of areas that often get missed by surface cleaning companies.Vacancy cleaning check list

3. Is everything fixed and in working order? People notice everything, a missing window blind and appliance knobs, broken molding, dirty fridge, missing light bulbs, weeds in the yard – everything should be ready to go. When we set an appointment with you to view the features and benefits of you home, we are also looking for items that might be of distraction or in need of replacement to assist you in making your home rent-ready. These are also the same standards in which we hold our tenants to when they are moving out and we are looking to get the home set up for the future renters.