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Should You Reveal Your Safety Harbor Rental Property’s Hardwood Floors?

Restored Hardwood Flooring in the Kitchen and Living RoomPurchasing a rental home with carpet already installed may result in a great surprise: that carpet may be covering a beautiful hardwood floor. The decision you need to consider is whether you should remove the carpet or leave it in place. For some property owners, the economical and efficient choice would be to stick with carpeted floors, but for others, revealing those hardwood floors would open the home up to higher rental income and better tenants. In the end, you have to weigh the pros and cons of exposing your rental property’s hardwood floors.

When choosing between carpet and hardwood flooring in your Safety Harbor rental property, think about these few things. Hardwood floors can be an attractive feature in a rental home. They have in them a beauty and durability that few carpets can match. Nevertheless, not all rental homes would benefit from hardwood. So, think about the type of tenant you have, the resale value of the property, the neighborhood, and the cost of preparing and maintaining each flooring type. Make the decision only after you’ve considered these things. Choosing to permanently remove your rental’s carpeting should not be done casually.

Not all tenants would share the same response to an upgrade of a hardwood floor. There are some tenants that may appreciate the beauty of a hardwood floor and are also conscientious enough to take on the responsibility of keeping the door clean and dry. However, there are also tenants that should not have hardwood floors. Those with pets and heavy furniture can easily scratch or gouge a wood floor, damaging it and making it unattractive. Some tenants may want hardwood floors for reasons other than the way it looks. For people who suffer from allergies, a hard floor surface would be better for them since they are easier to clean and keep free of dust than carpet. But if the tenant uses harsh cleaning products or scrubs hard, they could damage it. They need to know how to properly care for hardwood.

Beyond appearance, rental property owners should use the property’s current value and future value as the starting point when making their flooring choices. Because value is often influenced by a property’s location and nearby homes, it would be a good idea to find out what kind of floors the other homes in the neighborhood have— whether they feature hardwood or carpet. If most of the homes have carpet, then, perhaps, it wouldn’t be wise to remove yours. There are exceptions, however. For example, if the neighborhood is undergoing a renewal, offering upgrades like a hardwood floor could be what makes your rental house more attractive than the competition.

Finally, there are costs you need to account for when thinking about permanently removing your rental home’s carpet.  While you may save on the cost of replacing the carpet every five years, removing the carpet and preparing the floor for your next tenant isn’t free. There are additional expenses you will have to pay. For one, newer hardwood finishes are more durable than those in the past, but there’s a high likelihood that the floor under your rental’s carpet won’t be exactly new.

The hardwood may have also degraded from the years it spent lurking beneath a layer of the carpet. So, exposing a hardwood floor will most likely require refinishing, and then it would need regular maintenance to ensure that the condition is maintained. Now, all these steps would involve costs, and knowing how much you’d have to invest would be a tremendous help. It would help you make a well-informed decision.

After carefully considering how your tenants, neighborhood, and rental home factors into your specific situation, you can confidently decide whether or not you should expose your rental property’s hardwood floors.

Take the headache and hassle out of managing your rental properties. At Real Property Management TradeWinds, we handle the lease paperwork, renter relations, professional vendors and everything else! To talk to a professional Safety Harbor manager, contact us or call us at 727-400-4722 today.

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