Whether you’re renting out a home for the first time or you’re turning the property over between tenants, you don’t want to put it on the market until it’s move-in ready. If you start showing a rental home that hasn’t been cleaned or repaired, your prospective tenants will lose interest and you’ll find yourself facing a long vacancy period or reducing the price just to get people in the door.

Owners are often anxious to move through the rent-ready process in order to get it on the market so rent will start coming in. We understand this urgency, and we work quickly to prepare your property for the rental market. Typically, our turnover cycle lasts a couple of weeks. It will take us two or three weeks to prepare a single-family home for the market and maybe a full month to get a multi-family unit ready. These are competitive timeframes in the Philadelphia rental market.

We’re often asked what goes into the rent-ready process.

Making Repairs and Replacements at Your Philadelphia Rental Property

We’re going to conduct a complete inspection before placing your property on the Philadelphia rental market. This includes looking at plumbing and electrical functions as well as testing appliances and inspecting the heating and cooling system. We want everything to be move-in ready when we’re preparing your home for the rental market.

Don’t list it if there’s still work to be done. Schedule and complete the repairs and the maintenance first, and then clean it.

You’ll need a team of professional vendors and contractors who are ready to go. One of the reasons we keep our turnover time to a minimum is our relationships with painters, carpet professionals, and cleaners. We can make these things happen quickly.

Professional Rental Property Cleaning

Professionally cleaning your home will usually only add one day to the time it takes to get your property rent-ready. We want our cleaners to pay attention to the details. They will dust behind and under all the appliances and clean the baseboards and the ceiling fans. Your property’s bathroom sinks and tubs will be scrubbed until they shine and we’ll remove any trash, debris, or belongings that were left behind by former tenants. A completely empty property will be ready for the rental market. You want prospective new tenants to walk in and immediately imagine themselves living there.

Curb Appeal Counts during the Rent-Ready Process

First impressions are very important during the leasing process. Part of our rent-ready process is to make sure your property looks inviting and welcoming. We may decide to pressure wash the property or the driveway. In a multi-family property, common areas may need some extra attention before we rent out a unit. The yard will be well-landscaped with the grass mowed, weeds pulled, and branches trimmed.

Cosmetic upgrades and updates for the interior and exterior are also a great idea, even if it means adding a few days to the turnover period or the rent-ready process. Fresh paint, new carpet or hard surface flooring, and even minor things like new drawer pulls in the kitchen of the bathroom can make a big difference to prospective tenants.

We are in a hurry to get your property onto the rental market, but we want to make sure it’s positioned well to attract high rents and great tenants. Contact us at TCS Management if you’d like to talk about the rent-ready process for your home or if you have any questions about Philadelphia property management.

TCS Management is a full service property management company headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, also serving Cherry Hill, NJ, Wilmington, Delaware and the surrounding areas. We focus on single-family and multifamily residential property management of homes, condos, townhomes, and apartment buildings.