Owner Guides
5 min read
The make-ready items that actually pay for themselves
Not every improvement returns its cost at lease-up. Four consistently do, and three consistently do not.
Article
Turn budgets get spent emotionally. An owner walks a unit, sees what bothers them, and funds that. The items that move rent are rarely the items that bother the owner.
Consistently worth funding: paint in a single neutral throughout, hardware and lighting replacement, a deep clean that includes the appliance interiors, and anything that photographs as new in the first three listing images. Each of these is inexpensive relative to a week of vacancy and each shows up directly in application volume.
Consistently not worth funding at lease-up: full cabinet replacement, high-end countertop upgrades in a mid-market unit, and landscaping beyond tidy. These are asset decisions with long horizons, not leasing decisions, and they should be evaluated against a hold period rather than a listing date.
The test we apply before approving a turn item is simple: will this change the asking rent, the days on market, or the quality of the applicant pool? If it will not change any of the three, it is deferred maintenance planning, not make-ready.