Flooring That's Best for a Rental House
This guide covers the best flooring for each room of a rental holding, based on immovability, price, and aesthetics
If y'all're renovating a rental property and redoing the floors, yous're probably looking for a solution that will agree upwardly against even the worst tenants without breaking the banking concern.
At the same time, it needs to look good enough to brand the property attractive to potential renters.
I've renovated a lot of apartments over the past four years and, largely through trial and error, have learned a thing or 2 about flooring: what types look the best, are the most durable, and/or are just also expensive to make sense for a rental.
In this article I'll share the products and materials that have worked well in my ain properties, and which rooms they're best suited for.
Bound TO Department
- Flooring I Recommend For Rental Properties
- Refurbishing Existing Hardwood Floors
- Click Lock Vinyl Flooring
- Tile (Ceramic or mosaic)
- Rug (in some situations)
- Best Flooring For Bedrooms
- Best Flooring For Kitchens
- Best Flooring For Bathrooms
- All-time Flooring For The Living Room
- The Best Flooring In Your Marketplace
Flooring I Recommend For Rental Properties
Refurbishing Existing Hardwood Floors
Hardwood floors are beautiful and tin final hundreds of years if maintained properly. A few of my rentals accept hardwood floors that are over ninety years former. Subsequently refinishing, they yet look brand new.
If you have old hardwood floors in a rental property, odds are y'all can refinish them by sanding and and then coating in polyurethane. Even floors that have been painted or deeply scratched tin unremarkably be saved.
In addition to looking great, refinishing hardwood usually costs around $two per square foot, making it a cheaper and more durable choice than most other new products.
I've also found hardwood floors that show well volition help apartments rent quickly.
Click Lock Vinyl Flooring
Vinyl flooring used to be terrible — it looked inexpensive and didn't last long. In the last few years, withal, that's changed dramatically.
Newer products "click" together like puzzle pieces and wait almost equally good every bit existent hardwood or tile.
Some of the newer vinyl flooring is made out of a stone polymer blended, which means it'southward 100% waterproof and won't expand or contract much similar other vinyl flooring.
Most vinyl flooring will also come up with a xv-xxx-year warranty and is surprisingly affordable. When we renovated our role at Clever, we got a twenty-year commercial warranty for flooring that was merely $one.76 per square pes.
Vinyl flooring can be used to replace both hardwood flooring and tile.
Tile (Ceramic or Mosaic)
Tile flooring is i of my favorite products, assuming y'all have a solid contractor that can practice a expert job installing it at a cost-effective rate. Once installed, tile lasts a long time, looks great, and is incredibly like shooting fish in a barrel to make clean.
In some markets (similar St. Louis, where I invest) tile is usually used in hallways, kitchens, and bathrooms.
In my ain units, I prefer whatever ceramic or porcelain tile I tin can get on sale at Home Depot that still looks skilful. When I'g using tile, I mostly use the bigger square or rectangular tiles in the kitchen, hallways, or shower walls, and use black and white octagonal mosaic tile for bathroom floors.
Rug (in some situations)
I accept a love/detest relationship with carpet. Many tenants beloved carpet and won't rent a place without carpets in the bedroom — but information technology can be an expensive headache to maintain.
Carpeting is incredibly unforgiving if y'all accept bad tenants. Dogs, cigarette butts, stains, and furniture can all ruin carpet across repair and require replacing between tenants.
If you make up one's mind to use carpeting in your rentals I have a few suggestions:
If you're renting to college students, you lot can usually become abroad with commercial rug squares that are easy to replace. I've found that college students are pretty agreeable if y'all explicate to them that if they spill beer on the rug, you only have to charge them to replace one piece of carpet instead of the whole affair.
For more normal rentals, I'd recommend looking for carpet remnants at carpet supply stores or medium-priced carpets that advertise durability.
The easiest way to maintain your rug isn't actually based on the type of carpet — it'due south really about the type of tenants you hire to.
Generally speaking, carpets work better in backdrop with higher rent, as tenants volition take better intendance of the carpet — and you lot take a larger security deposit if they don't.
You can learn more than about the best carpet for rental backdrop here.
Best Flooring For Bedrooms
If you're looking to redo a bedroom, my number-one choice would be to refinish original hardwood floors — that is, if you lot take them.
If you don't, or you've noticed that rentals in your surface area hire fast with carpeted bedrooms, I'd recommend a product like the TrafficMaster brand at Dwelling Depot with a 5-year warranty for lower rent apartments.
For higher end apartments, you lot could jump for something a bit more expensive, equally those tenants volition probable be expecting it.
If you do become with carpet, I'd consider not assuasive dogs in your apartment, as dogs are likely to "dig" in the carpet and wear it out speedily — not to mention potential firm-breaking-related issues.
Best Floor For Kitchens
When information technology comes to kitchens, my preferred flooring is square or rectangular tile, with the actual tile size depending on the size of the kitchen.
I love tile for the kitchen considering it's waterproof. Kitchen floors get spilled on constantly, which tin brand hardwood a bad option.
While vinyl flooring is sometimes waterproof, I'd merely recommend information technology if you can't find someone to install your tile at an affordable price. In add-on to being more durable, I think tile just looks much nicer — even if you apply the vinyl flooring that'due south meant to imitate tile.
Best Flooring For Bathrooms
For bathrooms, I strongly recommend using tile. I invest in erstwhile houses and I've found that ceramic, octagonal, mosaic tiles A) look great and B) are piece of cake to install, every bit they come in a sheet.
However, more than modernistic bathrooms will utilize long rectangular tiles, which tin can look dandy too.
You can use waterproof vinyl planks for your bathrooms, but as I mentioned in the previous section, compared to tile, they're not as durable and simply won't await as nice.
Best Flooring For The Living Room
For the living room, I e'er recommend going with refurbished hardwood if you tin can — and vinyl plank if you can't.
Both of these options will make your unit look great in listing photos and showings, are very durable, and requite your tenants tons of flexibility when it comes to personalizing their living space.
While carpet is certainly an option, information technology's very rare to notice tenants that will crave it in the living room to sign a lease. That ordinarily but happens with bedrooms.
The Best Flooring In Your Market
I promise these recommendations help you lot choose your floor for your next project. However, if these products aren't commonly used in your local market, I'd recommend looking at the products that successful landlords with lots of apartments are using, and model your flooring after that. These landlords usually have a ton of experience, and will exist using products that piece of work well in your specific market.
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Source: https://listwithclever.com/real-estate-blog/best-flooring-for-rental-property/
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