11 Easy and Rental-Friendly Upgrades to Improve Property

In property management, part of the job is attracting the right types of residents to the right types of homes. If you own a rental property, you want it to be occupied by good residents. 

In today’s world, residents have a wide range of options, and they’ll typically only go to the most attractive and appealing homes on the market. That means your property needs to be in tip-top shape. 

Here are a few easy home improvements to help get you started with bumping up the curb appeal of your rental home.

Rental Friendly Upgrades to Improve a Home

Fortunately, you don’t have to break the bank to upgrade your home with expensive features or completely renovate your property. You can add inexpensive things to your home to make a difference and make a home more appealing. 

Install Outdoor Lighting

One quick and simple thing that helps improve your home is installing outdoor lighting. Outdoor lighting can accomplish a couple of things; it can make a home appear more inviting and sophisticated and appear safer and more secure. 

We recommend installing outdoor lighting in the following areas for the most significant impact:

• Around the mailbox
• Along the walkway leading up to the front
• Around the front door and garage
• Out in the back on the patio or deck

Plant Low-Maintenance Foliage

A well-manicured and well-landscaped lawn is appealing to virtually any homeowner. Make things easier on yourself From a maintenance standpoint, make and plant foliage that doesn’t require care and supervision. 

Suggestions for low-maintenance foliage include:

• Elijah Blue fescue
• Rose Glow Japanese barberry
• Hydrangeas
• Chinese fringe trees
• Verbenas
• Other similar plants

All of these plants require little maintenance and look great. 

Clean, Repaint and Upgrade the Exterior

There’s a lot to be said for a home that has a clean and updated exterior. You can add a fresh coat of paint or simply pressure-clean the entire exterior. 

Replace old fixtures, such as hinges, knobs, and hangers, with new fixtures that are bright brass or brushed nickel in color. Repaint the front door with vivid color. Pressure-clean the driveway and walkways, too; much grime can build up over the years. 

Add a Fresh Coat of Paint to the Rooms

It’s truly incredible how far a fresh coat of paint can go in a home. Painting interior walls are one of the go-to’s for DIY projects around the house.

Thankfully, painting is simple enough and doesn’t require professional help in most instances. Find a good color and get to it.

Paint Kitchen Cabinets

Another area to take paint to that has become increasingly popular is the kitchen, not the walls. If your kitchen cabinets are feeling drab, don’t be afraid to sand them down and give them a new life with a fresh coat of paint.

As long as the structure of your cabinets is still sound, the paint can genuinely go a long way to help open up the space and make it feel brand new, all while saving you the costs of new cabinetry.

Add Crown Molding

Crown molding helps to increase the value and charm of a home instantly. While professional crown molding can make and be easily installed, there are options for homeowners looking for DIY projects.

Look for a lightweight polystyrene foam that has been coated in hard plaster. This trimeric molding is easy enough to cut with a handsaw at home and install on your own. You can easily install crown molding in your home over the course of a weekend.

Get More Flowers

You can create more plants if you already have perennials in your garden, like daylilies, without spending a dime.

Split apart your perennials every year to help give you more flowers, invigorate growth, and control plant size. You can begin splitting in late summer before fall hits spring and summer-blooming flowers like daylilies.

Lay an Eco-Friendly Layer of Insulation

A new style of flooring is eco-friendly and adds some warmth and cushion to your home. Cork is a durable and resilient material that adds an earthy look to your floors.

Thankfully, this eco-friendly material is incredibly simple to install and even comes in engineered panels that snap together without needing any type of nails or glue.

Spare yourself the cost and the headache of installing hardwood floors or a large area rug – check out cork flooring as an option instead.

Protect Walls With an Easy-to-Clean Backsplash

Traditional tile backsplashes are great but might be out of your budget right now. Thankfully you still have other options. Consider a single sheet of solid surface material as a backsplash which will help to spruce up your kitchen and provide your renters with an easy to clean option.

Prevent Mold Growth with a Bathroom Vent

If your bathrooms don’t already have one, you might want to look to add vents in each of them. They are easy enough to install over a weekend, and renters will appreciate the added touch.

For you, as the homeowner, adding vents to your bathrooms will help to prevent the growth of mildew and mold, which are known to become severe issues over time for your home and health.

Add Ceiling Fans for Summer

Ceiling fans are always popular because energy costs continue to rise. In the summer, ceiling fans are an excellent alternative to air conditioning which is incredibly costly. In the winter, ceiling fans can be turned the opposite direction to help move heated air through the home, reducing heating costs.

If you have space above your ceilings that is accessible from the attic, installing a ceiling fan can be incredibly easy. Even if not, it’s still a doable DIY project you can handle. If not, you can always call in a handyperson to install one, and it shouldn’t be too costly.

Upgrade Your Rental with These Simple Additions

These are all simple and inexpensive things you can do to improve a rental home. So, if you’re looking for some easy rental-friendly upgrades that you can knock out over a weekend, try some of these out for size.

Matthew Whitaker

Matthew is the CEO of Evernest. He is a student of the book Good to Great and is passionate about building the best property management company on the planet (and maybe even the universe if Elon Musk will hurry up). You can usually find Matthew at the baseball field with his son, at a dance recital with his daughter, or at his favorite restaurant with his wife, when he’s not in the office. And if you can’t find him in any of those places, it probably means he’s traveling.