Hey BiggerPockets. This is Matt Faircloth. So today, we're going to talk about things that you
guys can do when you renovate property on how to make property management super simple for yourself
and affordable as well. So renovations, when you renovate a property, it is the way that you can
do... Obviously, we talk a lot about doing things to create rent, to create value in your rental,
through your innovations like putting in nice countertops, putting in better cabinets,
putting a new flooring, whatever to command market or maybe a little above market in rents for your
property. But there's something else you can consider when you're renovating a property
is what can I do to make property management, whether you're doing it yourself or somebody
else is doing it for you, to make property management super, super simple, and repeatable,
and just something that you can predict? So we're here at one of our rentals. I'm going to
give three tips on just renovation and things you guys can do keep your property management costs
down and make it super simple. We're in a living room for one of our apartments that we're in the
middle of renovating right now. What I wanted to show off here was paint. It sounds super simple.
"Maybe I'll just paint. Why do you want to talk about paint?" I'll tell you why I want to talk
about paint. We use the same paint color in all of our apartments. This paint is a paint that we get,
and it's just an antique white but we standardized. We use the same paint every,
every time. So if it is something that's owned or managed by my company, it's got this paint.
The reason for that is if a tenant moves out and they blemish the wall or something like that, my
guys can just come through here and just touch it up. They don't have to repaint every time or have
to manage a roster to say, "No, that's 123 Main Street, what color were those walls? Because we
got to go touch that up." It pays to standardize on paint. We even went and bought little,
small touch-up kits, which you can get like a pint of paint. We bought little ones of those and when
a tenant tells us they're moving out, we just give them the paint. I'm willing to pay for it to hand
it to them and have them come and touch up the walls because it's the paint that we use and I'm
going to have to pay the labor to do it. So if you standardize on things like paint,
you can very easily touch up, turn units around. Because we've standardized on paint, we've had
circumstances where one tenant moved out and they were out by 10:00 AM that morning. And I sent a
crew in, they just came in and did touch up and cleaning. That's all they had to do. The tenant
didn't really damage the place. They just touched up the walls and cleaned everything out. That
tenant moved out at 10:00 AM. I had a new tenant move in at 4:00 in the afternoon, the same day,
because there wasn't major reno required. So set your units up so that renovations in
between are not that hard to do. That's the number-one tip for renovations that you want
to do to make property management simple is things like paint that can make renting and
turning the unit over really, really simple to do. You can do the same thing with your
cabinet finishes. You can do the same thing with other mechanisms in your unit by standardization,
standardizing your light fixture, standardizing everything to where one unit looks like the
rest of them. So that's tip number one. Let's go to tip number two. All right, guys,
so this is tip number two for doing things to keep your property management costs down and
predictable for your rental properties when you guys do renovations. So this is a master
key that I have. So you want to install a master key system. I'm going to show you guys the one
that we use. This is not a plug, but the system we use, it's called Landlord Locks. The way Landlord
Locks works is I turn it this way to unlock the lock. And if I turn it the other way, I should be
able to yank it out. Let's see if I can do it. [inaudible 00:03:46]. There we go. I can pull
that cylinder right out of there. Cool, huh? Then, what I can do is I can remove this and put
a new lock in there. When a different tenant moves out, if I want to change the locks on my
apartments, everything that we own and manage is on a Landlord Locks system for that company
because I can change out the locks on the fly, I can just pull the cylinders out, put new in. Now,
it takes a little bit of a step to implement that kind of system. But once you got it,
I can just change the cylinders out. Like, if a tenant moved out of this building,
I could take this cylinder, put it in my office and then when I need something like
this at another property, I can just put that cylinder in that property. People aren't going
to know that they got swapped out, but it gets rotated throughout properties and everything like
that. So you don't have to buy a new every time a tenant moves. You can just take a cylinder here,
take what you've got sitting in the spare drawer of your office, and pop the new in it. Nobody's
going to know that the key that they had from the property they lived at five years ago,
one of your properties across town, is now over here. They're not going to think to try that.
So it's fine and safe, and you can keep the number... You see these all have number codes
on them so you can keep the number code in your office and keep track of what's on each door.
So the bottom line is systematization for property management. The first step was to keep cost down
for reno. The second step is systems, systems, systems, systems. This is a phenomenal system.
Other systems you guys can consider are things like video cameras. I recently did a thing talking
about video cameras. There's other systems that you guys can put in that are on-site systems,
not like online stuff. Online rent payments and stuff like that are other systems. But we're
talking about things you guys can do during construction, and door-locking mechanisms and
systems like this are a great way to minimize property management costs once you're up and
running and moving forward on the property. Do one more one. Come on upstairs.
All right, guys. So here's the last one that you guys can do during your construction phase
for property management expenses to keep them low, keeping them predictable. This one is durability.
We're going to talk about flooring now. So you guys got to look a little close here. So we're
going to talk about this flooring right here. See this? That's nice, pretty hardwood floors. Now,
these are nice planks. This will sand. Believe it or not, this has been painted.
I don't know who would've thunk to do that, but you can sand this floor to make it look all nice
and pretty like that. It'll cost, probably... I think that our local guy does it for somewhere
around a $1.70 a square foot to sand and stain hardwood floors. What you do is we like to stand
up and then we put three coats of polyurethane on top to where they're almost bulletproof.
I don't do carpet because carpet is not durable. It's nice. It's pretty. It is nice, and cushy,
and stuff like that. But carpet, if your tenants have animals, if they have kids, if they have
anything, if they spill a glass of wine, whatever it is, it will stain the carpets. All that you
can ding them on the security deposit, you're not going to restore your floors back to the
original color. When I sand down this floors, it's going to be like a nice, thick sheen. I'll put so
much polyurethane on it, it will be like your fingernail. It'll be a nice and thick plastic
thing on top. You don't put stain. You don't put stain. You just do a nice clear coat. The reason
for that is that if the tenant drags something across and scrapes it or whatever, you'll rarely
see it. It'll just be the natural wood hue. If you can't do standard hardwood floors like
this, you can put in laminate vinyl tile, or you can put in just laminate sheet good product or
whatever that that looks like wood floors. They make stuff that has a 10-year warranty on it. If
I didn't have these floors here, I'd put in some kind of a vinyl product down the floors that has
a wood finish to it but it is extremely strong, extremely durable, stuff that's got a long-term
warranty on it that's scratch-proof and everything like that too. It's nice, it'll
help you sell your unit, but it's durable. If you're going to do carpet, just do it in
the bedrooms because that just provides a nice, cushy sound. Tenants will like to
have carpet in there. Some people like to have carpet in their bedrooms so they don't have to
put their feet on a cold wood floor when they get up in the morning. But that's the only place you
should be doing if you're doing anywhere at all. Let them get a throw a rug and just put the wood
floors down if you can because it'll be the most durable flooring that you can get.
Those are the three, guys, the three things you guys can do during construction to you keep your
property management expenses predictable and low during your time ownership. Real quick, it's
durability through things like floors, systems through things like landlord key door locks,
and lowering your renovation costs during unit turns with things like standardized paint colors.
Okay? Leave comments below. I'm sure there's other stuff that we could talk about that are
out there to lower property management expenses. So leave some comments in the bar below, and we
can get into some chatter about it. So thanks for watching, guys. Have great and profitably week.