A few months ago, our best tenant ever received his military transfer notice and subsequently gave notice to vacate Rental Property #2 by the end of July. The bad news is, after 2 weeks of receiving ZERO calls about the property, we had to drop the advertised rent about $100 just to get a few leads. The good news is, we found a new tenant pretty quickly after that. Yep. Tenant #4 (we've had two at each property now) is moved in and (fingers crossed) hopefully in position to stay an awfully long time. The toughest part of owning these properties so far has definitely been the transition work between tenants, and this time was no exception. But in truth, this is the first time that we had to experience the full brunt of the transition, as we got away with the bare minimum during the first transition a year ago (the good part about the first exiting tenant beating us out of his lease was that he wasn't there long enough to really mess up anything). But this time was the full monty. And if nothing else, at least I can say I now have realistic expectations of what to expect in the future with a tenant transition: 4 days of fun.
Day 1: It took half a day just to walk through the property and make my multiple lists with 3 things in mind: What needs to be done (some repairs, some replacements, and lots of cleaning), what will the exiting tenant be charged for, and what needs to go on my Day 2 shopping list. After that, the second part of Day 1 was making phone calls to schedule contractors / painters / cleaners / whoever will help me for cheap. We got lucky in that everyone was available on pretty short notice.
Day 2: What surprised me the most was that I needed a FULL DAY just to shop for everything on my list. Of course, with a fresh pair of eyes, there was also a whole lot of revisions to all the lists made on Day 1. But after trips to 4 different Home Depots, 2 Lowes, and a Walmart, I was set to get to work on Day 3.
Day 3: Easily another a 12-hour work day. This is when you become the plumber / electrician / dry wall / cleanup guy (it's either that or pay someone else to do it). Rewire light fixtures, install tile flooring, put up bi-fold doors, blah blah blah... Basically git er dun... because you've got 36 hours until the new tenant gets the keys to the front door (oh yeah... that reminds me, add "change / re-key locks" to the list).
Day 4: Finally, the help arrives. Maid service, house painters and carpet cleaners. That wasn't the preferred order, but hey in a pinch you do what you've gotta do. And of course, be ready to work around all of them as you find a half dozen other things that you've overlooked during the first 3 days (like broken shelves in the closets, and a garbage can riddled with compacted trash, flies and maggots... can you say 5 gallons of bleach and a very long scrub broom?)...
About $1500 dollars later ($1800 if you include newspaper advertisement and lawn service... $1300 if you deduct from that the $500 we kept from the previous tenant's deposit) the renovations are a done deal. The keys and cash are exchanged, the tenants move in and everyone is happy...
Until you get the call that we got today about there being a crack in the master bedroom bathtub. And you're thinking: Bathroom... crack... upstairs... water damage... through the floor... downstairs ceiling... rotted wood in between. This can be expensive. Good Lord. I need a nap. And the carousel spins again.
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Of course, a huge silver lining to it all that I should probably mention is that, with just 4 days between tenants, we avoided paying utilities and rent for a vacant house! That could've easily been another $1300 per month. And given the current housing crisis (with homes not selling, rentals are a dime a dozen) that, my friend, is certainly something to be thankful for!
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