Are you a property owner and questioning what you should include in regards to furnishing in your property, this consideration is important. As a general rule, most renters will expect a rental house to include some appliances and blinds on the windows. These considerations are natural however the bigger question is whether and how much a property owner should furnish their rental home. The consideration lies in the type of renter you will be wanting to market to. If you have a short term renter then a furnished space is definitely preferred, but if it is a long term rental most renters will want to furnish and make the space their own.
For single-family rentals, there are many reasons why furnishing the home is both unnecessary and impractical. Perhaps the biggest reason is that most of your renters probably will not like the furniture someone else buys for their rental. Personal taste varies widely, and few things are more personal than home furnishings. Prospective tenants may like the rental home, but ask whether the furnishing can be removed.
This can become a very arduous process, putting a property owner in a difficult situation. Furnishing and then removing all furnishings from a rental house is a huge investment in both time and money. Which potentially will not give you the best pay out because you run the risk of reducing the pool of possible tenants who desire a furnished rental.
There are other disadvantages to furnishing a long-term rental home, such as the wear and tear taken on the furniture. The probability that the renters will not treat your furniture as if it were their own is high. If the renter doesn’t like or want the furniture, that may further complicate things. The furnishing meant to provide comfort may in turn become more of a liability on you. They may try to move the furniture themselves to make room for their own, which may result in damage, improper storage, or even losing furnishings in the shuffle.
Furnishing a rental home adds another layer of difficulty for the owner due to the need to track and monitor furnishings in addition to the home itself. Doing so raises a number of important questions about how this will be done and how it should be addressed in the lease. In the event that your owner-provided furnishings are damaged it raise a plethora of questions like how would that damage be monitored and documented? How much damage constitutes normal wear and tear, and how much is negligence? It may be nearly impossible to keep track of every fabric tear, ding, scuff mark, and so on.
Another question furnishing a rental home raises is what happens if a piece of furniture or décor is damaged beyond repair or goes missing? Many renters will not report damage for fear of being charged for the item’s replacement, and so you may not even find out something has been damaged until they move out years down the road. And if they inadvertently lose one or more furnishings by shuffling them in and out of a garage or storage unit, you’ll not only need to deal with the item’s replacement, but with recouping the cost of the item from the tenant as well.
For short-term rentals, such as vacation or corporate rentals, offering them as partially or fully furnished is a necessary part of doing business. But for property investors who market their single-family homes to long-term renters, furnishing the property is not only unnecessary, it may also make renting and managing the property much harder than it needs to be. When questions of whether to furnish a rental home arise, the professionals at Real Property Management can help. We advise our property investors on solid business strategies and the best practices that provide renting out a quality long term rental a profitable and efficient investment.