How to Tenant Proof Your Rental Property

hey guys what's up this is paul price and today i want to talk to you a little bit about how to tenant proof your rental properties and before we get started if you'll do me a favor press that like button and if you haven't already go ahead and subscribe to our channel and press that bell for notifications let's get started [Music] one of the first things you begin to realize when you own rental properties is that tenants can be rough on a property i always joke that they can tear up an anvil there are some things that you can do to protect yourself against tenant damages some of the things you can do is choose the right materials when you're doing your rehabs and when you're renovating between tenants make the right choices there and it can save you a lot of time and money and heartache down the road and you know what am i talking about here well i make my decisions on what materials i use based on several factors one of the factors is you know consistency am i going to be able to get the same color like a paint color or the style going to be the same whether it's going to be like a gold fixture and next time it's going to be brass or or is it going to be you know antique brass or brushed nickel or whatever the styles are they going to go out of style you know i remember when i was a kid we had avocado green refrigerator and stove and stuff that stuff is out of style now but you know what's not gone out of style white you can still buy a white refrigerator you can still buy black you can still buy stainless steel you know those things probably are going to stay around longer than some of these colors i saw the other day they had a red refrigerator that's probably just going to be you know a fad it's going to be popular for a while and then it's going to go away so you want to stick with stuff that's consistent that you can replace and and get the same thing over and over again so that you're not mixing and matching stuff down the line now let's talk about paint what it's not uncommon between tenants to have to paint and when you have to paint you want to use something like a higher sheen of paint and there's there's several different layers or sheens of paint there's flat there's eggshell there's satin semi-gloss and gloss those are the most common sheens the higher you go and sheen the more durable the paint and the better it is for cleaning so if you need to if somebody scuffs the wall you can take a sponge and wipe down the wall if it's flat or satin or eggshell if you try to wipe the wall down it's probably going to take the paint off i always use at least a semi-gloss and it gives you a lot more durability it lasts longer and it's cleanable i also always use the same paint color on every rental that i have you know i picked antique white now why did i pick antique white well i didn't want to pick basic white and antique white was only one of the two colors that that home depot carries in a five gallon bucket all the time pre-mixed if you go down there right now to home depot of my neighborhood i can get a speed wall by glidden antique white five gallons already pre-mixed now why do i like the pre-mixed because it's going to be more consistent if you want to go with taupe or gray or some other color every time you wanted to get that paint you would have to go in and have it mixed and you have to buy what's called a tent base and you can buy a five gallon tent base but you've got to take it up to the counter find the paint color they've got to put it in their machine they've got to mix it and you've got to hope that it's going to mix to match like the other if you've already painted it that color before makes it match because if it doesn't you're gonna have two different colors or two different shades and you're gonna have a hard time blending it i found it's better to buy the pre-mixed antique white it's already mixed at the factory and you just and it's easier i don't have to wait for them to mix it on to wait in line or anything i just go grab it off the shelf throw it on the cart take it and go and buying it in five gallons at a time is much cheaper now on my lower uh and middle income properties i'm gonna paint everything the same color and i mean everything i'm gonna paint the ceilings the trim the the doors everything gets antique white i i don't care i just painted everything antique white i don't have to worry if i bump the ceiling with a roller it's going to be painted in the same color anyway typically if you get into a higher end home i'll you know i may play the trim like a bright white and then paint something different but i don't do that very often most of my homes are low to middle income and if you want to decorate the house let them put pictures up and things like that i don't really worry about you know it not being kind of bland and kind of sterile looking i'm just trying to make it easy for me to do and make it quick for me to get in there and paint it and re-rent it and when you paint it it just makes it look fresher and cleaner and but i go with the antique white they also do pre-mixed just a solid white i think the antique white's a little bit better especially if you get a tent that smokes because it tends to make the walls a little bit dingy anyway and you can get away a little bit longer sometimes between paintings if you've got a little a little bit of that yellowish off-white tent to it uh if you got a smoker in there but most of the time if i can get away with you know not having to repaint a house i'll go in and just touch up the spots that i need to touch up try to clean where i can and then let it roll so you know i don't want to do any more painting than i have to damage to your walls now most of the time when your walls get damaged we usually end up with some kind of hole knocked in the wall typically it's one of two things it's either when they are moving furniture in or out they end up knocking something into the wall because it's big and bulky they they you know bounce it into the wall and then knock a hole in the wall or uh more commonly it's a doorknob and we find that nine out of 10 times that doorknob hits the wall and and knocks a hole in the wall because the door stop it is broken or bent and so we we started out using these little cheap you know 50 cent door stops that go on uh go on the baseboard and they they just don't work for very well especially if you get the little springy ones um also the little just a side note the little springy ones that have a little white cap on them those are not child proof that little cap will come off and kids can put it in their mouth so i stay away from those the solid ones are a little bit better and they have a cap on them but the cap is is is molded onto it and it doesn't snap off real easy one of the problems with the solid ones uh is that the the actual screw part that you put into the baseboard and the shaft that is the door stop are two pieces and um they're pressed together at the factory but they oftentimes if they're if someone walks by and kicks that door stop or runs into it they will pop apart and you can put it back together but then once it's been popped apart it tends to pop back off and that becomes a big issue so what we've gone to using is a dome or i call it a half moon kind of uh door stop and it's also a wall protector it goes high up on the wall where the door knob is and they have they come usually in a two pack and they've got a little bit of a little peeling stick you peel it off and you stick it to the wall and some walls depend on the texture it may not want to stick real well but if it if you have any problems with adhesive you can actually take the dome off of it and put a screw through it and then put the dome back on the dome and the back are two different two separate pieces and it kind of comes apart but those work really well they tend to keep the doorknob from getting you know bumped through the wall and that saved us a lot of headache and a lot of repairs on our drywall so something to make you know make sure when you walk through a house after it's been rented make sure that your doorstops are in place and and i would recommend using the dome ones at least on the high traffic doors like your front doors and things like that the ones get opened and closed a lot and those tend to get slammed into the wall more often than the other doors throughout the house okay let's talk about flooring over the last 20 years there have been many advances in flooring and we've tried most of them we've done the click lock and we've laminate and we've done commercial grade carpet we've done the no glue linoleums we've we've tried the vinyl plank flooring and there's the best one that we've found so far is the vinyl plank flooring and what i really love about vinyl plank flooring is that it is waterproof it is durable it and you can get it in flexible or rigid variety the ridgid is a click lock design and it snaps together and you can get the flexible which uses an adhesive edge to to tie together we use the flexible because a lot of our properties have rolling floors because they're older homes and things like that and that makes it a little easier to install over an uneven floor surface also it just it's just easier to install overall because it can be cut with a razor knife and you can get down on the floor you can measure it cut it and just snap it to break if you go with the rigid plank which we've used that as well you have to measure it get up and go to the saw and cut it and then come back and snap your plank in so there's a lot more time running back and forth with the saw and that that really greatly extends the installation time but vinyl plank flooring works really well it's a much better option than carpet it doesn't hold odors and it doesn't stain and it doesn't have those problems that carpet has and carpets a little more expensive to install because you have the pad and you have to have the tack strips and all that other stuff this is easy to install and it can be done by you you can install it yourself even if you've never done floors before it's pretty simple it doesn't take long to get a hang of and by the way the flexible plank is also a little more economical than the rigid blank it's usually about a you know 50 cents to a dollar or less per square foot so that's another reason why we like the the flexible plank vinyl flooring good durable stuff we've been putting it in for several years now and it's held up really well so we'll probably continue to use that going forward if you need to replace cabinets i would stay away from particle board particle board cabinets will not do well if they get wet and inevitably they will get wet something will happen either people will you know most of our tenants end up washing dishes by hand and they'll put dishes up that aren't dry and they're still wet and that'll get in the inside there and it'll cause that particle board to bubble up or if you have a sink there and the the sink starts leaking underneath it drips water it's going to swell up particle board just does not work well you want to get the plywood construction cabinets with the real wood fronts those are the best ones they're a little bit more expensive but they're going to hold up better over time and they're much more durable and if you have the real wood on the fronts don't get the laminate stuff like you can get them in white sometimes and that's a laminate that's been glued on problem is that if it peels off or somebody chips the edge of it it looks horrible and there's not much you can do about it if you get a real wood front if they scratch it or mess it up you can actually sand it and refinish them and that or paint them that's another option but if you get the stick on laminate fronts on them it's just you can't do anything with them if they get damaged so stick with the real wood fronts and the and the plywood construction on cabinetry and i usually buy the ones that are disassembled they come flat in a box and you you it makes them easier to haul for one thing you can put them all in a pickup truck take them to the site then you take them out of the box and just install them after you put them together appliances let's talk about those for a minute we typically only supply our tenants with a refrigerator and a stove we don't do dishwashers we don't do all the other stuff so we don't do microwaves or anything like that basic you know stove and refrigerator in the past i bought a used flat top you know glass flat top stove at one point and didn't last very long uh someone dropped a pan on it and cracked the whole thing and i ended up having to trash it because it was going to cost more to fix than it was worth so we try we do buy used appliances from time to time there's a dealer here that that buys them he buys the returns and scratching dents and stuff from lowe's and home depot places like that a lot of times we'll go look and see what they have if they've got a dent on the side or something that's going to be up against the cabinet nobody's going to see it a lot of times we'll buy those scratching dents and save the money if we buy new we'll go to home depot or lowe's and buy a basic refrigerator or stove we'll always buy white there again back to we can always get white it's a standard color and we only buy on a refrigerator we buy it over and under is what they call it it's got the freezer on top refrigerator on bottom we do not do ice makers we found that ice makers tend to have a lot of problems with leaks with the the lines coming up under the you know out of the floor or whatever if you get a leak or spring a leak behind there it can damage the floor cause all kinds of problems uh plus if the ice makers sometimes they break or they don't stop working and people are rough on them so we just quit doing ice makers that way we don't have to worry about the leaking issue and we don't have to worry about replacing or fixing ice makers on the refrigerators we also look for uh there's some options that you can get for like ten dollars more you can go from the wire shelves to the glass shelves and you think well the glass shelves are probably more likely to get broken we've not had that problem with the shelves getting broken but if you get the the graded wire shelves they tend to get if you spill something it gets all the way down in the bottom because it goes right through the shelves and it gets all on the bottom of it just gets nasty so if you get a glass shelf it contains spills you just wipe them out it's a lot easier to clean so i like the glass shelves they're about ten dollars more and it really they they're probably worth the extra money on those and we try to do a 17 cubic foot or bigger refrigerator um that's a reasonable price usually we end up paying around 400 for a brand new one and that's a pretty good size for a two or three bedroom house uh if you get anything smaller than that you can get some that are you know they'll be cheaper in price but they're you know when you got a family it's hard to put a lot of stuff in a you know 14 15 cubic foot refrigerator you need at least a 17 cubic foot refrigerator so we get that um and we try to stay pretty basic like i said on it no no fancy icing water through the door or anything like that it's going to be a basic refrigerator the same thing on the stove we go with a basic refrig stove with the regular standard eyes on the top and it may be a clock timer but we don't get into all the fancy push buttons and all that uh all the fancy stuff that comes on some it's no glass tops none of that stuff anymore so it's it's pretty basic let's talk about doors when we replace the door if it's an entry door on the front of the house or the back of the house we use a six panel metal door typically with no windows or anything just a solid door and those are the least expensive pre-hung and on the interior we do the same thing a six panel door that's a hollow core now depending on what we're doing on the inside sometimes if the door jambs in good shape and somebody's like knocked a hole into the door or something like that sometimes we'll do what's called a slab replacement where you can buy those at home depot you can just buy just the door itself it won't have any holes or any hinge cut out some as well you can buy it for about four or five dollars extra you can buy the door knob hole already pre-cut pre-drilled but it won't have the hinge things because you won't know how they line up until you get to your door frame but you'll have to route out the hinges now that is a little easier to replace than replacing the whole frame and doing a pre-hung typically if we're the whole door frame and everything's busted out we'll just tear the whole door out and put a new pre-hun door in but six panels have always been pretty or for the last 20 years or so have been pretty standard and are kind of the classic door to use right now so i think it's going to be in style for a while and so that's what we're going to stick with is a basic six panel door throughout the house on the front doors and on the interior doors now if you want to go with something a little more fancy on the front door and get like a half light or a fan light you can do that it's just going to cost you a little bit more money and you have the risk of somebody breaking the glass when it comes to lock sets and here's a real time saver when we i figured this out several years ago if you have multiple units and when you start getting a lot of units you lock sets will drive you nuts because you're going to go out and you're going to buy a lock set and every time you have somebody move out you're going to have to re-change the lock sets to re-key it and you end up with tubs full of i would have these big plastic tubs full of lock sets and i would take painters tape and write the date and what address and all that and stick them on there so i so i know which house it came out of and when the last time that lock was used that was kind of my system i found out a few years ago that kwikset makes a lock system called the smart key system now these lock sets you know you can buy we usually put a door knob and a deadbolt in and they come in a combo what they call a combo pack and you can buy a cheap combo pack for about 20 bucks these cost about 50 50 or like 49.95 or something like that the smart key system not only it's a little more expensive but it's a much nicer lock set it's a much heavier duty lock set you can actually pick up the lock set and it weighs more the actual knob is not hollow it's like a solid you can feel it it's real solid uh construction the the deadbolt is a little bit heavier duty and the uh the actual strike plates are a little bit nicer so you're paying a little bit more for that set but you get this feature called the smart key system which you take the original key a little tool and a new key and in about 10 seconds you can re-key that lock now what's great about that is if you've got entries on the front and the back and maybe the side of the house you might have three different entry doors on the house you can just pick up three sets grab a new key and you can go through and key all those locks the front door the side door the back door doesn't matter all three of them you can key them to the same key and that makes it really really easy to do and if someone moves out or they and i've had this happen many times they lose a key or they have a roommate or something that moves out and they want they call you and say hey can i re-key my lock instead of you coming out and re actually removing the old lock set and put a different lock set in you just go over there with your little tool you take their key you put it in there you turn it a quarter turn put the tool in pull the old key out put a new key in turn it back and forth and you've just rekeyed the lock it's that simple and so we use keep quick sets on all our rental properties we can we can turn them around really quickly if we need to uh to go and re-key something or even if we're in between tenants a lot of times i'll re-key it to a different key um just to let vendors come in to you know if we want to hire somebody to come in and do painting or something you can re-key the lock and give them a key and then when they're done you can re-key it back to another lock so it just allows you a lot of flexibility uh with lock sets and you don't have to save all these lock sets and keep them in the in tubs and i mean you don't have to worry about that all you have to do is keep up with keys and not lock sets which is a great time saving and another thing that you can do is and i'll get let you in on this little secret is if you've got 20 or 30 properties you could probably key some of those to the same key just make sure they're not close by and they don't know it if the tenants don't know it it doesn't matter you know if you've got a house on one side of town and a house on the other side of town and those people don't know each other and they don't know you own both those houses and you can both to the same walk nobody's going to know but you so think about that for a minute but anyway i would not do that in a multi-family like an apartment complex you don't want to put people in the same building that are going to have the same key but they're different addresses and they don't even know about each other i think you're okay there so there you have it those are my tips for how to tenant proof your rental properties this has come from years of experience doing this so i hope you find it useful and helpful and i hope it'll save you time and money too if you follow these tips if you want more information on some of the products i spoke of today i'm going to put links in the description below and if there's something i didn't cover and you'd like for me to cover it put a comment in the comment section and i'll try to respond back to you on that thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video please press the like button and if you'd like to see more subscribe to our channel don't forget to hit the bell for notifications so you know when we release new videos and if you'd like more information on real estate investing go to retirerichwithrealestate.com until next time i'm paul price teaching you how to retire rich with real estate

Channel: Retire Rich with Real Estate

Views: 7,889

Rating: 4.9481864 out of 5

Keywords: real estate, investing, rich, wealth, wealthy, money, freedom, financial freedom, millionaire, million dollars, tenant proofing property, tenant proof, tenant proof your rentals, smartkey, doorstops, best materials for rentals, real estate investing, passive income, best appliances for rental property, best paint for rental walls, best paint for rental house, how to choose paint for rental, best flooring for rentals, best flooring for rental property, best cabinets for rental property

Id: MOctvoTgtzs

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020