Rental turnover repairs

Rental turnover repairs between tenants, done in the gap rather than around a move in date. Two doors rekeyed, four drywall patches, touch up paint in two rooms, caulk renewed in the bathroom and kitchen, three fixtures checked and the dryer vent cleared. One visit, one crew, and a unit that shows properly instead of showing its last tenant.

Every week a unit sits empty is rent you do not collect, so the value here is speed as much as quality. We schedule these tight against the vacancy, work through the whole list in a single day where the unit allows it, and leave you photographs of the finished rooms for the listing.

What the turnover covers

• Two exterior doors rekeyed, with new keys cut and the old set retired
• Four drywall patches, sanded, primed and blended into the surrounding wall
• Touch up paint across two rooms, matched to what is already on the wall
• Caulk renewed at the tub, shower, sinks and countertop joints
• Three fixture checks, plus the dryer vent cleared to the exterior hood

That list came out of the work our crews actually get asked for at turnover, not out of a brochure. The four items landlords raise first are keys, walls, smells and anything that drips. The package covers all four, and anything beyond it gets quoted before we start rather than added to an invoice afterwards.

Rekeying rather than replacing

Replacing a lockset because a tenant moved out is money spent on hardware that was working fine. Rekeying changes the pins inside the existing cylinder, which takes minutes per door and gives you the same security for a fraction of the cost. It also lets you keep matched hardware across a building instead of ending up with four different finishes on four doors.

Where a lock is genuinely worn, sticking or has been forced, we say so and replace it. Multi unit owners often ask us to key a building so one master opens every unit, which is worth planning once rather than sorting out door by door over several years.

Patches that disappear

The tell on a bad patch is not the hole, it is the halo. A patch that has been mudded but not feathered, or primed with the wrong sheen, catches light across the wall and announces itself from the doorway. Our crews feather wide, prime the repair, and match the existing sheen so the wall reads as a wall.

Older buildings complicate it. Plaster over lath does not patch like drywall and it does not like being treated as if it does, which is why we handle it differently and why our notes on plaster repair are worth reading if your building predates the war. Larger wall work, including whole rooms, sits with our drywall crews instead.

Touch up paint, and when touch up stops working

Touch up works when the existing paint is in good condition, the color is known and the wall has not been scrubbed to a different sheen in patches. Two rooms is the package, usually the ones that take the most abuse. We keep the leftover from the last repaint where you have it, and match from a sample where you do not.

When a wall has three generations of touch up on it in slightly different whites, the honest answer is that the room wants repainting rather than patching. We will tell you which rooms are in that condition and price them, because a spotted wall costs you more in showings than a repaint costs to do. Color choices that hold up in rentals are covered in our notes on paint colors for Michigan homes.

Smoke is the exception to everything above. A unit that has been smoked in needs sealing primer before any finish coat, and touch up will not hold. We say that up front rather than painting twice.

Caulk, fixtures and the things that get flagged

Bathroom caulk that has gone black is the single most common complaint in a showing, and it is almost always a surface problem rather than a hidden one. We cut the old material out, clean the joint properly and lay new sealant rather than running a bead over the top, which is the shortcut that makes it fail again in four months.

Fixture checks cover the three most likely to have been abused. A toilet that rocks, a faucet that drips, a shower diverter that no longer diverts. Small parts get replaced during the visit. Anything at the supply valve or behind the wall gets flagged, and where a unit needs the full treatment we point at the water damage prevention package, which replaces the valves and hoses properly.

Fixture replacement beyond a like for like swap is bathroom fixture work and gets its own quote. Kitchens follow the same pattern, with the sink rim and the backsplash joint being the two places water gets behind something it should not.

Safety items worth doing in the same window

The vacancy between tenants is the only time nobody is inconvenienced by a crew going room to room, which makes it the right moment for the safety sweep. Detectors, extinguisher mounting and ground fault outlets all belong to the fire and carbon monoxide package, and the written placement record it produces is the document that matters if anything is ever questioned.

We do not represent any package as satisfying a particular municipal rental inspection, because requirements differ across the six counties and change without much notice. What we provide is working, in date equipment and a record of where it went. The general code picture for owners is set out in our building code guide.

Units that sit empty through a heating season need more than a turnover visit. Closing the water down properly and having somebody walk the building matters more than paint does, and that is covered under the monthly vacant property check.

Where the rental stock is, and what it needs

Student rentals around Ypsilanti turn over on a calendar everybody in the trade knows, which means August is crowded and June is not. Booking early is the whole game there. Houses near campus in Ann Arbor tend to be older stock with plaster, original trim and doors that have been rekeyed a dozen times.

Single family rentals in Westland, Taylor and Wayne are usually postwar ranches where the drywall patches and the dryer vent matter more than the plaster question. We adjust the day to the building. Owners with units spread across Wayne County can book several in sequence, and the full town list sits on our service area page.

Owners adding units rather than turning them

Plenty of our turnover clients are also thinking about adding a unit rather than only maintaining the ones they have. A basement rental unit is the most common version in this market, and the questions that decide whether it is feasible are ceiling height, egress and a separate entrance rather than finishes.

The wider accessory dwelling picture, including what municipalities across the region currently allow, is covered in our guide to accessory dwelling units. That is design and build work with permits and drawings behind it, and it runs on a different calendar from a turnover visit.

Wear against damage, and the deposit conversation

Owners often ask us to say which items are ordinary wear and which are damage. We will describe what we find in plain terms and photograph it, and that is as far as we go, because the legal line between the two is a question for your attorney rather than your contractor. What a photo record does give you is something concrete to point at.

In practice the argument is rarely about walls. It is about a countertop with a scorch mark, a door with a foot sized hole in it, or carpet that has gone past cleaning. Those are the items worth documenting on the day rather than reconstructing from memory three weeks later.

Interior doors are the repair most people do not realize is a repair. A hollow core door with a hole in it cannot be patched convincingly and wants replacing, but the jamb, the hinges and the strike usually survive, so the cost is the slab and an hour of hanging it. We carry common sizes and can handle it during the same visit when you flag it in advance.

Floors, blinds and the unglamorous list

Window coverings are the item that gets skipped and then costs a showing. Broken slats and a blind that hangs crooked read as neglect from the street side of a room, and replacing them is cheap and fast. We will hang what you supply, or source standard sizes if you would rather not chase them yourself.

Flooring transitions come next. A loose threshold strip between rooms is a trip hazard and the sort of detail that makes a unit feel tired. Refastening those takes minutes. Where a floor has real damage, vinyl plank can often be replaced a plank at a time without redoing the room, which is one of the few genuinely good things about the material.

Carpet is different, since spot repair rarely reads well and a cleaner is usually the right first call rather than a contractor. If the carpet is at the end of its life, replacing it is worth pricing against hard surface flooring, which lasts through more tenancies and cleans up between them. That comparison sits with our flooring notes, written for basements but applicable to any rental.

The smell test, and why it decides showings

Prospective tenants make up their minds in the first ten seconds, and most of that decision is made by the nose rather than the eye. A unit that smells of the last tenant will not rent at the price a clean one does, however good the patching is. The sources are predictable, and almost all of them are fixable in the same visit.

Dry floor drains and dry traps in unused fixtures let sewer gas back into a room, and a cup of water down each one solves it. A dryer vent clogged with lint holds a warm damp smell that people read as mold. A bathroom fan that has stopped moving air leaves the room humid for hours after every shower, and that is what eventually stains a ceiling. We check all three.

The one that genuinely needs a specialist is an odor that returns after cleaning, especially in a unit where pets lived. Subfloor contamination is not a paint problem and sealing over it only buys weeks. When that is what we find, we say so rather than putting a coat of primer on a problem that will outlast the next lease.

Scheduling a run of units

Owners with a portfolio get more out of this by batching. Three units in the same week means one mobilization, one paint mixing session and one trip to cut keys, and our scheduling reflects that. It also means the crew learns the building, which shows up in the second and third units as faster work rather than repeated discovery.

Seasonally, the quiet window for this work in Southeast Michigan runs from late autumn into February, outside the summer lease churn. If your leases turn in August, book the work in spring for the same crew and the same calendar slot rather than competing with every other owner in the county for the last two weeks of the month.

For an owner living out of state, we will do the walk, send photographs with notes, and get written approval on anything outside the package before the crew touches it. Nothing gets added to an invoice on the basis of a phone call and a good intention.

Buildings where the units are similar benefit from one more thing worth mentioning. Once we have matched the paint and recorded the hardware finish for one unit, every future turnover in that building is faster and cheaper, because the matching work is already done and written down.

What to have ready

• Confirmation the unit is empty, including the garage and any storage
• Paint records or leftover cans if you have them, which speeds matching
• How many keys you need cut and who is collecting them
• Any tenant complaint log from the last year, which tells us where to look
• Parking for a work vehicle close to the entrance

That complaint log is more useful than an inspection walk. A tenant who mentioned a slow drain twice in November has told you something the eye will not catch in an empty unit, and half an hour spent reading those notes usually prevents a callback in the first month of the new lease.

Booking it

Turnover work sits on the repairs and service side of the company, which runs its own calendar precisely so a one day job does not queue behind a kitchen. For owners with several units, we can schedule a run rather than booking each one separately, and the way we run a project applies to the larger work if any of it turns into a renovation.

Work carries the coverage described in our workmanship warranty. Materials carry their own manufacturer terms. To see the standard our crews hold on full builds, View our Portfolio. When you have a vacancy date, contact us now for a free quote, or book a consultation if you want the unit walked first.