I've spent much of the past two weeks cleaning. Cleaning ovens, cleaning bathrooms and scrubbing floors on my hands and knees. A day's cleaning can be pretty physically demanding if the calorie count on my Apple Watch is anything to go by.
Whilst not exactly among the most glamorous of jobs you might envision for a real estate investor, it's good to get one's hands dirty from time to time. There's actually something pretty satisfying about a job well done. The kind of satisfaction that comes from seeing the fruits of one's physical labour in real time.
Inevitably, at the end of a long renovation project, there are loose ends that need to be tied up and finishing touches to be administered. Usually these tasks fall to me personally since it's more difficult to efficiently contract out lots of small and disparate tasks without investing a disproportionate amount of time and money.
It's not just at the margin that these tasks make a difference.
If you want to convert prospective leads into actual leasing applications then perfect turnkey is essential (a point which too many letting agents and landlords unfortunately seem to forget...). It would be a shame to spend several months and tens of thousands of pounds renovating a property or unit only to fall short on the finishing touches.
A perfectly finished, well designed and spotlessly clean property can certainly help to drive incremental monthly rent, producing cashflow which will flow in its entirety through to the bottom line. And never underestimate the difference that a bad choice of paint colour can have on a property's appeal.
Moreover, there's also something quite humbling in talking to an investor about new acquisitions in the morning and then putting on the marigolds for a few hours scrubbing toilets in the afternoon...
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