What happens when a resident decides to move out?

There are many steps to nail when getting started with real estate investing, some of which are: which market and home to buy, how to obtain financing, how to fix up the home, and finally, how to place a resident and begin management.  When I purchased my first rental home, I wanted to minimize the learning curve by efficiently knocking off as many of the above as possible.  Though there weren’t many of these available, one hack at the time was to find a home that was already rented as that would give me certainty on the resident as well as not having to worry about renovations for the home.  Unfortunately, within a couple weeks of buying the home, my resident gave notice and I had to scramble to learn how to manage a turnover.

At Doorvest, we believe resident happiness has a direct correlation on length of residency and approach this by being proactive with requests as well as “surprise and delights”.  That said, life events such as a new job across town and welcoming a newborn can cause resident turnover.  One important point to highlight is, unlike Doorvest, many management companies are heavily incentivized to encourage high resident turnover due to placement fees and maintenance markups, both of which Doorvest never charges.

Here’s our three step approach to handling resident turnovers:

Take account of home

Nearly all resident turnovers will require a number of items to be repaired before a new resident is able to move-in.  In this process, it’s important to strike a fine balance between minimizing expenses while also preparing a home that the next resident is excited to be moving into.

At Doorvest, we’ll go through a 160-point checklist that spans everything from the functionality of lights throughout the home to potential safety hazards.

With this list in mind, we’ll be ready to move onto the next step: repairs and updates.

Repairs and updates

With the entire list compiled, the next step is to break the list into three categories: 1) must complete 2) upgrades and 3) unnecessary.

The first and third categories are self-explanatory with the “upgrades” category being the judgement calls.  Here, we’ll decide with a cost-benefit analysis on potential upgrades that can payoff over the long-term.  Again, the objective is to delight our future resident by preparing their home in a way they’ll be excited and proud to be moving into.

Once the home is prepared, it’s time for resident marketing and placement.

Resident placement

Once the home looks great, it’s time for marketing.  We’ll go through and take professional photos of the home and list on all applicable rental websites.  The objective here isn’t to sell the resident on the home immediately but instead to drive traffic to the home where we’re able to highlight the qualities of this specific home.

Once we’ve narrowed down potential residents, it’s time to screen to ensure viability.  All Doorvest residents are vigorously underwritten within federal housing laws for factors such as income and background.

As soon as we’re able to find a qualified resident, the final step is completing the lease and collecting the rents and applicable move-in costs!  The cycle of working hard to delight the resident then begins again.

At Doorvest, we believe in triple wins that begins with resident happiness that leads to happy owners which ultimately leads to a successful business for us.