What is Move-In Ready

My name is Tia Vincent and I'm the broker and owner of Roundtable Property Management. I absolutely love when an owner calls and tells me that the home is move in ready or when I see an advertisement that says move in ready is the tag line. And I think it's hilarious because assuming that if you are going to be moving into this home, they should all be move and ready. 

So what is move in ready? What does that look like?

• First, we want the home to be professionally cleaned. A lot of times homeowners, when they're turning over property, they want to try to clean it themselves. I don't recommend this. Our cleaners are typically between 200 and 300 dollars to clean the whole home. They're going to clean inside the appliances, pull them out. They're going to do the blinds behind the toilet. The ceiling fans, they're going to clean all of the areas that you're going to forget or you're just not going to want to do. On top of that, we need that piece of paper that says, look, I paid for professional cleaner because when the tenant moves out and they don't have it professionally cleaned and we'll send our people to clean it at that time, they go, well, it wasn't professionally cleaned when I moved in. And you can show them that piece of paper that says, yes, it was. So we like to have the home professionally cleaned with that cleaning. We also want to have the carpets professionally cleaned, with the one exception that if the house has brand new carpet, obviously we don't need to have a cleaned because we have the receipt from the install. But we do want to have the carpet professionally cleaned for the exact same reason when the tenant moves out. They need to have it professionally cleaned again. And we need to be able to prove that it was like that when they moved in. 
• We re-key all of our properties between every single tenant. The previous tenant, the one that's moving out, they pay for the new keys for the new tenant through their security deposit. But at Take-Over, when the owner gives us the property to manage right before the tenant moves out, we do send the locksmith and that charge is put off to the homeowner. 
• Let's talk about interior conditions. So we want walls to be absolutely nail free. We don't want any holes or nails in the walls and this is because we tell the tenants they're not allowed to put nails holes. And when they do and they move out, we're gonna send someone to patch and paint. If you leave 10 nail holes and they put 10 nail holes in, the next person does the same by five years down the road the home is littered with no holes. So we like nice fresh canvas on our walls. 
• We also want to make sure that the AC filters are clean, that all of the light bulbs are working and we're in good condition. And we want to make sure that all the smoke alarm batteries are in good condition. We don't have any of that beeping that you have questions about what is move in ready or if there is an item in your home that you think you might need to get fixed before a tenant moves in. 

Feel free to give us a call or we can discuss it. My name is Tia Vincent and on the broker and owner of Roundtable Property Management.