by Mark Tarses
Nobody wants an 'open concept bathroom', no matter how many fashion magazines say otherwise. An open concept bathroom is a bathroom with no door between the the bathroom and the bedroom or the living room or just a clear glass wall between them. Queen Victoria used to like to watch Prince Albert shave, but nobody wants to watch you sit on the toilet.
Your building will not look elegant with fake balconies. Fake balconies are sometimes needed for safety reasons, like keeping people from opening French doors and just falling out, but if they serve no purpose, fake balconies won't impress anybody
Everyone wants a broom closet or cabinet. A lot of apartments have no place to put a broom, a vacuum cleaner, or an ironing board, or anything else that is tall. I have seen a lot of apartments where the landlord was apparently under the impression that tenants do not own brooms. Well, I have news for you. Tenants do own brooms, and they want a place to put them!
Never put a ceiling light fixture in apartment that has a glass cover that the tenants have to remove to change a light bulb. That is just asking for trouble. Never put light fixtures in a rental that use odd size or odd type light bulbs, such as light fixtures that require halogen or candelabra size light bulbs.
Never put a compact stacked washer and dryer in an apartment unless you absolutely have to. A GE compact washer/dryer is 24" wide. A full-size GE stacked washer/dryer is 27" wide. Even though it is only 3" wider, the full-size washing machine is 70% bigger inside. (3.9 cubic feet vs. 2.3 cubic feet) The compact and the full-size machines cost about the same. It is annoying to tenants to have to wash their bed's top sheet in one load and the bottom sheet in a second load and have to take their blanket to a laundromat.
Low showerheads seem funny to some people but not to tall people. They are very annoying to tall people. You can usually solve this problem by just adding a $20 'S' shaped showerhead extender. The next time you get a vacancy, ask yourself if a 6' tall man could take a shower without bending his knees. Don't ignore little things that are annoying your tenants. Some of the biggest fights between tenants and their landlords start off that way.
Only buy shower curtains with grommets on them.
When adding or remodeling a bathroom in a rental, always go for a bathtub with shower rather than a shower alone if you have the room for a 5' bathtub. A lot of people prefer taking a bath to a shower, and even people who shower every day occasionally like to take a bath.
Don't live in the past. A lot of landlords are old - like me - and think about what tenants wanted 20 or 30 years ago. Nobody wants shag carpet, porcelain kitchen sinks, cottage cheese ceilings, or drapes anymore.
Never plant lemon trees on your property. They look beautiful at a distance when they are full of ripe lemons, but the branches are covered with sharp spikes. Lime, plum, and some orange trees have spikes too. And when the ripe fruit falls on the ground, who is going to pick it up? Rats love plums and citrus fruit.
