After 292 page views on Rentclicks and 3 showings, our property manager got our last preconstruction house rented.  And for top dollar!  (see prior posts on our rental ad and our good management).  There was one other home of the same floor plan in our neighborhood for rent also.  Ours was listed for $1200, that one was listed for $1195.  There are other floor plans renting for as low as $900.  Our twin has been for rent for a longer period of time and it still sits empty!  Our property manager has been in both and tells us that for $5 more per month, there is no comparison due to the painting we did inside and the upgrades we chose.

This goes to substantiate my continued belief that it pays to put in the upgrades.  So many of the investor homes I’ve seen have linoleum floors, cheap oak cabinetry, plain laminate countertops, and just a general lack of thought put into the options.  Many investors don’t upgrade hardly at all, and arbitrarily choose colors over the phone without even seeing what it will look like.  For the extra time that we spent choosing colors at the design center, we spent about $300 on our own to paint the inside and upgrade the lighting and ceiling fans, we maybe spent $10k to $15k more than most would and a full weekend painting.  When you amortize that out and figure the monthly cost of that into the pay option ARM loans that we get, it’s almost nothing.  While that other house sits vacant yet another month, the $1195 that he’s missing out on could well total our annual costs to cover all of our upgrades and then some.

Something else about this house that’s working out beautifully is our re-fi strategy.  We started the re-fi process before we made our first payment.  Our mortgage broker is helping us time it so that we get to skip a month before making our first payment with the new loan, so essentially we will have the house 3 months before making a payment.  And, we’re getting about $2,000 back at closing, so that will be enough to cover what we spent on buying the refrigerator and the rock for the backyard.  The renter will be paying rent before our first payment is due, so our payments will be covered right from the get-go and we’ll basically only be out of pocket the initial 5% we put down, plus $700 we spent on the blinds.  The only other thing I anticipate might come up is the garage door opener.  There isn’t one and the renter will probably want one.  We haven’t decided if we’ll agree to pay for it or not.  I’ll probably just wait to see if the renter asks for a garage door opener or if he asks if it’s ok if he installs one.  Maybe we’ll get lucky.