You might be wondering should I offer my rental property fully furnished for a long-term tenant or should it be empty when I'm looking for a long-term tenant? This is Eric Wetherington with New Heights Property Management. The answer to the question really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If you are looking to turn your rental property into a corporate rental where all the furnishings are provided, you can include electricity, water, cable, phone all of the different utilities and everything is in one inclusive monthly price - Then a furnished rental might make sense for you. But in all other circumstances it just doesn't make sense to have a rental property that has furniture left in it. It is very difficult to assess accurately what the condition of those furnishings are and then try to determine if any damage has been done to that furniture or if just normal wear and tear has caused the rip in the pillow or caused the couch to be worn down a little bit more or is it normal that a chair might have a scratch on it after a year or two or three years of a tenant living in the property.
So we highly recommend for long term rental properties that they be rented with all the owner's property removed from that property. And if an owner decides they're going to leave some curtains or leave a piece of furniture we will tell that owner look don't expect to get those curtains back or don't expect to get that furniture back. Just anticipate that it won't be there because in most cases the tenant’s going to have different decorating taste. They're not going to want that piece of furniture that you think you might be leaving to help them and its just going to get in their way and they're going to need to move it so that they can have quiet enjoyment and reasonable enjoyment and use of the property that you've rented to them.
Hope that information is helpful to you. Reach out to us here at New Heights Property Management if we can ever be of service.