Home Staging And Furnishing A Rental Property

The latest project that has had all my attention, as mentioned in my last blog post, has been to get my rental property an inner city apartment rented out.

The rental market in Perth has not been good for landlords and vacancy rates have hit a 20 year high. I discovered this when my rental was vacant for the last 3 months! Admittedly, that time included the break I had for the wedding and honeymoon. But still, when you compare it to 3 years ago when I had applications flying in and tenants offering more than the asking price to secure the place, it really has been a big change. 

Well, now the opposite has occurred, the rent prices have come down and there is over 5% of vacancies. Add to this the location of my property in East Perth where there are a lot of new developments, so tenants are going for the newer builds rather than the older complexes like mine.

I knew I had to do something to make the property more appealing to tenants because walking into an empty space not everyone can use their imagination and envisage what it would look like with a comfy couch, feature rug and modern art on the walls. Plus a lot of the potential tenants were students and travellers and wanted it already furnished so as the saying goes you need to cater for the market.

So I set myself a budget after working out how long it would take to recoup the money spent and got busy on Gumtree sourcing modern and stylish furniture and whitegoods suitable for apartment living. While most items I got were second hand, I went for quality brands and nearly new items, some of them were ex-display furniture used to stage homes for sale so they were in perfect near new condition.

All the accessories came from Kmart they are so on trend with their designs and inexpensive so it was worthwhile adding some decor items to really add personality to the rooms. Most of the artwork was also from Kmart with a few artworks from Target too.

The coffee table and side table were from Kmart's industrial range and I just love them I want them for my place! The rug had to be a real feature and statement piece and this was the only real splurge item but I scored it for half price so that made it ok - it's from Rugs A Million. 

We did a lot of upgrades too, touch up painting with some of the bedrooms getting a complete paint job, installed all new fittings in the bathroom and toilets, changed all the taps and shower head, we even replaced the old oven with a shiny new one. 

All these little details gave a new lease of life to the place and for a minor investment it really did give a big result.

Once it was furnished and decorated I took some photos and put a new ad up on Gumtree (free advertising!) and after just 4 days and 2 home opens/viewings I found new tenants.

I really do believe that with it furnished it was so much more appealing and everyone that came through said they wanted to live there compared to the way they reacted to the empty space before ... they couldn't get out of there fast enough!

A big selling point for this place is the facilities - it has a swimming pool, spa, sauna and gym.

When you walk out onto the balcony and look down onto the tropical gardens and swimming pool beckoning on a hot sunny day you can't help but want to sit out here with a drink and relax and take it all in. 

So how much did it cost? 

To stage a similar property, that's renting everything for about 6 weeks not purchasing it, will cost upwards of $4,000.

I spent less than $2,500 for the furniture, whitegoods, accessories and art for this 3 bedroom apartment and the best part is as I purchased everything instead of rented it I can always sell and recoup some of the money back down the track if I need to.

I really loved staging and styling the property and I would love to do this kind of thing for a living!

What are your thoughts on staging a property for sale or rent?

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[All images my own]