RENTAL HOME YARDCARE - INCLUDING LANDSCAPING IN THE RENT
Including yard care in the rent? You must be kidding? Rental homes are already expensive enough!
Well, I am not kidding. I do feel like I have a valid argument for why including yard care is an important service for your potential clients.
We include routine yard care for all our homes. This includes mowing, trimming, edging, blowing, and such. Including yard care in the rent has several benefits for both the client and for the homeowner.
Primarily, by including yard care, you ensure your property's landscaping is well taken care of. You ensure that the neighborhood says attractive and help your property values continue to rise. You prevent drawing attention to the fact that the home is a rental property because it is continually manicured as if a homeowner was invested in the home. All of these things help improve the neighborhood, deter crime, and hopefully will add to your property value over time.
Additionally, your clients are renting a home from you. Clients that rent homes are more likely to be moving more frequently, have recently changed jobs, and are in a state of transition. Many of them do not own yard equipment. Often, potential clients will turn away from a single family home because they do not want the hassle of yard work. You do not want to lose potential clients to an apartment or condo simply because they cannot or do not want to perform yard care.
Yard care is more reasonably priced than you might think. We have several homes and our yard care professionals discount their work because we give them several homes to care for. Additionally, depending on your climate and location, it might not be something that has to be done year round. We service our southern NC homes twice a week from about March through October. We usually include a leaf blowing, gutter cleaning, and hedge trimming in there as well.
Finally, if you have someone staying on top of your landscaping, you will avoid the negative connotations of having to bother your clients to keep up with the yard. Negative interactions as a whole are bad for your relationship with your clients. You will also ensure that there are minimal costly "whole yard" landscaping renovations once your client moves on. This can often add up to more than the landscaping over the course of the season would have amounted too. Even if it means an adjustment in your asking price, landscaping will be a huge benefit to the client and to you.
Clients love it when landscaping is included in the rent. Often, they cannot believe it when I let them know. I think it is important to think about what makes life a little nicer for your client. Landscaping care not only improves their quality of life, but it will improve your stress and neighborhood appeal as well.
- Casey