Cleaning Your Rental for Optimum Rentability

Rent-ready is the term we use in the property management business.  It means the property is ready for occupancy, but not deep cleaned.  You can deep clean it if you wish, but the new tenant is not expected to deep clean it when finished.  On more expensive homes, the level of cleanliness is higher than an expensive rental.  But, it doesn't have to be that way.

Owners can hire us to clean and rent-ready the property at, or a little less than, the going rate for such services.  We use state-of-the-art cleaning equipment including steam cleaners, expensive carpet extracters, spot cleaners, and top-notch cleaning chemicals from janitorial supply houses.

Mini-blinds have a useful life of 3-5 years.  After that, they sun fade, warp, get too dusty, break slats, break strings, and generally look pretty bad.  The faux wood slat blinds fare a little better, but cleaning them is tricky.  Regular drapes are a serious problem.  They are expensive to clean and usually are old.  It's best not to have regular draperies in a rental property.

Cleaning window sills and window tracks is easy with our portable steam cleaners.  Window cleaning is nice to do, but costly.  Cleaning the screens is nice, and should be done every few years.

Painting inside and out must be done to keep the property looking good.  We have in-house painting for property interiors, and sub-contract exterior work.

Carpet should be professionally cleaned with every move out.  If it's not done by the tenant, then it should be done by the owner.  If the tenant has been there for a year or more, the carpet cleaning is generally paid for by the owner.  We do our own carpet cleaning at a very attractive price for our owners.

Carpet and linoleum replacement should be done every 3-7 years, depending on wear and tear.  Some tenants are very hard on carpet and linoleum, others very easy.  It's not uncommon to have to recarpet after a bad tenant, but that's pretty rare.

We can always get a written bid to you for cleaning work for your authorization.  We find that owners like to be involved in decision making and like getting proposals in advance.

If your property is squeaky clean and ready for occupancy, it will rent much faster and to a much better tenant.  So, plan on a quality cleaning job before we start showing your property!

LoDo (Lower Downtown) Denver Luxury Loft For Lease - $3300/mo

1720 Wazee St., #5-A in LoDo (Lower Downtown Denver) rents for $3300 per month.  Key feature:  The livingroom glass walls slide back to open it up to the patio, resulting in an even larger living room and entertainment area.  The view is worthy of it's million dollar value.

High security building in the heart of LoDo.  Great views.  Ideal floorplan for entertaining.  Open floorplan, high ceilings.  Detailed information is available on our website: cityscapedenver.com 

SORRY, IT'S NO LONGER FOR RENT.  THIS FINE PROPERTY HAS BEEN LEASED OUT BY CITYSCAPE REAL ESTATE, LLC.

CityScape Internet Advertising Program for Rentals

We subscribe to HeroPm.com which is a web service for property managers.  HeroPm.com, formerly known as HomeRentals.net is a stand-alone advertiser, plus it acts as a portal for data entry into many other property management websites.  There are about 10 websites that immediately accept the data feed from HeroPm.com.  Those sites are: homerentals.net, cityscapedenver.com, Google.com, places4rent.com, RentalsIn.com, SnapRent.com, USAHomeRentals.com, VacancyList.com, RentProperty.com, NARPM.com, and HotPads.com.

Once we input a listing into our website, it is immediately broadcast onto these partner websites.  From those sites, other websites gather data from those sites.  So, this information makes it to a number of websites all with just one data feed from us.

There are additional fee-based sites that we use.  The fees for these sites is paid for by our owners, per the management agreement.  Owners direct us as to which fee-based sites they want us to use, or simply send us advertising funds and we decide for them.  Choices include: RentSpider.com, MyNewPlace.com, RentalHouses.com, and RentalHomePros.com.  Our favorite sites, are Rentals.com and HomeRentalsPlus.com.  We get a lot of leads from those two sites.  Both of those sites have partner sites as well.

For the biggest splash of all, RentMarketer.com takes the data feed from HeroPm.com and puts it on as many as 50 sites immediately.  There are several levels of involvement, including bunching up with other fee-based sites.

If you are an owner and want your property rented quickly, a monthly budget of $100-200 will get an amazing amount of exposure of your property to prospective tenants, most likely enough to get the property rented quickly.  If you want maximum exposure, then $200-300 per month will buy enough web exposure and local ads to attract prospective tenants even faster.

That may sound like a lot of money, but keep in mind that a property that rents for $1500 loses about $50 per day for every day that it sits vacant.  If you spent $200 on advertising, you only have to rent it 4 days sooner to recapture your $200 expenditure.  Likewise, spending $300 on advertising equates to 6 days rent.

In summary, if you want your property rented sooner, send us advertising money so we can place ads for your property.  We will send you a detailed summary of all fee-based advertising we do on your property.  Any funds left over in your advertising account that are not spent, can be returned to you.  We have the advertising choices put together in a "sushi" menu so it's easy for you to decide what level of advertising is best for you and your property.  We can email you the form, fax you the form, or send it by regular or priority mail.  You can pay us by credit card, ACH transfer, or Paypal.

The New Metro Broker Logo

Here is the all new Metro Broker logo.  It is now updated with a 3-D image.  We will be using this logo on all our advertising as quickly as we can make the changeover.  Metro Brokers has been very good for our business.  We are pleased to be a Metro Broker company and pleased to be hosting a new Metro Broker office, the first of it's kind suited for companies and agents who want to sell and also do property management.

Expansion of our Carpet Cleaning Dept.

We've just expanded our carpet cleaning business end of the maintenance department with the addition of air movers.  This one, made by the Stanley Co., can dry out carpet and also point upwards for upholstery, or for drying out wet sheetrock or ceilings.  It has 3 speeds and extra outlets, so extra dryers can be daisy-chained for rapid drying.

For larger drying jobs, we also have 2 Ridgid Air Movers.  These are much larger dryers.  When we clean carpet, these dryers can dry out carpet in a couple of hours instead of a whole day without them.  That makes a big difference in crunch season where we have tenants moving out the end of the month and new tenants moving in the next day.  It's a scramble getting the carpets cleaned and dried out before the new tenant moves in.


We presently have 4 carpet extractors of varying sizes from a 3 gallon to 8 gallon size.  The smaller ones easily fit into the back seat or trunk of a car.  We have an assortment of hoses and wands to do just about any carpet cleaning job imaginable.  You can also detail your vehicles with this equipment.

Our fleet of rental extractors fits nicely into the back of a pickup truck.  Each one will comfortably fit into the back seat or trunk of about any vehicle.  So, getting it to the property and back again is easy.  For a small fee, we'll even deliver it to you.

Our rental machines are roughly twice the size of the grocery store rentals, but not that much heavier.  So, you can do the job better in less time for about the same money.  You'll be pleased with the results.

CityScape Real Estate, LLC in the News

This is a Denver Post article with quotes from Ron Herdt and two of our property owners:

http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_6654468


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This is a web posting by the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) for their Alumni Recognition Program. Ron Herdt was a recepient of this award in 1978:

https://www.cualum.org/awards/alumni-recog-award-winners/