A great post. For those that rent their homes, these are the customers viewpoints whether you agree or not. If I was renting my home out, I would be thankful for comments like these that that would help me elevate the service I provide from good to excellent. I even found the comment on the left handed ice cream scoop to be interesting. What a great personal touch it would be to find out if your guests were left handed, then provide them with the ice cream scoop and a little note saying "I noticed you were left handed....hope this makes your ice cream more enjoyable". I guarantee that little touches like that would result in folks lining up to rent your place.

This is a great post with some good information!

I bought a property in Virginia Trace as an investment and had a long term renter that just moved out. I was told by that renter that the house was spot less...let me just say that there was a clear divide between my idea of spotless and theirs. I spent 14 hours cleaning the property so that it was immaculate for my first "seasonal" renter.

I have asked for feedback from my renters and will do all I can to accommodate their preferences, but also know that realistically I will not be able to do everything. I did put WIFI in and as a "welcome" to my home left them a bottle of red/white wine and a couple of chocolates as well as a small gift card to a local business for their enjoyment.

I am looking forward to this being a great experience.

I'm not sure everyone understood the original post the same as I. I took it as a "heads up" owners.....this is what renters want! Obviously, the OP related their own personal experiences, since that is what they know. I didn't take it as a gripe session, at all. I actually found it interesting.

I was in the guest relations business for most of my adult life; hotels, restaurants and finally owning my own, small, apartment complex. It is not the responsibility of the renter to inform the owner/manager that the carpet is dirty, the paint is in need of touch up, etc. The owner/manager should know about it, and fix it, prior to the renter's arrival. I have never understood how people are always saying you (the customer) should tell the owner/manager or you are somehow, partly, responsible for the problem yourself.

What you SHOULD tell the owner is when YOU cause there to be a problem, like the spilled coffee, as mentioned, or, even if you didn't cause it, something happens while you are in residence, like a faucet starts to leak or a stove burner stops working, etc.

One example....our tenants paid their own utilities. We had a water bill arrive for one of our apartments that was astronomical. When we presented it to the tenants, their reply was that the toilet had been running for the past month, non-stop, so they should not be responsible for all of the water bill. Now, these people had lived there for almost a year, with a low water bill. They never mentioned the running toilet to us, even though the lease stated they were to tell us of any problems, like that, immediately.

For what it's worth, we rented twice in TV before moving into our own house, and we found both rentals to be modestly priced, yet more than adequately equipped with nice, comfortable furniture, house wares and decor. I'm betting that is the norm, here.

:agree: You should not be renting as you want a home that will meet all your expectations and rentals don't always do that. You need to consider buying here.

DACA

Sorry casita37 but I disagree on your assumption. Paint and dirty carpet we should know about. However you will never find that the dishwasher is loose, the draw in one bureau doesn't work smoothly, that one burner of the stove doesn't always light, that a light bulb flickers sometimes, that the washing machine is noisy on the delicate cycle, a smoke detector beeps when the house is cool, and on and on. I have a check list I use when I go through the house and have added to it many times, but I can never find it all unless they tell me. Communication works. Just as your tenant did not tell you about the running toilet. We have new tenants every month except the 3 prime which always get rented together, and a very short window to turn the home around.

So please explain your contradictory statements.

1. It is the responsibility of the owner to fix before ...
2. It is in my contract for the tenant to tell me when something doesn't work ...

What works best?

Actually, you can determine a lot of the things you listed. Dirt and paint are obvious. Loose drawers, non-working burners, things like that, can be found with a bit more thorough inspection. However, you are right, not everything can be found. You are not going to run the washer on delicate prior to every tenant, so some common sense and, as you said, communication is important. And even though you don't run the washer between EVERY tenant, you really should do a COMPLETE inspection every so often. Kind of like taking your car in for a 5000 mile check up, where they go over it from end to end, run all systems, etc.

The items the OP mentioned were pretty obvious and are the type of thing that can cause a bad first impression.....and it's downhill from there.

As for it being in the lease that the tenant tell us when something doesn't work, that means if it breaks while they are living there. You can inspect a stove, it's working great, tenant moves in and lives there for a few months and then the burner goes out. That's what that means. We also put in our leases that we had the right to inspect, with 48 hours notice, at any time. We never did do that, and after a tenant left, we usually were wishing we had....LOL

The timing seems to be the problem
 

When you have people leaving one day and new people coming in the next I don't see the time for a complete check every little thing go thru.

But filthy obviously is a problem. Most owners managers want to fix anything that isn't up to standards. I grew up in a family owned rental cottages and ski lodge and people can be and usually are really hard on stuff they don't own.
We have for 30 years rented from owners (alot are handled by management companies or have maintence/cleaning contracts with a local) when we go home to Hawaii. I have often wished I could hold back 20% of the final payment until after a walk thru so I could be assured that issues would be fixed, but that is not the system so you throw the dice and hope for the best when you are unable to rent a known quantity. And the landlord is taking his chances on us also when we are unkown to him but then he has the security deposit to help offset the risk.