How to prepare an apartment for renting out

A rental property has different priorities from an owner-occupied home: durability and easy maintenance rather than personal taste. Light but practical wall colours, flooring that cleans easily (laminate with a good wear rating, or tiles in wet rooms), and decent-quality fittings reduce how often small repairs are needed between tenants.

Avoid expensive or fragile choices — delicate textured wallpaper, soft-surface flooring, light fixtures with many parts to replace. A mid-priced but durable option usually pays off better than either the cheapest or the most luxurious. The same applies to kitchen appliances: a more expensive but more durable cooker or fridge means fewer emergency repairs during a tenancy, when the owner does not have daily access to the property.

• Walls in a neutral, easily refreshed colour
• High-wear flooring in common areas
• Good-quality door and window handles and hinges
• Sound window seals against leaks and damp

Preparation is not the same for every property. A small studio near an educational institution needs tougher, easy-clean surfaces and fewer decorative elements, because occupants change more often and wear is higher. A family apartment for a longer tenancy allows more attention to comfort — for example a fully equipped kitchen and enough storage space — because the tenant stays longer and typically takes better care of the property.

A fully furnished property also needs a more detailed inventory, because there are more items to document. An unfurnished property reduces the risk of disputes over furniture, but may narrow the pool of potential tenants if local demand is mostly for move-in-ready homes.

Before listing the property, check the boiler, air conditioning, sockets and switches, the toilet cistern and the window seals. A small fault discovered by a tenant in the first week creates a poor first impression and often raises the expectation of an immediate response from the owner. It is useful to draw up a short checklist and run through it at every change of tenant, not only before the property is first let.

A written inventory is the basis for a calm relationship with the tenant and for clear handling of the deposit at move-out — covered in detail in the deposit and handover protocol. It lists every significant item, appliance and piece of furniture, with a brief note of its condition on the move-in date.

• Appliances: make, model, any visible defects
• Furniture and textiles: quantity, condition of upholstery
• Keys and remotes: number of copies handed over
• Meters: electricity and water readings at move-in

As a hypothetical example, suppose preparing a two-room apartment for rent includes replacing the seals on three windows for €90, repainting the walls for €250, and a professional clean before viewings for €60 — €400 in total. At a rent of €500 a month (a 30-day month), that works out to about €16.67 a day. If the preparation shortens the vacancy period by 14 to 21 days, the rent saved is roughly €233–350. On a purely arithmetic basis, the €400 spend breaks even against about 24 days of avoided vacancy, before any other costs are considered — there is no guaranteed payback.

Listing photos and record-keeping photos serve different purposes. For the listing — daylight, tidy rooms, wide shots from an angle that shows the room's proportions. For the move-in record — clear, dated photos of every room, appliance and any existing defect, so there is no dispute later over who caused it.

Keep these photos together with the move-in protocol — they serve as practical evidence if a disagreement arises when the tenant moves out. It is good practice to take the photos on the day the keys are handed over rather than in advance, since the condition of the rooms can change in the meantime.

If preparation takes more time or effort than you have available, it is worth considering whether to delegate the management of the property to someone who knows the process from viewing through to signing the contract.