Professional carpet cleaning or new carpet? (how much, Home Depot, color, cleaner)
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I have carpets in my rental home that need to be cleaned. I would rather have them professionally cleaned than replaced, but not sure how much they can get out. What have your experiences been? I would have them come out to give an estimate and opinion, but am scared that they will say they can get the stains out, but not be able to and then have to replace anyway. I'm not exactly sure what the stains are. What do you all think? What have they been able to get out of your carpets? Thanks for any help.
How old is the carpet? How long were the tenants on the carpet? If it is over 5 years old and in that bad a shape, replace it.
You can always ask the carpet cleaners for an estimate, but I have never had a cleaner give me a garentee. They will usually do a really good job and add odor eleiminators.
carpeting in any type of rental is always a problem. both for the LL and the tenant.
I would go with wood, and have it re finished from time to time. It is much more sanitary. Also, who would want to live in someones elses carpet, be it cleaned or not. It is just gross.
also, color, what color do you get....
wood is more durable, i would save yourself the aggravation.
The majority of the house is wood. There are only a few rooms that have carpet, the basement being one of them, I don't think I've ever seen wood in a basement? I could be wrong. I'm not sure if I could afford to have wood installed. I'm not sure how old the carpet is, but I'm saying probably around 10 years old. This is my mother's old house so I'm not sure the exact dates everything was installed. The carpet looked good, she took care of it when she lived there, but that was 3 years ago. I'm leaning more toward having it replaced. Some rooms are worse than others. Thanks for the help.
If it is 10 years old and well taken care of, it could be cleaned and last through another tenant. If it is really dirty, especially the basement, replace it with maybe indoor/outdoor carpet. If it's more finished, I would go with berber.
Replace. Get photos after installation with two copies. Hand one copy to the tenants when they fork over the security deposit. And BTW, get a property management company or pro to vet your potential tenants.
Replace. I suspect you could get a good deal from a local carpet store right now because they're going to be under pressure to compete with the ongoing Lowe's/Home Depot "install all of it for $59" promotion.
You can sometimes find places that sell used carpeting from trade shows, auto shows etc. It is super cheap, good quality and often has not even been walked on. That is the best way to get a deal that I have found. INstallers are going to get the same amount of money one way or another. They all have the same costs. If they have a low price, watch for high prices on the carpeting, padding, trip fees, materials. Unless they are being subsidized, they can only go so low. Workers work for a set price. Materials cost all of them about the same. Overhead can vary, but it is not going to make that big of a difference in the price. They all have to have some profit or they will go out of business. Make sure your labor price is competitive with any others, but you will probably save more on the purchase price of the carpeting than youever will on installation.
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