Three Factors That Motivate Rental Property Developers To Invest In Landscaping

By Author: Yuriko Rodriguez
Total Articles: 4
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Rental property developers tend to invest heavily in landscaping. This is something they typically do once the construction of their rental properties is complete, and just before starting to rent the properties. It is also something they keep on doing over the years (even after the properties have found tenants). That is unless the properties are designed in such a way that individual tenants have their own yards: in which case, it is typically the tenants who take the responsibility of landscaping their individual yards. But where the yards are shared – for instance, in rental apartment blocks – the property developers normally take it upon themselves to landscape the yards. The question that comes up is, of course, one as to why the rental property developers take all this trouble (of landscaping the rental properties). And that is where we come to learn that there are three factors that motivate rental property developers to invest in landscaping, namely:

The desire to make the properties attractive to prospective tenants: few people will argue with the assertion that nicely landscaped properties tend to look ...
... (substantially) more attractive to prospective tenants than properties whose yards/compounds are not landscaped. Most people want to live in classy-looking apartment blocks, and one of the ways to make such properties look ‘classy’ is by landscaping the yards around them. However aesthetically appealing the actual properties may look, so long as the yards around them aren’t landscaped, it will always look as if something is wrong with them. To overcome that jinx, it becomes necessary to get the yards landscaped: even if that means spending quite a bit of money.

In fact, in most cases, leaving the yards around the newly-developed rental properties in an unkempt state tends to mean having to wait for quite a bit of time, before eventually getting tenants into the properties. The money lost (in terms of forfeited rental income in that ‘awaiting’ duration) tends to be more than what would have been spent in getting the yards landscaped. Awake to this fact, many rental property developers are willing to spend quite a bit of money on landscaping.

The desire to enhance the apparent value of the properties: the nature of the rental market is such that tenants tend to show willingness to pay higher rents on ‘classy-looking’ properties. Many property developers are, of course, awake to this fact. And that being the case, they show willingness to spend quite a bit of money in getting their rental properties elaborately landscaped. They view such expenditure as some sort of investment. That is the case given the fact that it ultimately leads to a situation where they earn higher rental incomes than would have been the case had they opted not to landscape the yards around their properties.

The desire to retain tenants in the long run: a rental property developer operating in a market where there is a good supply of rental properties has to give his or her tenants a reason to continue staying in his or her property. Otherwise, tenant turnover rates can be high. Now if a property developer invests in landscaping, making the rental properties in question look classy, the tenants living there would have been given a reason to continue living in those particular rental properties. That is because most people like living in classy-looking properties (and landscaping, as we saw earlier, is one of the ways in which otherwise plain-looking properties can be made to come across as being ‘classy’). That being the case, it becomes essential for rental property owners who wish to retain their clients to landscape the yards around their properties.

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