Add'l Rent for W/D?
Our tenant is requesting that we add a W/D to his apartment. How much additional rent would be reasonable to charge? Hook-ups are already there, we just need to order and install it. They pay for electricity, but we still pay for gas until we convert over a meter. Also, do you think it is…
Our tenant is requesting that we add a W/D to his apartment. How much additional rent would be reasonable to charge? Hook-ups are already there, we just need to order and install it. They pay for electricity, but we still pay for gas until we convert over a meter.
Also, do you think it is OK to have tenant pay for W/D and we will deduct a monthly amount off their rent? We are strapped for cash at this time.
As a landlord with a W/D in my rental unit, I think CMU’s math is right on as to actual cost. Sounds like you’re going to need to finance this, so you should add on for that. Plus you’ll need to service it every once in a while, which is a cost and a hassle. So I’d land at about $60-$75/month.
Some other important considerations:
– what DIBS said about shutoff valves and a pan.
– sounds like you trust these people and they’re good tenants. If that’s true, making them happy is important.
– think about vibrations. W/D’s on upper floors can make crazy vibrations through the whole building. We put ours on a horse mat. Seriously, it totally works. We used the Mighty Lite, which you can get in 3’x4′ squares.
– *Rob*, yes, you are the only person who feels that way. But that must be familiar, right? 😉
Sorry let me clarify my statement a little more – I do 2-3 loads 4-5 times a week and some things I dry a little longer than a hour. I also use it as an iron sometimes ;). I still think for all the laundry I do the $30 a month on my bill is much cheaper than $30 a week at the laundromat.
Well that’s what’s on my water bill so I don’t know what to say to you cmu
I think I’d tell them if they want one they can put one in on their dime (with your approval on the machine and the installer). Plus an extra $25-40 per month for water/gas. When they leave, they’ll probably end up leaving it — most people do I think.
When there are repairs in our building, we make them ourselves or use a tradesman, contractor or handyman we trust. We don’t leave repairs for our tenants—unless your tenant is a master craftsman, a foolish policy for any landlord. Neither would I discuss my own finances with a tenant. Depending on tenant, I might seek their input prior to replacing an old appliance, but would never give them final say on selection. The question for me in this post is that OP said they can’t afford purchase/installation right now, but are otherwise amenable. Tenants would like the machines, and a discussion about tenants taking on the cost of purchase and installation would be informative for all concerned. For the short-term anyway, the actual cost of utilities is minor compared to the cost of purchase and installation.
As a tenant who has a W/D in our unit, I can say that we were willing to pay up to an extra $100/mo for the convenience. It was that big of a deal for us (I travel all the time and my wife works rotating shifts). $50 is completely reasonable in my mind.
The Whirlpool Thin Twin is a small washer/dryer unit that retails for about $1,100. We have had one in our rental unit for 10 years now and no problems (fingers crossed).
We bought a W/D last November and financed it with a brand new PC Richards credit card with 0% interest. I am only bringing that up because we’re paying $80/mo for 20 months (until the interest payment kicks in) to pay it off. That’s roughly the same time as a 2 year lease. As someone above commented, there’s also the water bill.
Between water and a pro-rated purchase price, I’d add $100/mo to the rent.
Water… equally impossible. This is not rocket science to compute:
Even old top loaders used say 25 gals = 500 gals / month with 5 load/week. We use 150 gals/day and our quarterly bill is $120 or so. So the additional is about $15/quarter.
new machines are so energy efficient, they should not make your make your gas bill go up more than $5 or 10 a month. my dryer didn’t, and I run it constantly. Like cmu said, water even less so. staceys, your machines must not be inline with the newer major brand energy efficient models.