Book the trades before the unit is empty, not after. That is most of the difference between a five-day turn and a nineteen-day one, and it costs nothing to do.
The arithmetic is worth sitting with. On a unit renting for $1,800, every vacant day is about $60 gone, and it never comes back. Fourteen days of turnover is $840. That is more than most landlords spend on the turn itself.
Before the tenant leaves
The moment you have a written move-out date, three things happen the same week.
Book the trades provisionally. Painter, carpet cleaner, general handyman, and whoever handles the deep clean. Hold dates starting two days after the keys come back. Tell each of them the date might move by a few days and confirm it once the unit is actually empty.
List the unit. You do not need to wait for it to be empty to advertise it. Photos from the previous listing, or from before this tenant moved in, are usually good enough to open a waitlist and start scheduling showings for the week after the turn. Just be honest about what the photos are, and reshoot before the listing goes live properly.
Order anything with a lead time. Blinds, an appliance you already know is failing, a screen door, a specific paint color. These are what turn a five-day job into a three-week one.
What you cannot do in this window is start work. The tenant has possession until they do not, and sending a contractor in early is an entry problem you do not want.
The day the keys come back
Inspect before anything else touches the unit. Photograph, rate, note, close the report. Nothing gets cleaned, repaired, hauled away or replaced until that is done, because work performed first destroys the record every deduction depends on. The full order is in the move-out inspection, done in the right order.
Then rekey. Same day. Not because the departing tenant is a suspect, but because you have no idea how many copies exist after two years, and a rekey is forty dollars.
The order the work goes in
Sequence matters more than speed. Doing these out of order means doing some of them twice.
- Haul-away and trash-out. Empty the unit completely first, including the garage, storage, and anything left on a patio. Every other trade works faster in a clear space.
- Anything that opens a wall or floor. Plumbing, electrical, HVAC. If a supply line under the kitchen sink is weeping, it gets fixed before the cabinet is cleaned and long before the floor is done.
- Carpentry and hardware. Doors that stick, cabinet hinges, closet tracks, window locks, towel bars, blinds.
- Patch and prime. All of it, everywhere, before anyone opens a can of finish paint.
- Paint. Walls, then trim, then doors.
- Floors. Carpet cleaning or replacement, hard floors refinished or deep cleaned. After paint, always. Painters drip.
- Deep clean. Last, and it includes appliance interiors, inside cabinets, window tracks, and light fixtures. Everything before this step made a mess.
- Final walk and photos. The unit is now the baseline for the next tenancy.
The two steps landlords most often invert are floors and paint, and clean and everything else. Both cost a second visit.
The federal rule that catches DIY paint prep
If the building was built before 1978 and you are paying somebody to do the work, the lead renovation rule applies, and the threshold is lower than most people assume.
Six square feet is a patch about two and a half feet on a side. Scraping and sanding a bedroom wall before repainting clears it easily. The practical consequence is that a contractor doing paint prep in an older building generally needs to be a certified firm with a certified renovator on site, and splitting the work across two weekends does not get you under the threshold.
This is one of the few turnover items where the penalty for getting it wrong is federal rather than a bad review.
What only gets done between tenants
Some work is impossible or unreasonable with somebody living there. Batch it here.
- Rekey, and replace any lock that is sticky rather than oiling it again
- Replace every smoke and carbon monoxide alarm that is within a year of its ten-year expiry, and write the install date on each one
- Flush the water heater and photograph the label with its serial and date
- Replace supply lines to the toilets, sinks, washer and dishwasher if they are braided steel older than about eight years
- Clean the dryer vent all the way to the exterior hood
- Re-caulk tubs, showers, and kitchen backsplashes
- Service the HVAC and change the filter, with the date written on it
- Check every outlet with a tester, and every GFCI with its own test button
- Trim back anything growing against the siding or the roof
Half of that list is the same work as a seasonal maintenance pass, so if the turn lands near one of those anyway, do them together. A quarter-by-quarter maintenance checklist covers the rest of the year’s version.
What you can and cannot charge the last tenant for
Turnover cost and deposit deduction are two different budgets, and mixing them is how landlords end up in small claims.
Cleaning is the line people cross most. The standard is not “ready for the next tenant.” It is the condition the unit was in when this tenant received it.
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.5(b)(3)
the deposit may be used for cleaning the premises upon termination of the tenancy necessary to return the unit to the same level of cleanliness it was in at the inception of the tenancy.
So a professional turn clean on a unit the tenant handed back broom-clean and undamaged is a cost of doing business. Paint on a normal repaint cycle is the same. Everything on the list above that is preventive maintenance is yours, not theirs.
Keep the record
Every turn generates invoices, photos, dates and warranty paperwork, and every one of them is worth having eighteen months later when something fails again. Maintenance in LeaseRooster keeps the work orders and invoices against the unit rather than the tenancy, so a turn from two tenants ago is still where you left it. The unit is ready to advertise the moment the final photos are taken, which is what listings are waiting on anyway.
This is general information, not legal advice. Rules change and local ordinances vary. Confirm current requirements with your city, county, or an attorney before you act.