Make-ready work is its own trade and most homeowners never see it. A tenant moves out, or a short term rental needs to reset between seasons, and somebody has a narrow window to get every unit back to rentable. Here is one real job, and what it taught us about pricing the next one.
In August a short term rental operator off Charlotte Avenue in West Nashville handed us a small block of units and a date. I am going to walk through it as an example rather than a template, because the useful lesson is the opposite of a template.
The scope, written down
Vague scopes are where make-ready jobs go wrong, so ours are boring on purpose. Interior repaint: walls, ceilings, trim and doors, two finish coats throughout. Prep included patching nail holes, caulking gaps, sanding, masking and protecting floors, cutting in and rolling walls and ceilings, and brushing trim by hand.
Closet interiors were written out of the estimate. Closets are the classic turnover argument: they take real time, nobody photographs them, and if you do not say in writing whether they are in or out, somebody is unhappy on the last day. So we priced without them.
Then we painted them anyway, at no charge, because the crew had the coverage and the schedule held. That is not us being soft. A client who finds an extra you did not bill for is a client who calls you the next time a unit turns over.
A per door price only works if the doors are genuinely the same. The first thing we do on a multi unit walk is check whether that is true, and it usually is not.
What it cost
The units matched each other, so this one priced as a single per home number applied across the block.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Labor | $2,693.20 |
| Materials | $1,505.99 |
| Subtotal | $4,199.19 |
| Sales tax, materials only | $146.83 |
| Total per unit | $4,346.02 |
Deposit was one third at signing, $1,448.67 per unit. Materials get ordered once that clears, balance is due on substantial completion. We structure it that way because on a multi unit turn we are fronting several thousand dollars of paint before anyone has picked up a brush.
What went into a unit
Walls took Behr Premium Plus in eggshell, bought in five gallon buckets. Ceilings took two buckets of Behr Premium Plus Ceiling Flat, five gallons each, because ceilings in a turnover almost always need full coverage rather than a touch-up. Trim and doors took about three gallons of Sherwin-Williams urethane trim enamel, the same product on both so the finish matches where a door meets its casing.
On top of that, the consumables: tape, plastic sheeting, spackle, caulk, roller covers, sanding sponges, tray liners. The full breakdown of what each of those costs is in our materials post.
Two coats everywhere is not padding. On a unit that has been repainted twice already, one coat will flash wherever the old patches sit, and it will show under the light of whoever is photographing the listing. You get one shot at that photo.
This is an example, not a price list
We have now worked with five different property management companies, and the thing that stands out is how little they agree with each other.
One wants every unit in the same builder white so touch-ups never need a color match. Another repaints accent walls between guests and treats it as branding. One counts closet interiors as standard scope and would have found their exclusion strange. Another wants ceilings left alone unless there is visible damage, because their turnover window is 48 hours and ceilings are what blows it. One schedules us around cleaners and stagers to the hour. One hands us a key and a deadline and does not want a phone call in between.
All of those are reasonable. None of them can be served by a single per door number pulled off somebody else's job. So the way we actually price a turn is: walk every unit rather than one, quote the common scope per door, then list the exceptions separately so a manager can approve or decline each one on its own. Nobody discovers a surprise on the invoice.
And there is no emergency fee
If a guest cancels and a window opens on Saturday, or a tenant leaves the place worse than anyone expected and the schedule compresses, we do not add a rush charge. We are open seven days, six to six, and the price is the price. Turnover work is deadline work by nature. Charging a premium for the deadline is charging for the job.
How we run a multi unit turn
One unit taken all the way to done
Not every unit in prep, then every unit in first coat. Finish one, then start the next. The manager can photograph and list unit one while we are still working in unit two, and if something goes wrong we have one unit exposed instead of the whole block.
Prep the day before, not the morning of
Masking and floor protection is dead time if the whole crew does it together at 8am. On a turn we prep ahead so the morning starts with somebody already cutting in.
Colors logged per unit
We write down what went where. Six months later when a guest scuffs the hallway in one specific unit, the manager does not guess. That single habit has saved our clients more callback hassle than anything else we do.
One crew, no subcontractors
The same people work every unit. It matters more on turnover work than on a single home, because units painted by different crews end up looking like different units, and that shows up in the listing photos.
If you manage rentals in Middle Tennessee
What we hear most from managers is that the painting is never the problem, the schedule is. Somebody says four days, takes nine, and that is nine days of nobody paying rent. We would rather quote five and hit five.
We do turnover and make-ready work across Murfreesboro, Smyrna, Nashville and the rest of Middle Tennessee, on single doors and on small portfolios. If you want a per door number, we will walk every unit and give you the common scope plus the exceptions, in writing.
Related: what painting actually costs across our recent jobs, our interior and exterior painting page, and the commercial and multi unit side of what we do.