Cost, Durability, Style: What Matters Most with Buy to Let Furniture?

To furnish or not to furnish is a question landlords have been asking themselves for decades. Having to fully kit out your rental properties can seem like a real hassle, not to mention costly, if you buy from the wrong supplier or use pieces that aren’t fit for purpose.

Providing tenants with excellent surroundings doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.

Creating a space for tenants to easily make your property their home for as long as they live it will keep them happy. And in turn, the constant flow of rental income will keep you happy. 

Finding the right buy to let furniture can be hard, though. Low quality furniture that isn’t designed for the rental market often needs replacing. Worse than that, cutting corners can lead to you potentially losing tenants. 

You can’t afford not to provide your tenants with a furnished property. There’s a great number of upsides, including a boost to your rental income. But when it comes to finding the right pieces, landlords are often forced to choose furniture based on cost, durability or style. So, which of these factors is most important to tenants and to your bottom line?

BUY TO LET FURNITURE COST

Finding high quality furniture at the right price can feel like a slog. 

After hours spent hunting for the right sofa, it can feel like affordability and quality just don’t go hand in hand anymore.

In many cases this is true. The rise of flat-pack furniture at rock-bottom prices allows for people to buy cheap furniture that matches whatever’s trendy at the time, and leaves them free to replace it every year if they want to. 

It’s often bad quality and it’s usually bad for the environment.  

While properly furnishing a property can have a high upfront cost, taking the plunge at this early stage can allow you to charge a higher rate of rent. This means you should be able to make your money back and then some before too long. 

Furnished properties can earn around 20% more in rent per month on average compared to unfurnished alternatives. 

Statistics from OnTheMarket found that a furnished flat in Manchester can bring in around £100 extra per month. And for many prospective city-tenants a furnished apartment is a more attractive option so it could lead to more interest, too. 

Optimising your buy to let space is about finding a way for quality and affordability to go hand in hand, so you can meet your tenants’ high expectations.

In the long run, spending a little more on furniture can lead to greater profits down the line. 

BUY TO LET FURNITURE DURABILITY

If you ask any tenant what they want in their furnished apartment they will tell you that they expect luxury, a place to relax after a tough day. 

Now ask a landlord and they’ll tell you that the key things are that the furniture is fit for purpose, long-lasting, and that the tenant is happy with. 

Luxury doesn’t have to mean crystal chandeliers and gold-plated furnishings, it can just mean a comfortable, stylish space to live. It certainly doesn’t mean cheaply produced, flimsy MDF though.

Quality not quantity doesn’t have to only apply to comedians writing a new set-list of jokes. It can apply to buy to let furniture as well.

Let’s imagine a football club is in desperate need of a striker. Instead of going all-out for a world-class player to fix the problem, they opt for a catalogue of cheaper options. If these new additions spend more time in the physio room than they do out on the pitch, the club will wish they had just stumped up the cash to actually solve the problem in the first place. 

Similarly, if you need to replace all of your furniture every time a tenant moves out because you’ve tried to save money and what you bought wasn’t fit for purpose, then you’ll very quickly come to wish you’d just gone for quality in the first place. 

Accidents can happen. Renters can trip and fall, knock things over, and who can say they carefully ease down onto their sofa after a hard day? Breakages will happen, and if you buy low quality, they will happen a lot. 

Our furniture is specifically designed and built for the rental market, so it’s built to last. We know the stress furniture can come under in day-to-day life. Our furniture is ready for it. 

BUY TO LET FURNITURE STYLE

The world has spent the last year in what often felt like an eternal lockdown. Days and nights in became the norm. 

With people not able to get out and enjoy nature, the company of friends and families, or local amenities, we were forced to make the most out of the indoors. 

A whole year where nights in binge-watching sitcoms and consuming record numbers of takeaways have made people realise the importance of a space to relax in that they can be proud of, a space for those nights on the sofa where you “can’t go to the pub because you’ve got other plans”.

If your tenant is coming home from a hard day to relax on a dull, uncomfortable sofa, in an uninspiring, drab living room before going to sleep in a boring room on a rock hard, flimsy bed, they won’t want to stay around long. 

Making a home stylish and luxurious is about understanding the key fundamentals of design, and how to appropriately use furniture to complement and improve the space. 

The key to picking the right buy to let furniture is to juggle making a space interesting while realising that it's not the time to go too out there. 

Even if you love mechanical singing fish, your tenant might not, so keep it stylish and keep it timeless.

There’s no point furnishing a flat if only you would want to live there. 

We offer an expert service. Our in-house design team is there to help create interior spaces tailored to your needs, while taking inspiration from things like current trends, the surrounding area, and more.

SO, WHAT MATTERS MOST? 

The truth is, they all matter the most. You shouldn’t even have to be put in the situation where you have to choose. 

The perfect buy to let furniture should be a combination of all three.  The cost, durability and style go hand in hand (in hand). 

Setting your tenant up to have the best experience living in your property while also maximising your long-term profits should be the goal for any landlord. 

We’re experts at juggling, allowing tenants to have the best possible experience, while reducing the impact it can have on a landlord's wallet.

Our team of world-class interior designers have years of experience in outfitting amazing rental properties, and are equipped to tackle any challenge facing them.