Good ol' vinyl wood-lookalike planks. Cheap to buy, cheap to install, easy to repair without tearing up the whole floor, glues right down to the beautiful hardwood underneath.
No wonder landlords love them
Here these are usually wood composite boards with a layer of veneer on top. Technically wooden floors, but not actually. Still a major step up from plastic floors.
Chaulked right full of urea based glues though. If it’s new sleep with the windows open.
The true landlord way is to not even bother gluing them down so you can keep your tenant's security deposit for "damaging the floors"
You're not supposed to glue them. It's a "floating" floor meaning it needs to be allowed to expand and contract according to temperature and humidity. If you glue it down it'll start bulging and joints will open up. I install these for a living and the manufacturer instructions specifically forbid the use of glue.
Relatively cheap to install especially when it can be laid over the old flooring but it's not exactly cheap to buy though. Personally I vastly prefer the feel of LVP to laminate or parquet. It feels warmer and softer and is also much less slippery and waterproof. As a general contractor I also prefer installing it over the others.
The last time I installed them was a few years ago so "cheap" might have changed since then. But I did a 20'x15' kitchen all by myself with a pair of scissors for like $300 and about a day's work. (Though I didn't put it down over hardwood because I'm not a monster.)
This is my exact fucking floor.
I have a heat pump and my landlord isn’t a psycho though, so the only way I’m moving is via the coroner’s van
Yet my place, that was built in the last decade, only has AC. If I want to switch to a bi directional heat pump, they'll need to access the lines to add insulation, which would have added maybe a couple hundred dollars to the building cost but at this point would involve opening up walls. All that on top of the several thousand to buy the heat pump unit itself plus a conversion or new air exchanger.
The technical difference between an AC and heat pump is so trivial that IMO ACs that aren't heat pumps should be banned.
I have that floor and luxury it aint. Is nicer than carpet though
I legit have this floor, my rent is actually $3050 in the back fucking woods of Massachusetts. It was literally the cheapest 3 bedroom we could find (partners kids). New construction, corporate landlord. Literally no idea who owns the property, or to whom my rent goes.
When I moved out of my last apartment a couple years ago(which was the exact same size), gorgeous 100yr old mill housing. Has solid wood doors, real tiled bathroom, recently (within the last 10yrs) redone electrical and HVAC. Plus the landlord and his wife were legitimately rad people and lived in the building next door and we smoked weed together, had cookouts and fires. Rent was $1650.
And the BEST part, they didn't even install the flooring correctly. It's less than 2yr old building, screws are backing out and making bumps. On top of the tiles that are peeling/lifting.
Like, my partner and I have great jobs and it's only manageable. I have absolutely zero clue how anyone doing slightly worse is getting by.
Now I don't know Canadian taxes but just out of interest I investigated once what would happen if I rented out my house (it's still newly under mortgage so I can't but just to see what would happen.) I see some of my neighbors rent out theirs from for about this amount, 2500 euros.
After taxes in my part of the world I would retain just under 18000 euros in profit per year, which is a return on investment (~500k) of about 3.5% And this is not counting any repairs or maintenance the house will invariably need.
It's a crazy amount of rent for the renter but it's at best a poor return on investment for me, and if I'm a good landlord that actively maintains the place even worse. Sticking the money into even a so-so savings account will give a better return without any headache.
Having rented for most of my life (until very recently) I feel your pain but the real problem is the insane cost of real estate.
Why Landlords never seem to take into account that rises in property/land value also equal profit has always been a mystery to me.
How do you define "profit" here? Do you subtract mortgage payment? Because you only lose the interest portion of that; the principal payment is also profit (just not as a liquid asset).
Yeah if that's after mortgage payments then that extra is really just a dividend. You have to also look at property value increase as a potential proffit as well as the payment on principle since you could sell the property in a few years and make money on that sale.
Renting out SUCKS. Especially on a small scale. Renting out your house or condo is just headaches for a return on investment you probably could have matched with the market and not have to go through the lottery of asshole tenants.
Renting starts making sense once you've got 6+ units, then you can actually make a living, but until then it's just not worth it IMO
Some people will disagree, but those people are the kind of people that "love the grind" or whether, I just think life is too short for that kind of fuckery.
We have friends that rent out and it feels like they are constantly on edge. Always on call for some bullshit. Every vacation they have to be ready to take calls and deal with shit.
Well, yeah. You invest into real estate for it to pay off after 20 years and then generate you pure profit. The problem is that at that time, maintaining a 20 yo property isn't cheap either, especially with remodels in between that need to happen to keep it looking good and functional.
But if you do that for as long as your mortgage lasts, at the end you have a house worth $500k, probably way more, you haven't paid a single dollar of your own money towards that mortgage and still got $18k of profit per year.
To put that money in a savings account you would need to have liquid $500k to begin with. With a mortgage, you borrow money and then rely on somebody else to pay it back
Of course that tips ever more in your favor the more money you have to begin with. While I think anyone being landlord is unethical, by far the biggest problem are real estate investors that buy 100s or 1000s of homes
You can absolutely rent your house out while it's still under mortgage, most rentals are not paid off. The profit starts coming in later. 10 years from now your mortgage will be the same, but rent will be $1000 more per month. Plus you're getting someone else to pay off a major asset for you.
Uh, floating click together vinyl will go great with the lease on the mustang
What makes it worth the money is the sliding faux-barn doors between the bathroom and the rest of the apartment and the faux-marble island in the "eat-in" kitchen.
That's quackers.
2500 fuck that i want carpet
