I remember the first Exterior Painting job that we were tasked to complete. The owner said, and I’m paraphrasing, “I don’t care what the outside looks like… I trust that the vendor can choose a color scheme that will be good for my property”. With that as my guide I instructed the vendor to provide me with two options for schemes and I chose the one I liked best. However, at the time I thought that the options given were basic as there was no ‘magic’ in the colors suggested… no WOW factor that made the property stand out. We got the job done and the property looked good. Fast forward, we had the second exterior painting job from an owner that lived out of state who specifically asked, “Jeff, please send me two or three color schemes that you or the vendor suggest, and I’ll chose one to move forward with”. Well, this time I figured that we could do a better job of advising on a color scheme that would make the rental property stand out when putting it on the market for rent! I took a trip to my local Dunn Edwards paint store, walked up to the front desk and asked if they had any brochures with suggested exterior color schemes. The front desk rep gave me a fancy brochure to take but he also said, “You may want to talk to our Color Advisor as he will be able to provide more advice for your particular project”. I did not know that this service existed! I met with the advisor, hired him for the project and am happy to share that both the owner and I were extremely satisfied with how the project turned out making our property the best looking one in the block! In addition, the property was placed on the market… got rented quickly and pretty much everyone that walked through the property make the comment that they liked the colors picked and the accent front door and shutters!
COLOR ADVISOR
Dunn Edwards offers a Color Advisor whose services can be purchased. The services provided will vary in pricing based on what is being advised on (interior vs. exterior color suggestions) and for exterior painting advice pricing is just over $200. While this includes multiple items, from a rental perspective the key value being provided is an exterior walk-through of the property from the advisor to get an idea of what the property and neighborhood offer, their expertise of current color trends and a total of three-color scheme renderings. It is important that an owner’s input and their preferences such as colors to include, or not include, as well as desire for strong or subtle accent colors can be considered in order to guide the advisor to provide the ideal suggestions for color schemes.
COLORS
The following is a sample property that we’ve worked on.
WE PAY FOR IT
Oh… did I share that we (the management company) pay for the services of the Color Advisor?!
CONCLUSION
Painting the exterior of a rental property is not something that happens often but when it is time to do so we believe that taking the extra effort of hiring a Color Advisor to provide a color scheme that will help the property stand out in the marketplace is well worth it!
