There’s no shortage of lists telling landlords how to improve a rental. The problem is that most treat a $5 fix and a $15,000 renovation as equals, and plenty still recommend things that have since become legal requirements – or quietly stopped being good advice.
So here’s our working list, organised the way we’d actually talk it through with an owner: what the law now requires (no longer optional), what costs almost nothing and prevents expensive problems, what genuinely lifts rent and tenant quality, and what we’d politely suggest you skip. Every idea here has earned its place in real Wellington tenancies.
One principle before the list: an improvement only “pays off” if it does at least one of three things – lifts the rent your property can fairly ask, attracts and keeps better tenants, or prevents a bigger cost later. If a spend does none of those, it’s decorating, not investing.
First – Ideas That are Actually The Law
A few classics from every old improvement list have graduated into the Healthy Homes standards and smoke alarm rules. If your property doesn’t have these, they’re not improvements – they’re overdue:
- Ceiling and underfloor insulation to the required standard.
- Fixed heating in the main living area that meets the required heating capacity – for most Wellington homes, that means a heat pump; a small plug-in panel heater usually doesn’t qualify. (And unflued gas bottle heaters, once merely a bad idea, are now prohibited as a heating solution.)
- Extractor fans in the kitchen and bathroom, vented to the outside – “vented into the roof cavity” doesn’t count and creates its own moisture problem.
- Draught-stopping – sealing the gaps around windows, doors and unused fireplaces that older lists suggested foaming as a comfort upgrade.
- Working smoke alarms – long-life photoelectric alarms located within three metres of each bedroom doorway. The old “change the batteries when the clocks change” routine belongs to a previous era; replacements must be the 10-year sealed type.
If you’re unsure where your property stands on any of these, that’s a five-minute conversation – we assess every property we take on against each standard and set out exactly what’s needed, and what isn’t.
The Under-$50 Fixes That Punch Above Their Weight
Small, cheap, and disproportionately effective – most of these prevent tenant frustration or a maintenance callout that would cost twenty times more:
- Fit door stops on every internal door. The cheapest wall-repair insurance available.
- Rub a white candle along sticking drawers and cupboard doors. An old trick that still beats a callout.
- Oil squeaky hinges, re-washer dripping taps. Drips waste water and goodwill; both fixes are minutes each.
- Line cupboard shelves and drawer bottoms with off-cut lino – surfaces stay presentable tenancy after tenancy.
- Replace the toilet seat, shower curtain and doormat at each re-let. Small items, outsized effect on how “fresh” a property feels at viewings.
- Disable the oven’s auto-timer if it routinely confuses – a surprising share of “broken oven” reports are a timer switched to auto. One tweak, several avoided callouts.
- A washing machine outlet that actually drains to the waste – cheap plumbing that prevents an overflow claim.
Presentation Upgrades that Lift Rent & Shorten Vacancies
The middle tier: hundreds rather than thousands, and where most of the letting-day payoff lives.
- Paint interiors in a light neutral. The old rule – any colour as long as it’s white – has softened to warm whites and light neutrals, but the logic stands: bright, clean, and easy to touch up. Skip wallpaper.
- Refresh the kitchen without replacing it. New benchtop, repainted cabinet fronts, new handles – a fraction of a new kitchen’s cost, most of its photographic effect.
- LED lighting throughout, and decent lampshades. Bright rooms photograph better and feel bigger; LEDs also end the light-bulb-replacement conversation.
- Have carpets stretched, re-edged and steam cleaned before deciding they need replacing – rippled carpet often has years left in it.
- New curtains, a new letterbox, washed walls, waterblasted paths and exterior. Street appeal and first-impression items that cost little and show up in every enquiry.
- Carpet off-cut runners in halls and entries – protects the high-wear zones and keeps end-of-tenancy cleaning arguments off the table.
Security: Inexpensive Peace of Mind Tenants Notice
Security features consistently rate with tenants, especially those with families, and most cost less than people assume:
- Deadlocks on exterior doors and ranchsliders, keyed window locks or window stays on ground-floor windows.
- Sensor lights at the front door, path and garage.
- Change lock barrels and keys at each new tenancy – inexpensive, and it removes an entire category of risk from previous key-holders.
- Proper padlocks on sheds and garages – a locksmith-grade padlock, not the lightest one on the hardware-store shelf.
- A monitored alarm is the top shelf (roughly $500–$1,500 installed plus monitoring costs) – worth weighing for higher-value properties, optional for most.
Tenant Retention: The Improvements That Keep Good People
A long tenancy is the most profitable improvement a rental can have, and these are the spends aimed squarely at it:
- A heat pump even where a lesser heater would technically comply. Warm, cheap-to-run homes are the ones tenants renew in – in Wellington, this is arguably the single strongest retention spend available.
- A dishwasher. Consistently near the top of tenant wish lists relative to its cost.
- Whiteware – with eyes open. Providing a fridge or washing machine widens your applicant pool, but every chattel you supply is a chattel you must maintain and eventually replace. Worth it for many properties; a decision, not a default.
- Professionally maintained lawns and gardens, priced into the rent. Grounds stay presentable, tenants without mowers aren’t excluded, and inspections stop being about the grass.
- A card or small gift at Christmas for tenants who’ve looked after the place. Old-fashioned, costs almost nothing, and remembered at renewal time.
Some Bigger Spends (Worth It – Sometimes)
- A carport – one of the better cost-to-appeal ratios among structural additions, and it adds capital value alongside rentability.
- A new fence – security, privacy and presentation in one; and it’s always worth asking whether the neighbour will share the cost of a boundary fence.
- Exterior repaint – protects the cladding (weatherboard especially) and transforms street appeal; more maintenance than improvement on older homes.
- Bathroom renovation – the biggest-ticket item on this list, and the one to cost carefully against the realistic rent lift for your suburb before committing.
- Rent-inclusive extras (power, window cleaning) – legal and occasionally clever, but they blur the price comparison for prospective tenants and lock you into a cost you don’t control. We’d usually advise against.
And a Few More – That We’d Retire
Every old list carries some passengers. The fake flashing “burglar alarm” LED fools nobody in 2026; 100-watt incandescent bulbs have left the building; a phone jack in every room now qualifies as a historical feature; and installing a large-screen TV for tenants mostly buys you a maintenance obligation and an expectation.
Spend the money on the heat pump instead.
Not sure which of these your property actually needs?
That’s genuinely the most useful question on this page – because the right shortlist depends on your property, its suburb, and the tenants it should be attracting.
Our rental preparation service is exactly this triage: we’ll tell you which improvements would lift your rent and tenant quality, and which would just spend your money.
Or start with a free rental appraisal – a realistic rent range for your property as it stands, and where it could sit with the right preparation.