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How to Make Your Rental’s Entryway More Accessible

Elderly West Richland Man Walking Up the Path to the Front Door

As a West Richland property manager, the safety of your tenants is a top focus. Likewise, you could do with a property with great curb appeal. The most beneficial investment properties combine the two by generating attractive, accessible entry areas. You can significantly reduce slips and falls on the property by making sure your tenants can come and go easily.

An accessible entryway isn’t just about safety measures. By developing an accessible entry into your rental property, you can multiply your potential renter demographic and attract seniors or renters with accessibility needs. In what follows, we’ll take a closer look at techniques that you can make your property’s entryway both safer and more aesthetically pleasing.

Why Entryways Matter

Entry points to a house control access to the property. Because of this, they are an important facet of preparing your home for tenants. Many single-family rental homes are not automatically built with easy accessibility in mind. In particular, this is true for older homes, which often have safety hazards like steps without railings or slippery walkway materials. Newer homes may experience the same problem, but improved building codes and a better understanding of universal design had noticeably increased accessibility in far too many ways.

Assess Accessibility

No matter when your rental property was developed, it’s important to start by evaluating it from an accessibility standpoint. To get an accurate picture of how accessible your rental home is, begin with a slow walk through entry areas, looking for potential concerns. Walk from the edge of the property and line up the driveway and front walkway. Consider how smooth the walkway surfaces are and whether there are damaged areas that might trip someone or cause a wheelchair to get stuck. If at all feasible, you should walk with a friend at your side. 

You may be shocked by how narrow your front walkway is. Both damaged surfaces and narrow access points can make it difficult for some tenants to use them safely. The same can be said about right-angle turns. Consider replacing sharp corners with curves instead. A gently curving pathway up to the front door will not only be more accessible, but it will add an alluring feature to the front of the house as well.

Another real trouble area for entryway accessibility is the front steps. Although common, steps can make it difficult for some tenants to come and go safely. This is particularly true if your rental property is in an area where ice and snow can be a problem. The best home designs have no steps into the house. But even if your property already has them, there are things you can do to make your entryway more accessible.

How to Improve Access

In a nutshell, there are a lot of simple ways to improve the safety and accessibility of your rental home. For example:

Stairs: If in case your rental home doesn’t already have one, you can start by installing a durable handrail and good exterior lighting. Railings should extend at least one foot beyond the bottom of the stairs, and lights should be placed carefully for clear illumination of each step. Also, consider adding non-slip strips or material to the steps.

Entry Doors: Another thing that can make an entryway more accessible is the type of hardware used. Traditional doorknobs can be hard to use for many people. Instead, consider installing a keypad, using lever handles, or even an automatic opener.

Ramps: If your accessibility planning requires you to invest some money into upgrading your front steps, think about using that same money to replace them entirely. Depending on how high the front doorstep is, it might be more cost-effective to build a ramp up to the front door. Some of the best entryway ramps don’t even look like ramps. Rather, they have been designed so well that they look no different from a slightly raised cement walkway with a gentle upward slope. In this way, you can upgrade the curb appeal of your property while still adding a low-profile ramp that will greatly improve the safety of the entry areas.

Improving the safety and accessibility of your West Richland rental property’s entryway is an important part of keeping your property profitable and increasing value. Using these strategies, you can also expand your renter demographic while completing these goals

 

Are you looking for more ways to make your rental safer – and expand your renter demographic at the same time? Feel free to contact Real Property Management Tri-Cities by reaching out online or giving us a call at 509-572-5440.

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