Knowledge Base
Make-Ready Cost
A make-ready cost is the total labor and materials spend required to prepare a vacant apartment unit for its next resident, typically covering cleaning, painting, flooring, repairs, and replacement parts.
What goes into a make-ready
A make-ready is the punch list between move-out and move-in: cleaning, painting, carpet or flooring work, drywall repair, appliance repair or replacement, blinds, hardware, locks, and a final inspection. Labor and materials both count. The make-ready is one component of total turnover cost — the broader figure that also includes marketing, concessions, and rent lost to vacancy, and which Zego's survey of 630 property managers, reported by Multifamily Dive, put at about $3,872 per turn.
Why make-ready spend rewards price discipline
Make-readies buy the same items again and again: paint, flooring, blinds, appliance parts, fixtures. Repetition is what makes pricing matter — a small overpayment on one item repeats on every turn across every unit, and the same part can carry very different prices across suppliers. Comparing supplier prices on the items a property already buys is the cheapest way to cut turn cost without cutting scope, and it is the mechanism behind The Benchmark: price each invoice line against verified suppliers and show where to buy instead.
Common mistakes
The first mistake is running turns without a standard scope and per-unit budget, which makes cost impossible to compare across units or properties. The second is blending renovation into the make-ready: upgrades are capital decisions and belong in CapEx, not the turn budget. The third is measuring only speed. Days-vacant matters, but a fast turn at inflated part prices simply moves the loss from the rent roll to the expense ledger.
Related terms
Start with one property and one quarter
Send us a quarter of invoices and we will show you what it should have cost. If there is nothing there, we will tell you that too.
