Rental apartment renovation in Batumi for a year-long tenant

What matters more to a year-long tenant than to a guest

Renovating an apartment for a one-year let starts with the things that come second in a short-term rental. A guest comes for a week and looks at the view and how clean the place is. A tenant spends the whole Batumi winter in the apartment: they cook every day, work at a desk, keep their winter clothes at home and dry their laundry indoors. At the viewing they open the wardrobes, look at the corners by the windows and ask how much the electricity came to in January.

It helps to decide in advance who you are letting to: a family with children, a couple who work from home, or one person. That decides the number of bedrooms and the size of the kitchen and wardrobes. If you haven't chosen the rental format yet, first look at the comparison of short-term and long-term rental, and approve the estimate after that.

Warm and dry in winter

Tenants' complaints come in winter: the apartment is cold, the windows mist up, a corner behind the wardrobe turns dark. Before the finishing we check the windows and their reveals, insulate the reveals and the patches of wall where condensation forms in winter, and fit fresh air inlets in the bedrooms and extraction in the bathroom and kitchen.

We choose the heating to suit the building. If the apartment has a gas supply, we discuss a boiler with radiators. If there is no gas, we heat with inverter air conditioners in every room and fit an electric heated towel rail in the bathroom. The tenant usually pays the heating bills, but those bills affect whether they will want to renew the lease.

We plan the space for a tumble dryer or a washer and dryer stacked in a column at the rough-work stage: a socket and a condensate drain. Condenser and heat-pump dryers don't need an air vent to the outside, so those are the ones we choose for apartments.

A kitchen for cooking every day

A tenant cooks meals for the family, and two hob rings are not enough. In the kitchen we lay in connection points for a full-size hob, an oven, a dishwasher and a full-height fridge, with at least four sockets above the worktop. We duct the cooker hood into the ventilation shaft if the building allows it: a recirculating hood with a filter is worse at removing smells and doesn't remove moisture at all.

We make the splashback from porcelain tiles or glass, and the worktop from compact laminate or engineered quartz. These surfaces will last for years without careful handling, and between tenants they only need a thorough clean.

Storage and a place to work

Someone moving in for a year brings what a guest doesn't: winter coats and boots, children's things, sports kit, empty suitcases. If there aren't enough wardrobes, all of it ends up on the balcony. So we plan a floor-to-ceiling hallway wardrobe for coats and wet umbrellas, with a vent grille in the door, a recess for the vacuum cleaner and suitcases, and a wardrobe in every bedroom.

Working from home needs a desk by the window, two or three sockets, a network socket and lighting that doesn't glare on the screen. We run the internet cable from the router position to the desk before the walls are skim coated: after painting, it would mean cutting a chase into a finished wall.

Finishes that survive a change of tenants

Over a couple of years a tenant hangs pictures, moves furniture and rolls an office chair across the floor. We paint the walls with washable paint in a light shade that is easy to buy again a few years later. Tiles and flooring come from permanent collections, not leftover clearance stock, so that a few pieces can be replaced later. A picture rail can go under the ceiling: the tenant hangs whatever they like from it, and the walls stay free of holes.

At turnover between tenants a cosmetic refresh is usually enough: touching up the walls, replacing the silicone, adjusting the doors and fittings, and replacing the flooring in the walkways. What a full cosmetic renovation includes and how long it takes for different floor areas is set out on the page about cosmetic renovation. If the apartment is still in frame condition, with no finishing yet, we first bring the whole of it up to a liveable state, as described on the page about renovating an apartment from white frame.

How much a rental apartment renovation costs in Batumi

The price depends on the condition we start from. A cosmetic refresh between tenants costs from 210 to 300 ₾ per m² of the apartment's floor area: that is labour and basic materials, meaning filler, primer and paint. We don't touch the pipes or wiring in this kind of work, and the flooring, doors and light fittings are priced separately, according to the models you choose. A turnkey renovation from white frame costs 570–720 ₾ per m², which covers labour and rough-work materials, with finishing materials priced separately.

If only part of the apartment needs freshening up, we price it item by item: painting walls in two coats costs 23–36 ₾ per m² of wall, laying laminate 20–30 ₾ per m² of floor, and post-renovation cleaning 12–18 ₾ per m². Furniture and appliances are not included in these figures: at mid-range they add another 360–480 ₾ per m².

The price goes up with new windows, gas heating with radiators, moving wet areas and a made-to-measure kitchen. It comes down if the developer's tiles and sanitary ware are kept and the ceilings are simple. If the pipes and wiring in a resale apartment are due for replacement, that is already a full renovation with its own estimate. The final cost is set after the site measurement and once the estimate is agreed.

Who finds the tenant and takes over the apartment

Finding a tenant, the lease and the inventory are handled by our property management team: see the pages about screening tenants before move-in and about long-term letting with a property manager. We hand the apartment over after cleaning, together with the handover file, so a tradesman called out to a breakdown can see where the pipes and cables run. An apartment that is let to tourists in summer needs a different list of works, and it is collected on the page about renovating for short-term rental.