Rental Turnovers in Cobb County — One Crew for the Inside and the Outside

A turnover normally takes four contractors — a hauler, a painter, someone for the repairs, and a yard crew — each with their own schedule, their own invoice and their own reasons for being late. We do all of it with one crew, one point of contact and one itemized quote, and we work to your lease or listing date rather than our own calendar.

Turnovers between tenants, cleanouts, repairs and outside work for landlords, investors and agents around Kennesaw and Cobb County.

How the turnover actually runs

One crew holds the property from key handover to rent-ready — cleanout, paint, repairs and the outside — in consecutive days on site rather than five trades taking turns. That is the whole difference. The seven to fourteen days a turnover normally takes is mostly waiting between contractors, not working.

You get one point of contact, one itemized quote with the scope written out room by room, and a date.

This year 2MT has run full turnovers across Cobb and north Fulton — whole-house repaints, cleanouts, repairs and the exterior reset — for owners and investors who have come back for the next property. References available on request. Fully insured; certificate of insurance on request.

Investor Services

The expensive part of a vacancy is not the work, it is the days. A typical turnover needs a hauler, a painter, someone for the repairs and a yard crew — four schedules, four invoices, four reasons it slips. We do all of it with one crew, one point of contact and one itemized quote, and we work to your listing or lease date rather than our own calendar. Repeat volume is priced accordingly.

1. The cleanout

Furniture, appliances, garage and attic — everything hauled off in one visit. It goes first because nothing else can start around somebody else’s abandoned sofa.

2. Paint and repairs

Interior painting, drywall repair and patching, blinds, door hardware and bulbs. This is the bulk of most turnovers, and it is the work 2MT does more of than anything else.

3. The outside reset

Beds edged and topped, overgrowth cut back, exterior washed down, debris gone. Curb appeal is what gets the unit shown.

What the empty days actually cost

The line above is easy to assert, so here are somebody else’s numbers behind it.

Northpoint Asset Management puts the average Atlanta vacancy at 30 to 45 days, and the rent lost across it at $2,000 to $3,500. The make-ready work — cleaning, paint, carpet, minor repairs — runs about $1,100 to $3,300. Their conservative total is $3,500 to $6,500 a turnover. Published market figures, not ours.

Which means the trades are roughly half the bill and the calendar is the other half. Take two weeks off a turnover and you have saved more than most quotes differ by — and those two weeks are almost always lost in the handoffs between contractors rather than inside any one of them.

One crew doing the cleanout, the interior and the outside work removes the handoffs. That is the whole proposition, and it is why we quote a turnover as one job on one schedule rather than as four trades you have to sequence yourself.

Between turns, on the properties you already manage

Gutter Cleaning

Cleared by hand, downspouts flushed, debris hauled off. Priced by house size, not by guess.

Yard Cleanup & Hauling

Overgrown lots, brush and storm debris cut down and hauled off the property.

Retaining Walls

Block walls built on a proper base with drainage behind them, so they stay put.

What a turnover usually involves

• Cleanout — furniture, appliances, garage and attic, everything hauled off

• Interior painting, drywall repair and patching

• Flooring and cosmetic repairs

• Yard reset — overgrowth cleared, beds edged, mulch or pine straw, gutters cleaned

• Demolition of decks, sheds and built-ins where the unit needs it

Priced line by line before anything starts, so an owner can see exactly what the turn cost and why. Fully insured, certificate of insurance on request.

What we do not do

We do not do exterior painting. We do not take on weekly mowing contracts — we are a project crew, not a maintenance service. Pressure washing is done by a specialist rather than our own crew: the same person on every job, someone we work with regularly. If something on your list falls outside what we do, we will tell you at the quote rather than halfway through the job.

If you manage properties for other people

Fully insured, general liability, certificate on request. Registered Georgia LLC. Every job is quoted in writing before it starts with labor and materials itemized separately, so it can be passed straight to an owner without translation. We are happy to work inside whatever maintenance system you use — and if you have a vendor application, send it.

How we work a make-ready

Different words for the same job depending on who is asking. Owners call it a turnover. Property managers call it a make-ready. The large single-family operators call it a turn. It is one piece of work, and this is how we run it.

We work to your rent-ready date, not our calendar. Tell us when it has to be listed and we build the sequence backwards from there — cleanout, then paint and repairs, then flooring, then the yard — so no trade is working around another one.

One scope of work, itemized by trade. One walkthrough, one written scope, labor and materials separated line by line. It can go straight to an owner or into an approval workflow without being rewritten, and it can be compared against last year’s turn on the same street.

One point of contact for the whole house. The inside and the outside are the same crew and the same phone number. Nobody is coordinating a hauler, a painter, a handyman and a yard company against a single deadline.

Before and after photos on every job, without being chased for them. We take them anyway. If your system wants them attached to the work order, tell us at the start and they will be there when the invoice is.

We will work inside your system. A maintenance portal, a work order platform, or an email and a purchase order — whichever it is, that is fine, and we would rather learn yours than ask you to learn ours. If you have a vendor packet, send it and we will fill it in.

Georgia’s deposit law sets the clock on a turnover, and decides who pays for the paint

Most of what is written online about security deposits and repainting was written for another state. These are the Georgia sections themselves, read from the Code in September 2026. It is the statute, not legal advice — a specific charge in dispute is a conversation for your own attorney.

Three business days to produce an itemized damage list. O.C.G.A. § 44-7-33(b) requires the landlord or the landlord’s agent to inspect within three business days of the lease ending and the tenant vacating, or of surrender and acceptance, whichever comes first — and to compile a comprehensive list of the damage that is the basis for any charge against the deposit, together with the estimated dollar value of each item. The dollar value is the part people miss. A list of scuffs and holes without numbers beside them is not what the statute asks for.

Missing the deadline forfeits the whole claim, not just part of it. § 44-7-35(b) says that failing to provide those lists and written statements inside the periods set by § 44-7-34 works a forfeiture of all of the landlord’s rights to withhold any portion of the deposit — and of the right to bring an action against the tenant for damage to the premises at all. Bad-faith retention runs to three times the sum improperly withheld plus attorney’s fees under § 44-7-35(a). That is what makes the three-day list worth doing properly.

Ordinary wear and tear cannot come out of the deposit. § 44-7-34(a) says no deposit may be retained to cover ordinary wear and tear resulting from use of the premises for the purpose intended, provided there was no negligence, carelessness, accident or abuse. Georgia does not define the term in the statute and publishes no depreciation schedule against it. The practical effect on a turn is that a routine repaint between tenants generally sits with the owner rather than the tenant — so the levers that are actually left are how fast it happens and how clean the number is.

The deposit has a ceiling now. The Safe at Home Act, HB 404, took effect 1 July 2024 and caps a residential security deposit at the equivalent of two months’ rent, for leases entered into or renewed on or after that date. It also requires three business days’ notice to pay before an eviction filing for nonpayment. A smaller deposit is less cushion against a hard turn, which pushes the same way: get the scope priced and the work done rather than argue about the deduction.

The small-owner exemption is narrower than people assume. § 44-7-36 disapplies §§ 44-7-31, 44-7-32, 44-7-33 and 44-7-35 for units owned by a natural person where that person, their spouse and their minor children collectively own ten or fewer rental units — and it falls away entirely the moment management, rent collection included, is performed by a third party for a fee. Note which section is not on that list. § 44-7-34, the return of the deposit and the wear-and-tear rule, applies either way.

Where we fit. The three-day list wants a dollar figure beside each item, and that is a contractor’s number rather than an owner’s estimate. We quote in writing before anything starts, labor and materials itemized separately, and we can walk a vacated house and turn that around inside the window. If the repaint is the owner’s cost rather than the tenant’s, the calendar and the quote are the only things left to manage — which is the job we are set up to do. Sources: O.C.G.A. §§ 44-7-33, 44-7-34, 44-7-35 and 44-7-36, and 2024 Ga. Laws HB 404.

The cleanout comes first

Between tenants the cleanout is usually what decides whether anything else can start. We clear it in one visit, so the painter is not working around somebody’s abandoned sofa.

The outside is what gets it shown

Curb appeal is what gets the unit shown. Beds edged and topped, overgrowth cut back, and the front of the property looking like somebody is responsible for it.