Christian OsgoodCEO, Multifamily Strategy · CEO at Multifamily Strategy

Cost of Renovations for an Unit During a Long Time Frame

9 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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1:26

In a brief interview, Christian Osgood explains how renovation costs for residential units can vary widely, typically ranging from $1,000 to $30,000. He emphasizes that the scope of work—whether it involves only cosmetic updates like painting and deep cleaning or more extensive tasks such as plumbing, electrical work, flooring replacement, cabinet installation, and shower surround changes—drives the cost. Cosmetic turns usually cost $1,000–$2,000, while projects that require major trades can quickly reach the tens of thousands. When the condition of a unit is unknown, Osgood recommends using a placeholder budget of $10,000, to be refined after a professional assessment. Although a specific timeline isn’t detailed, he notes that the duration likewise depends on the extent of the work and the involvement of specialized trades.

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How much do you think renovations will cost updating some units, and how long would the time frame for a unit?
It totally depends on the unit, and I, I try to always give an actual answer to every question. Unit turns will cost typically somewhere between $1,000 to $30,000 depending on the unit. If you're good, because if you're doing, if you're doing a thing like we got to do plumbing and we're going to, uh, you know, we need to change shower surrounds, cabinets, uh, easy to get into the tens of thousands of dollars. If you're like, hey, we need to do a deep clean and we need to touch up paint, that's really inexpensive. So it really depends on what the turn is and what the project is, just because plumbing is expensive, electric is expensive, hardware is expensive. Whether you're doing those things or not is going to depend on the project quite a bit. So it's a large swing. But generally speaking, if you are doing a turn where it's all cosmetic, nothing major, you just need to prep an almost ready unit, it's going to cost you like $1,000 to $2,000 to get it looking great. If it's one where you're, you know, you're replacing flooring, you're actually doing contractor work, so you know you're updating them. If you have absolutely no idea what the cost is, you're going to get it quoted from a professional, but just use $10,000 as a placeholder. If you have absolutely no idea but you know work needs to be done, it'll probably be less than that, but that's what I budget if I'm like, I really don't know what the condition looks like. We're going to assume 10, and then I'll refine that as we go.