Glossary

Unit Turn (Make-Ready)

Also known as: Make-Ready, Turn

The process of preparing a vacated multifamily unit for re-leasing — cleaning, repairs, painting, and any renovation-program upgrades — measured from move-out to move-in-ready, with turn time and turn cost tracked as core operational KPIs.

Operators distinguish routine make-ready turns, which restore a unit to leasable condition through standard cleaning, paint touch-up, and minor repair, from value-add renovation turns, which execute the full renovation scope of work — new flooring, countertops, appliances, and fixtures — while the unit is vacant, taking materially longer and costing more but generating the renovation premium. Average turn time is a closely watched leading indicator of vacancy loss, since every additional day a unit sits down directly reduces occupancy and revenue, and institutional multifamily operators commonly target five- to ten-day turns for standard make-ready work while tracking the full turn-time distribution, not just the average, to catch outlier units dragging down performance. Rushing a turn to minimize downtime can undermine renovation quality and durability, and thus the achievable rent premium and the unit's subsequent useful life before it needs to be renovated again, which is why turn-time KPIs are typically paired with quality-control inspection and warranty-callback metrics rather than optimized in isolation.