Refresh Cycle
Harvey W James — How we run the Redecoration & Refresh Cycle
Void days are the landlord's money. A property that sits empty for fifteen days on a £3,500 per month rent costs the landlord around £1,700 in lost rent, plus £150 to £200 in council tax and standing charges the tenant is no longer covering. We treat void days as our accountability because, in practical terms, they are. You have handed us the property; the days it is not earning are days we are answerable for. This page sets out how we plan the days it sits empty rather than absorb them as they arise.
Premium new-build flats let quickly at the right price and hold that price for the first tenancy. The second tenancy is usually still strong. By the third, decoration has had three to five years of normal use, carpets have absorbed wear, kitchens and bathrooms show the marks of daily life. Nothing here is fault; it is the property ageing through use, exactly as expected. The point of the refresh cycle is that this ageing is predictable, plannable, and reversible if it is addressed before the property starts to drift. A planned refresh holds the rent and the applicant pool. A deferred one does not.
The portfolio profile this is calibrated to
The schedule and allowances on this page are calibrated to the Harvey W James portfolio: premium new-build flats, typically one to three beds, with wooden flooring in receptions, halls, kitchens and dining areas, tiled bathrooms (full or near-full height), and carpets confined to the bedrooms. Most are furnished or semi-furnished. Tenants are in the upper income deciles for the area and the portfolio sees gentle wear because deposit recovery is taken seriously by people for whom it represents real money.
That profile matters. The major refresh in our stock is dominated by paint on walls and ceilings, bedroom carpet, and sealant and grout refresh in bathrooms. It does not involve stair-carpet uplift, painted-bathroom redecoration, or whole-property carpet relay. Those are the costs that drive longer void allowances in generic letting playbooks, and they are not in scope for the properties we manage. If you have a Victorian terrace, a maisonette, a multi-bath house, or an HMO, the cycle still applies, but the allowances and the day-count adjust at instruction. We say so up front rather than pretending one number fits every property.
The two-track decision: Minor and Major
Every refresh sorts into one of two tracks.
Minor refresh covers touch-ups, single-room redecoration, partial deep clean, sealant replacement. It is completed within 28 days of the new tenant's check-in, around the tenant where access is agreed in writing, and produces no void. The Lettings team leads because the priority is getting the property back on the market; the Aftercare team produces the contractor quote against the landlord's float and supervises the works.
Major refresh covers full property redecoration, multiple rooms, carpet replacement, soft furnishings refresh. It is expected approximately every five years on good-quality decoration in our portfolio, requires a ten-day void allowance, and is scheduled between the checkout date and the start of the four-week marketing window, not inside it. The marketing window is for marketing; the void is for the works. The Aftercare and Lettings teams co-own a Major refresh. Aftercare leads on the works (contractors, sequencing, sign-off); Lettings runs the parallel marketing track (valuation, photoshoot, listing copy) against the same dates so the property hits market on the planned Monday, not a day later.
The Lettings Manager and the Aftercare Manager agree the refresh track jointly at the point the outgoing tenant gives notice, or earlier at the mid-term inspection if the calendar trigger is already met. Two teams, one plan, one set of dates.
The ten-day Major refresh schedule
The ten-day allowance is not aspirational. It is the published day-by-day schedule below, calibrated to the portfolio profile above. Where contractor capacity allows two parallel trades, days 8 and 9 compress into day 8 and day 9 becomes buffer. The buffer is the difference between a clean ten-day handover and an overrun.
| Day | Activity |
|---|---|
| Day 0 | Outgoing tenant checkout. Inventory clerk attends; keys handed over. Lettings notified, Aftercare on standby. |
| Day 1 | Aftercare property inspection. Snag list compiled. Urgent issues (damp, leaks, pests) instructed the same day. Contractor briefed on the works scope. |
| Days 2 to 3 | Pre-works deep clean (the cleaning-before-paint rule below). Carpets uplifted in bedrooms where replacement is in scope. Surfaces prepared. |
| Days 4 to 7 | Redecoration: filling, sanding, priming, two coats. Walls, ceilings, woodwork. Rooms run in parallel where contractor capacity allows. |
| Day 8 | Bedroom carpet relay where in scope. Sealant and grout refresh in bathrooms. Minor joinery touch-ups (kitchen unit doors, scuffed skirting, door edges). |
| Day 9 | Post-works light clean. Snag-list walk-through with the Aftercare Manager. Contractor remediates any post-works defects. |
| Day 10 | Final sign-off. Photoshoot booked for Day 11 or 12 if photos are not yet held. Lettings accepts the property as marketable. |
The four-week marketing window runs in parallel, not after. Lettings sets the available date as the Monday immediately after Aftercare sign-off, and the advert goes live four weeks before that date. That is typically two to three weeks before the outgoing tenant has even moved out, with the existing tenant in occupation under the cooperative-viewings rule. Marketing produces applicants for a void window the refresh works then run inside. The Four Week Rule explains the marketing-launch mechanic in detail.
Sequencing: clean comes before paint
Cleaning is performed before redecoration begins. The reasons are practical and they save the landlord money. Dust and residue on walls cause paint adhesion problems and lead to peel, patchiness and a return visit. A dust-free environment is required for a clean finish, and redecoration disturbs settled dust, so a deep clean after redecoration disturbs the new finish. Sequencing in the right order shortens the total void: a clean-then-redecorate void is consistently shorter than a redecorate-then-clean-then-touch-up void.
The Aftercare Manager briefs every contractor on the sequencing at instruction. If a contractor proposes a different order, the Aftercare Manager re-briefs; if the contractor insists, the Aftercare Manager substitutes.
The sign-off gate
No property leaves the works stage without a documented sign-off. The gate has four artefacts: the pre-works snag list (prepared at the Day 1 inspection), the post-works snag list (Day 9 walk-through), photographic evidence of each room, and an Aftercare sign-off form completed by the Aftercare Manager. The contractor invoice is released against sign-off, not before. Until sign-off, Lettings does not photograph, does not commence viewings of the vacant property, and does not confirm the available date with the new tenant. The sign-off is the gate; without it the ten-day allowance is not enforceable and the standard collapses to "best endeavours". The same director-level discipline that governs higher-value works at Harvey W James applies here, set out in full on the Aftercare page.
Mid-term inspections as the early-warning surface
The mid-term inspection, a six-monthly cadence run by Aftercare, is the primary early-warning surface for the cycle. Tenancies are now periodic from inception under the Renters' Rights Act 2025, so there is no "renewal" stage; the mid-term inspection is the recurring moment at which decoration age and condition get formally recorded. The Aftercare Manager records decoration age against four bands (under 1 year, under 3 years, under 5 years, over 5 years), and a property in the "over 5 years" band is flagged automatically for the refresh conversation.
The recommendation is one of three: no action, Minor refresh at the next tenant change, or Major refresh at the next vacant possession. Where the recommendation is Major, the Aftercare Manager provides an indicative quote band and the ten-day void allowance, and the Lettings Manager is looped in so the joint plan and dates are sketched there and then. If you decline, the decline is recorded without judgement and the conversation re-opens at the next inspection.
What we publish, and what we don't
We publish the void allowance up front because the void is the part of the conversation that lands as a surprise on landlords most often. We share the cost band for a Major refresh at instruction, from the Aftercare rates schedule reviewed quarterly against the approved contractor panel and held by the Aftercare Manager. We don't publish refresh cost figures on this page because they vary by scope, stock, and contractor pricing rotation; quoting a single number on a web page would be precise where it should be honest. Where end-of-tenancy condition warrants a deposit deduction, that claim runs through the deposit returns process. The cycle governs the works; the deposit process governs the claim.
Why the cycle matters more under the Renters' Rights Act
Under the Act, the marketing price you set at re-let is in practical terms the price for the life of the tenancy. Section 13 (HA1988 s.13) follows the local market, not the landlord's wishes; Section 21 was abolished on 1 May 2026; there is no "renewal" event at which the landlord can reset the figure. Re-letting after a tenant moves out is in practice the only moment at which the landlord can re-market and reset upward against a current valuation.
That makes the condition of the property at re-let the single most consequential lever a landlord controls. The refresh cycle exists to make sure that lever is pulled at the right moment, with the property in the right condition, photographed and marketed against the Four Week Rule. A landlord who lets the cycle drift forfeits the lever; a landlord who runs it on plan compounds the value of the property across tenancies. Where the available date is not forced by the outgoing tenant's notice and a Major refresh is on the cards, the re-let can be planned to land in the August enquiries peak, covered in engineering the August re-let under the RRA.
A note on what this standard is built on
The ten-day allowance, the day-by-day schedule and the planning calendar above are a forward-looking standard. Most of the properties on our managed portfolio are new-build and have not yet reached their first Major refresh cycle. The four operational metrics by which we calibrate the standard against real Majors as they run (actual void days, recommendation action rate, declined-versus-accepted void delta, marketing-launch hit rate) are tracked internally and will be reported in the quarterly landlord briefings as the data accumulates. We publish the standard now because the post-RRA market will not wait for a back-derived version, and the discipline of publishing then measuring is itself the data-backed move.
Where to look next
- Landlords — the full proposition, fee architecture and service tiers.
- Property Management — the operational pillars and annual cycle this fits inside.
- Aftercare — the High-Value Works Review process behind the sign-off gate.
- New-Build Specialists — why new-build stock lets, ages and re-lets differently.
- Deposit Returns — the adjudication-grade process where refresh-cycle works overlap with a deposit claim.
- The Renters' Rights Act 2025 — the regime under which condition at re-let became the lever.
- The Four Week Rule — the parallel marketing-launch mechanic.
- Engineering the August re-let under the RRA — the timing option where the outgoing tenant has flexibility.
Sources
- Harvey W James Redecoration & Refresh Cycle Playbook (28 May 2026).
- Essential Terms and Charges v2.1.5 §73 (Redecoration & Cleaning Plan at Checkout), §41 (Section 13 Rent Reviews), §44 (Mid-Tenancy Inspection), §68.1 / §68.2 (Consent-Based Re-Letting), §69 (Section 8 Grounds).
- HWJ Lettings Valuation Guide v2.0 §4.1 to §4.3 (Four Week Rule), Timing Appendix §1 (August enquiry peak).
- Renters' Rights Act 2025; Housing Act 1988 sections 4A, 8, 13 (as amended); Protection from Eviction Act 1977 s.5(1ZA)(a).
This page describes the Redecoration & Refresh Cycle as Harvey W James Ltd operates it at the date of publication. It is general information about how a managed-portfolio refresh cycle runs in a premium new-build context. It is not legal, tax or financial advice. Where the Essential Terms and Charges document and this page differ, the Essential Terms and Charges prevail. For a specific property or tenancy please speak to the Aftercare or Lettings teams directly. Last reviewed against Essential Terms and Charges v2.1.5 (7 May 2026).