At our REI Landlord monthly meeting, a lot of the other landlords we expounding the virtues of the new vinyl plank flooring available, specifically Allure. They indicate the lifespan is quite a bit longer than carpet, and survives turnovers.

We researched it, and found it needed a pretty pristine I.e. perfectly level start for it to be successful and not let the imperfections come through the final installation.

What other brands would work on OSB subfloors and also slabs? Some of our rentals have slabs, and some have the traditional subfloors. We want to use the click in place, rather than the glue or nail down types.

Any suggestions on brands and what experience you have had with those brands?

We have looked at Shaw (one of our installers says this is what he uses and recommends), Tarkett and SuperFast.

Thanks Peeps!

N&P,

Allure with sticky strips. Laid THOUSANDSSS of SF and still extremely happy with it.

Yes the floor needs to be smooth. Not hard to do.

My carpet shampoo bill dropped from $5000 per year to $200.

Almost every lease signing the new residents tell me they chose this house because it was carpet free. Carpet is OUT.

I've never used the click Allure. Costs about 50% more and almost everyone on this site who has used it says they hate it. Brittle, hard to install, etc.

I use the glue strip Allure floating floor that runs about $1.79/sq ft. It's an excellent flooring choice because it is highly water and stain resistant, and it's easy to repair damaged pieces. Yes, floor prep is required, but the same will be true for many other floor types.

First glue strip vinyl planking we put is in now in it's 8th year and looks great. Survived a dog for the first four years.

Other options are Lumber Liquidators or Lowes. Click Vinyl Floor is a great choice. Also the thickness of the surface of the floor is important. Surface Thickness 1.5mm, 2 mm, 3 mm, 4mm, 5 mm, and 7 mm.

Consider a 1,000 square foot at $2.99 thats $2,999 plus underlay padding about $700 . At $3,700 this is a 7mm Luxury Click Vinyl Flooring from Lumber Liquidators. That's $33.33 costs per square yard in carpet terms and how many times would you have replaced the carpet PLUS professionally cleaned the carpet too. You want to make sure the subfloor wood or concrete has no bad surface that will damage the Click Vinyl. Can a tenant damage the floor dragging furniture across it yes they can and if you are worried about it. Then paint the concrete floor and call it a day. Concrete is hard on the feet but painted concrete may be better on your budget as a landlord.

IF you have a higher end rental and want the look of wood try Cali Bamboo stranded flooring from Lowes. The hardness of the bamboo is better than oak or maple.

The problem with carpet is the allergens that it keeps in the material. PLUS if there are spills on carpet it can create problems with the pad as well.

Spills on the Click Vinyl Floor are not going to be ignored by a tenant like a spill on the carpet. Cat or dog urine in carpet tear it out is the ONLY solution PUS clean the subfloor as well.

We prefer laminate it looks better and we also prefer floating floors.

Laminate looks great until it doesn't. We have laminate flooring in several places (pre-Allure days) and it still looks great in 99% of them. My son has Costco Laminate in his house installed in 2002 and it's in PERFECT condition, looks new.

In the 1% of our places that have had 1) water leaks or 2) pet urine issues, it's not quite so perfect.

Plus it is VERY loud if on a second floor, and dogs slip and fall on it - it's slippery.

Since switching to Allure, I've only seen one house with actual damage (and they are still there and think I don't know!) They dragged a recliner with a bad foot across the floor and there are deep scratches on the Allure, hidden by furniture.

We'll deal when they someday leave, it might just require a furniture pen stain to color the scratch.

Otherwise, the only other issue we have had with Allure is with the click-lock stuff in our own bedroom. Difficult to install, big gap formed in the middle of the room for no reason. And two, again in our own home, we installed Allure over padding to try to soften sound for the downstairs tenant. Not a good idea. It's been several years but there are dents and dings in the floor, it was not meant to be installed over pad so totally our fault.