Electronic Rent Collection

[Lynn Hill-Torres]

Hello BiggerPockets family.

We are working with a landlord, managing one of her tenants as a way to gain experience  for when we finish renovating our property.  I remember in Brandon Turner's book, he said one way to get experience is to work with  a  landlord . So I was wondering if anyone had any really good apps or ways of collecting rent electronically. Right now the landlord goes to each tenant collects in person and I surely don't want to do that. Gas and time is too precious to waste.

Any helpful tips would be much appreciated.

Oh yeah, So the property is in Baltimore City, Maryland, in the Bel Air/Edison area. It's a Cmarket with C -type tenants. In addition, she is renting out rooms in the property and most of the tenants are more on the low income side. We are hoping to get late payers paying on time and for people who haven't been paying, to get them out.

Any help or thoughts? Thanks in advance. Let me know if you need more info.

[Rick S.]

Originally posted by @Devin Morgan:

I've used both erentpayment and cozy for electronic payment. They both take about the same amount of time to clear in your bank account. Erentpayment pros to me is it has more options, it can report to the credit bureaus if the tenants choose, and it can automatically add a late fee of your choice after whatever day. Cons it cost $3 per transaction which can get to be a bit much as you increase properties. Also the interface isn't that great. Cozy is more user friendly, and it's free. Plus you can do applications and screening through them (fee). Bad is that if you want to add extra fees like late fees etc you have to manually do it. I switched to Cozy due to glowing reviews but either will suffice. 

Honestly and for the person that said most of the tenants won't have bank accounts or won't pay online that's BS. These days people are moving towards automation and convenience. Most people have smart phones especially in C neighborhoods. Furthermore they may at the very least have a prepaid card. Most people would consider it easier to pay online or on their phone versus going to the bank getting a money order etc. I believe older people prefer traditional methods though.

 Hi Devin,

Thank you very much for the feedback as we appreciate it and I am going to message you to see if you can provide additional details on how we could improve the interface if you have time.  Our standard processing time is 2-3 business days so I believe that is quicker than their standard option but similar to their express option, which they charge a fee for.

The automatic late fee is a very popular option along with the automatic partial payment block for our customers, especially if they have served a 3-day notice or are in an eviction proceeding.  We are already in the process of adding the other two bureaus to our credit reporting for tenants.

We do understand your pricing comment so we are working to add the following features in our next big release, which we hope to have done within the next few weeks:

1. Monthly Pricing Option: $10 per month and it includes up to 5 transactions.  Any additional transactions are $1 each.  This will work really well for landlords processing more than 2-3 payments.

2. Integrated Background/Credit check: We already offer customizable online applications so you will be able to request a background/credit check right from our system.  

We are really excited for these two features to add even more options for our customers.  The project has expanded to include some other updates that we found to be necessary with the changes so it has taken longer than expected but we are definitely getting close finally.

Thank you again for the feedback!