Acceptance Letter and Deposit to Hold Question

[Karen Johnson]

Hello,

I've been screening tenants and have decided on who to accept for my rental. I realize, I don't have a plan for a couple of things though:

1 - Acceptance Letter. I have written it an think I'm just gonig to send it via e-mail. Does that seem reasonable? Prospective tenants are in state, but not exactly local. I guess I'm trying to be considerate in not making them drive over for something I can reasonably email, or make them wait for the letter in the mail to find out if accepted. Is email acceptable or should I be doing something else? Also, if I email it, should I include handwritten signature? Is that necessary?

2 - Deposit to hold. Again, tenants are not local. I'm thinking about requesting an electronic payment, but not sure how best to do this. My acceptance letter gives 24 hours to make the deposit, which wouldn't work for something like cozy.co which will take 2-3 days to complete the setup for the tenants. It's what I'm ultimately planning to use to collect rent, though. Should I extend timeline for deposit and use cozy to collect, so the tenants get familiar with it now? Or should I use something like paypal or popmoney (or something else)? It would be nice if they could just send me an ETF payment, but I know not all banks make this easy to do online.

PS - I know I should probably have figured this out before now. My previous tenant was local and handed me deposit to hold when filling out the application, so I've didn't have to think about it the last time. I'll be better prepared next time.

Thanks in advance!

[Account Closed]

Hi @Karen Johnson

Yes, emailing the acceptance letter is fine. Good call, collecting the hold-deposit. I have handled this a few ways for tenants who aren't close. 1. If you have an account with a national bank or one with several locations in your state, you can give them your account number and ask them to direct deposit into your account. This is easy and convenient for both parties. 2. Depending on who you bank with, they likely have a way to "request money" online 3. You could send a PayPal invoice and just mark "from a friend" so you don't incur the fee. 

You can also use an e-sign service like hellosign for the lease docs. It is free for a limited number of monthly docs. We use it all the time. 

I hope that helps. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask.