Fee to drop off rent to office instead of direct debit.

[Kimberly Hamada]

Is it normal for a property manager to charge 25.00$ a month if I drop my rent check to his office instead of agreeing to direct debit from my checking? 

[Michael Hayworth]

Originally posted by @Cody L.:

Lol. Your manager is awesome. I want to hire her.

My ops person wanted to turn on a connivence fee for online payments. I said "no" but added a fee for tree based 1800s style payments.

I hate non online pay. I'd like to charge people at least $10 for making my manager deal with tree pieces

It's hard for me to believe that @John Anderson manages many properties. Physical checks suck, and money orders or cash are even worse. A physical check requires my bookkeeper to take 3 minutes out of her day to run the deposit through our Chase check scanner. But money order or cash require her to actually drive to the bank to make a deposit. Sure, that was common 10 years ago, but it's not 2007 anymore. But more importantly, those forms or payment depend on the tenant to remember to make his/her payment, and get it there while the office is open. We don't want that - we want payment to come out automatically every month.

We make it clear in our lease agreement that the stated rent amount is for auto-pay, which can be ACH thru our bank, or electronic payments thru eRentPayment.com. (BTW, eRent allows tenants the option of reporting the credit bureaus, which has helped several good tenants rebuild their credit after divorce or other bad life circumstance.) If they want to do a check, cash or money order, it's an additional $25/mo. 

The other nice thing this allows us to do is break up payments if necessary. I have one tenant who's a very sweet lady who has trouble managing her money. She's a teacher who gets paid twice a month, so we broke up her rent into two monthly payments. The school district pays her via direct deposit on the 1st and 15th, and we take rent right out of the account immediately on those days.