How do you automate your rental business?

Question

I love automating my rental business. Here is a short list of what I have automated so far:

1) Showing pre-screening: After getting some ideas from other Bigger Pockets users, I automated gathering information from potential tenants before scheduling a screening. (PM me for details, if I mention the details in the forms the post is  deleted for self promotion)

2) Lease signing- I use DocuSign or other services to electronically sign the leases and other documents.

3) I collect all of my rent via ACH using U.S. Bank Single Point Essentials ($35/month) - never a late payment, I never check the mail

4) Tenant reminders: I use boomerang to schedule recurring reminders to the tenant  - i.e. change the furnace filter, winterize the home, etc - I ask the tenant to respond when the task is complete and boomerang will also remind me if they don't respond.

5) (Manual and preventative) I automatically replace certain components before their end-of-life to prevent tenant calls if things break - i.e. All faucets and toilet parts every 5 years, etc

I'm experimenting with creating a chat bot to allow the tenants to create work orders/repair requests via voice call, text message, facebook, or kik.  I'm sure I can do more with the chat bot, I just haven't thought of it yet. =)

I'd like to automate/outsource showings and move-in/move-out inspections - has anyone attempted this in the past? How did it go?

What tools and techniques do you use to automate your business?

Michelle Bright · Answer

This forum is great. I am currently using Tenant Cloud to manage my 6 doors from 3 hours away. For $9 a month they provide rent payments, maintenance requests, messaging, screening, property listing and much more. I have been using them since October and have very little complaints.

One tip that I do is I make sure to only use one card for all my purchases. This is of course separate from my personal banking accounts.

I also use the same 24 hour home repair company. They service a property's AC and HVAC once a yr for $195 ($99 if you only have HVAC) and it enrolls you in their "Peace of Mind" program. It give us 24 hr service if needed without the 24 hr price. If they have to go out on holidays, nights or weekends their is no extra charge than if it were a Tuesday at 2 pm. Also if we do have them repair anything we get 10% off. They are extremely professional so the cost of having them go out verses trying to find the cheapest guy on craigslist is worth it to us. If you are in Fort Wayne, IN they are Korte Does It All.

Tenant Cloud and the 24 hr company help us manage our properties from a far pretty easily. We have only been doing it for a few months but I can say long distance land lording can be done!

Christopher B. · Answer

That's a good deal. Wish I could find a plumber to offer something similar. I recently had a plumber want $700 to change a toilet out in a rental, insanity.

Another idea is to build the renters insurance charge into your lease. Can call it a Building Fee, then enroll the tenant in your renters insurance program.  This will ensure they have renters insurance and you don't have to keep track if theirs is up to date.

Also, put your security deposits into an interest bearing account. Free money.

Peter Tverdov · Answer

-I collect all rent online using Cozy or Venmo.

-Starting in June all maintenance requests will need to be emailed to an email I provided them (really is being done so I can stop waking up to late night text messages)

-I don't want to automate too much. I actually prefer to sign the Lease in person and spend 30 minutes going over it (I do student housing). Most of the tenants I am signing have never signed a Lease before so I want to educate them while setting expectations.

Jacob Price · Answer

I'm not sure of the laws in your state, but in Virginia you can't keep the interest from the security deposits. In fact on security deposits held over 13 months you have to pay interest at the federal base minus 4 points. This is in Virginia, but I'd recommend everyone checking there state laws concerning security deposits.

Christopher B. · Answer

I'm working on the same things right now. One thought, if you are already paying $35/month for payment processing for 8 units you can move to a pm software like rentec or buildium for only $10 more and get the same feature plus many more, like a resident portal for maintenance requests, payments, document sharing, etc. They also offer digital lease signing built-in to the system which is nice. I use Buildium, it costs $5/lease but I just built that into the application fees. ACH is .50 and the cost is paid by the tenant. Same cost as a stamp, so pretty easy sell.

It's always a work in progress but some things I've begun working on:

1)ACH payments

2) PM software; website, online applications, digital leases, maintenance requests through resident portal. Auto reminders for lease renewals, quarterly/annual preventative maintenance programs. For maintenance reminders I have created a checklist in excel and attached it to my reminders fot easy reference.

3) Communications; I've built email/letter templates from simple lease renewal reminders to a welcome letter for new residents reminding them of policies, procedures, and provides helpful info. The templates autofill with unit and resident names. I have also set-up automatic rent payment email reminders that are sent to each tenant at the end of the month.

4) It's a work in progress but I am building a unit materials and info document. I attach these to each property in my software for easy reference. I can quickly look what size filter, paint color, type of tile, etc for each unit. I have moved to std materials for each unit but it's never perfect. This helps maintenance and turnover times.

5) Showings; I set-up an open house for showings or appts back to back. Still playing with this but it has saved me time vs giving individual showings. I also collect a bit of data and outline all of my qualifications and fees before showing the units to pre-screen tenants and eliminate tire kickers.

I've been working on this off and on for the last couple weeks. A lot of it is setting standard procedures and building systems around them. I'll use trial and error and by the end of 2018 have an exact system (documented) to make growth easier and eventually hand-off to an in-house manager.

Christopher B. · Answer

Good points. I thought about this a bit after I posted as well. While I know property mgmt companies do it here everyone should look up the laws before doing so.

Paul Salmela · Answer

Seeing what you wrote is getting me motivated to become more automated!  Here's one big change I made...  Two years ago I requested an account with Knockrentals.com and they gave me one for free.  I use this to schedule all my showings and it has been a real timesaver.  All my units are occupied when I do showings so I work out an hour window (once or twice a week) with my tenant, put the timeframe for showings in knock, and all the showings automatically get scheduled during the hour window (and I don't need to respond to e-mails).  I typically have multiple people showing up during showing which isn't ideal but I average 2 showings to rent a property which is a big timesaver for me.

Christopher J. · Answer

Anyone automating phone calls? Calls to text services?

Virtual assistances?

Trying to work on automation and outsourcing so business can run without me and I can scale to greater levels.

Dale Lotts · Answer

Hi @Peter T., thanks for weighing in.

I agree, spending the time at lease signing to make sure they understand everything is important and sets the tenant up for a successful rental term.

Did you have anything intersting come out of these 30 minute sessions? What works well? How has it changed over time?

Deren Huang · Answer

This is a great thread, following!

How do you automate your rental business?

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