Collecting rent from tenants

[Maureen Santibañez]

How do y’all collect rent from tenants?

Me and my family recently came across an ad that seem too good to be true. It was for a rental on Craigslist. 3bed 2.5 baths all bills paid except water with a security deposit of $700 and monthly payments of $800. It was a two story with a garage.

We thought it was good but there was red flags as we went through the process. He didn’t mention it was a self tour and so we were like okay. And just rolled with the flow. The ‘landlord’ said to leave the back door unlocked when we did a tour.

So everything looks good until we send the deposit. He told us to send it via. Cash app, Zelle, and PayPal. None of them went through I checked the bank and it was fine on their behalf. It seemed like a big scam first of all because his emails didn’t match his name or credentials. (I thought he was new so I just let it slide but didn’t move forward till I saw what my family thought).

We ended up not paying and decided to look elsewhere. I wanted to know what do you use to collect payments from y’all’s tenants via online? I also want to do rentals when I get enough capital to fund everything so any advice as well?