What parts of your processes and tasks are automated?

Question

I'm trying to automate and digitize more processes of managing long term and shortterm rentals.

Curious to learn what other landlords and STR listing owners are doing to automate day to day processes?

How much time are you saving by doing things more digitally and with more automation?

Thanks in advance

Rachelle Antoine · Answer

currently using avail for taking payment and applications ( including backgrounds, eviction, rental history, history,etc); also allows for lease generation. There's more I want to automate myself!

Drew Sygit · Answer

@Rachelle Antoine you'll want to be careful renting out your basement unless you have an egress that meets fire code. Typically you can get a window egress installed for $3k-5k.

Not aware of a Metro Detroit city that will allow the conversion of a SFR to 2-4 units in an R1 zoned area.- You can improve your search by only looking in R2+ zoned areas.- Will still be challenging to acquire a SFR at a low enough price to justify the cost of any conversion.

Regarding Michigan property taxes, we have a one-page explanation document we'll share if you DM us. - The challenge in Detroit is that the city is "deliberately" keeping SEVs low to not scare investors away over property tax increases. This is good news due to future increases in Taxable Values being capped:)

@Nicolas Munoz The City of Detroit offers many 2-4 unit properties, allowing an owner to live in one unit and rent out the rest. We've got many clients that buy them as pure rentals also. - The FHA 203(k) loan is a great way to buy a MFR as it allows repairs to be included in the purchase mortgage. Check it out!

Drew Sygit · Answer

Your automation metrics will depend on your scale.

It's one thing trying to automate for around 10 doors vs 700 doors.

Ify (Bobby) Anizoba · Answer

I’ve made a conscious effort in automating and digitizing more of my rental management tasks and can share some of the tools I've been exploring that might be helpful to others.

I use Baselane a lot, it is a platform that's really geared towards landlords and real estate investors. It offers features like Automated rent collection (Tenants can set up auto-pay) and you can receive payments directly into your account without any manual tracking. Help with Expense tracking and categorization: You can sync your bank accounts and credit cards to automatically categorize expenses related to your properties. This feature and the financial reporting piece of it really saved my life!! You can generate reports on your cash flow and actually see how you’re doing. It also a property management piece built in with lease management functionality and maintenance requests. I have buddies that use stessa and avail but I use Baselane. The functionalities are kinda similar but baselane has more stuff built in so it’s easier to accomplish more within the platform. I’ve also heard of rent redi, but I’ll advice you look into each and you’ll see what I mean about the more complete platform.

Alyssa Wright · Answer

We use codeboxes for our vacant showings along with Appfolio. So it has almost completely automated the showing process for our vacant properties. As well as Appfolio will automatically confirm/cancel and follow up on showings.

It may not seem like a lot, but it really saves a lot of time to focus on other tasks/aspects!

Rachelle Antoine · Answer

I will look at a few factors, rent for area, total mortgage payment with property taxes( which can be crazy in Detroit), investment in neighborhood, I like looking into places where they are building homes and apartments that attract young professionals or families , and also looking at potential to make a single family home into a duplex or something can add an adu or transform a basement to a studio apartment!

Petar Stojanovski · Answer

I've seen some amazing recommendations and advice here. I also tried Avail. I'm always looking for some automation tools (I would be happy with basics like email management), but I definitely needed some resources to better understand it all. I was experimenting with workspace AI and came across this article that breaks it down quite understandably. We'll see how it goes.

Nicolas Munoz · Answer

Rachelle, that sounds like exciting progress, and thank you for sharing your strategy with me. When looking for your next potential property how will you approach the analysis?

Rachelle Antoine · Answer

hey Nicolas! I've been house hacking and renting another room in home via Furnished Finder for Midterm rentals for the past year. I use furnished finder for leads and just started airbnb for midterm guests. I think house hacking is a great way to start your investment journey, much easier to come up with 3-5% down. And easier to buy a home with potential to rent out rooms or renovate a basement, add an ADU etc.  I rented my home and have made  about $1100 for my room which helped me renovate my basement!  I just completed my renovation  to turn my basement into a studio apartment that I will rent soon! Then I will rinse and repeat the process. I  hope this helps! I think  buying a primary, putting 3-5% down, look for a home with potential to either rent rooms or duplex,  triplex or quad! House hacking is a great way to start especially in this market!

Nicolas Munoz · Answer

Hey Rachelle, I'm a newbie investor and trying to learn as much as I can about the industry. I'm curious to learn more about what else you're trying to automate. Would you mind sharing?

What parts of your processes and tasks are automated?

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