Advice for Business/Checking Accounts for Rental Property

[Dustin Swanson]

Hello All,

My cousin and I partnered up and purchased our first rental property in western Massachusetts. He is local and will be fulfilling landlord duties. I am remote (living in Reno, NV) and will be handling all accounting/finances. 

CPA recommended we open a joint business checking account under both of our names to keep tax season simple. Any recommendations or experience on good online banks with high APY for this purpose? 

NOTE: We planned on using Turbo Tenant for tenant management.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Brian Kloft]

I can not speak about online only banks as I have not used any. However most brick and morter banks these days have a lot if not just as many online features. I am not sure how you plan to handle rent collections but if you think there may be times that a tenant will need to pay via some non online option then having a bank in the area of the property can be good. Some lower income tenants tend to pay via cash or money orders and you could have them deposit it direct into your account and text you the receipt for you to input. I recommend trying to make it be where everyone pays online as it makes your life easier. However I have had a few tenants that did not have a computer nor a smart phone so they were not able to pay online. 

Personally I refuse to deal with any of the large banks, (Wells, BofA, Chase) and prefer to deal with smaller regional banks or credit unions. The regional ones tend to have most or all of the same services but tend to provide much better customer service. 

As far as a specific bank recommendation,  it looks like Mountain America Credit Union has a couple of branches in the surrounding area and I personally like them.