Best of ways to automate rent payment

[Brandon Garcia]

Hi everyone, about to start leasing my first rental property. Any advice on the best way to automate for the tenant to pay rent? I keep seeing this Baselane site pop up. But is Bill Pay via their bank or Zelle sufficient enough? Thanks! 

[Saad D.]

Hi @Brandon Garcia, I think most first time landlords make this mistake. They do not set up the right systems and then pay for it later. I can guarantee you this will happened because I made the same mistake with my first rental. Whatever you do, I strongly recommend avoiding Zelle. I understand you want to get your cash instantly but you're leaving yourself open to many risks with using a Zelle, Venmo, cash app, etc. 

Use a system that allows you to do the following 3 things: automatically charge a late fee, track all paid and unpaid invoices in a clear ledger, prevent tenants from paying partial payments.

At this moment, you're also just asking about how to collect rent. Let me ask you a question - How are you planning to mange all of your rental property finances (vendor payments, taxes, insurance, mortgage, reconciling rent payments, understand how much money you're actually making, have clean financials for tax time, etc.)?

The reason I ask is because the second biggest mistake I see new landlords making is not organizing their rental finances. This may seem trivial now, and not something you need because you only have one property. However, let me reframe it for you. If you want to scale, and be a pro investors, It's about building the right habits, and establishing the right systems and processes, now, not later. That's actually why I joined Baselane 3.5 years ago to build a platform I know I needed to run my rental business and to help 15M landlords in the U.S. do the same. Hope that helps.