RentRedi as a Property Management Software

If you’re a landlord in the business of renting out your property, you know that it can be a challenge to keep track of everything. Sometimes you don’t have the time or resources to manage all the details necessary to run your property, so you need a solution that can help you out, and that is finding the right rental property software. But searching for the software that's easy to use and adopt is no small task. It can be overwhelming, especially if you're a landlord who's just starting out.

Most of the property management software out in the market offers the same objective, which is to make your life simpler as a landlord by providing a configurable online platform to manage your properties and tenants. So, it depends on your needs and budget which software will be suitable for you.

RentRedi has been our property management software for at least 18 months. And why did we choose it? Well, we listed down some pros and cons that we think will be useful if you’re planning on getting it in the future.

PROS:

1. RentRedi is affordable. As a BiggerPockets Pro member, they offer flat rate pricing and whichever plan you choose, you get an unlimited number of rentals, tenants, teammates, listings, application & screening, and customer support. We are currently on the Annual plan for $9/month which we also recommend if you want to save more! Here’s their current pricing based from their website:
Monthly: $19.95
Quarterly: $15 a month (paid every 3 months)
Annual: $9 a month (paid every 12 months)

2. It has a user-friendly interface and comes with an easy-to-use dashboard where you can supervise all your properties at once. It’s also Cloud-based so you can access it anywhere even if you’re away for a trip.

3. Mobile app is available for download on your phone. Most of our tenants have the mobile app downloaded on their phone to easily pay their rent and other fees. The rent collection fee for ACH transactions is $1 and for credit cards, it’s 2.9% plus $0.30. We highly encourage our tenants to pay through ACH transactions.

3. When it comes to listing, RentRedi automatically syndicates vacant property listings to its 2 affiliated sites which are Realtor.com and Doorsteps.com for free! They recently added Zillow, Trulia and HotPads with a $1.75/unit charge per day which we haven’t tried yet. But from our experience so far, we’re getting more hits from Realtor than Doorsteps.

4. RentRedi uses TransUnion which helps us to choose the best candidate to be a tenant during our application and tenant screening process. Aside from our own process of doing reference checks, TransUnion also does comprehensive credit, criminal, and eviction history checks for $35 which is being covered by the applicant.

5. Customer support is responsive. We typically contact them for hard problems and they are responsive with a solution within an hour or less depending on the complexity.

6. RentRedi is thoughtful about scams and tenant security. For bigger properties, they require a property management agreement before allowing the software to operate. We think this is a value add and helps police our community.

CONS:

1. It may take one to seven business days for the money to be deposited in the bank. After tenants paid their rent using the RentRedi app, you need to be patient as it may take a while for you to get the money.

2. RentRedi only offers an in-app notification or sending an email if you would like to communicate with your tenants. It has no ability to send directly a SMS or call.

3. There is additional paid subscription to have access to maintenance, financial reporting and accounting functionality.

4. The back end database is clunky when dealing with date specific information. For instance, if you enter a new lease after the start date, the database will assume the current date is the beginning of the lease. Then you’ll have to go in and manually modify the lease payment dates. The work around is to enter your information before the lease starts or manually adjust the date after the lease starts. For our business, we manually adjust because of existing workflows.

Overall RentRedi provides great value. We will continue to use RentRedi to support our business operations. Their development team regularly upgrades the product and makes routine incremental improvements.