Four fantastic systems every investor should have to save time

Whether you own 1 or 100 units, rental properties are a business and businesses require a lot of time. Here's some of my favorite time saving systems for running your real estate business:

Master Key System. When I bought my first property, a triplex, I was the lucky recipient of a jumbo size zip-lock bag full of keys with no labels. Before I saw the error of my ways, I went through each and every key, labeled them and organized them in a key box. Needless to say, it was quite a pain in my rear end and I was hoping there was a better way. There was. I met a fellow BPer and friend, Mark Owens, and learned that there is a trick to have all your locks keyed to a single master key for the landlord while still having separate individual keys for each unit/tenant. Mark, as well as many other landlords, use Kwikset keys and have bought a re-key kit in Amazon that allows you to re-key each lock. I took a slightly different approach and decided to use a company called Landlord Locks that keys the locks for you and has a easily interchangeable core for when you need to re-key each lock. Regardless of what you use, this is one of the single biggest time saving tools you can have as a landlord. Not only does it come in handy for keeping track of your keys but it is also extremely helpful for when you develop a group of vendors you trust (HVAC guy, plumber, handyman, etc). They can easily access all your properties and are able to provide maintenance without you having to supply a key or meet them at the property. 

Scheduling Showings For Rentals. This was and still is one of my most time consuming activities in the rental process. At first I used to succumb to every single interested person that wanted to see the property and showed the property to them as soon as possible. This was a nightmare since I kept trying to rush to the house and show them the house or worse, I'd drive all the way there and they would not show up. For sure, the most inefficient use of my time. Then, I heard someone (don't remember if it was a podcast or in a meetup) talk about how they show the house to multiple people and create a competitive atmosphere. Soon thereafter I started offering a couple showing dates and times to prospects and stacking all the appointments in certain time slots. Now a days I'll typically do Tuesdays at 6:00 pm, Thursdays at 6:00 pm and Saturday at 12:00 pm. About 99% of the people that want to come see the property can make it on one of those three days. Also, I ended up hiring a virtual assistant to answer the frequently asked questions and to schedule all the online leads. This was a HUGE time saver. Almost everyone asks about the rental criteria, how much the application costs, when can they move in, blah, blah, blah... I just made a list and started giving the FAQ out to folks and if they still asked questions then my VA would respond with email templates I created for her. She also confirms showing appointments via SMS through google voice (a little bit of legwork to set up but totally worth it). Lastly, when I was too busy or had a couple rental listings going on at once, I hired a call answering service called PAT Live (no affiliation and there are plenty of other similar companies). I simply gave them a google form to fill out for them to set the appointments and I gave them a list of the Frequently Asked Questions. This helped put a end at the random phone calls throughout the day.

Standard Paint Colors. I am most definitely not your interior designer/artistic type of person. I struggle each day to simply combine a pants and a shirt, let alone paint schemes. When it came time to do my first renovation on my first deal, I pretty much copied everything from the apartment I was renting. I bought the exact same tile for the bathroom, same paint colors, same light fixtures, etc and somehow  it still didn't end up looking as nice as my apartment (I don't know how I screwed it up). One thing I did learn very early on from this is that I stayed with that same color for all of my units (elegant ivory from Glidden). It was a really tough choice because it's not the most appealing color and now a days the light blue/gray colors are extremely popular in my market area. I've debated changing the paint scheme but the benefit of having one color to easily touch up all the houses weighs a lot more than the cost of switching every single unit. Regardless, it really does make it very easy for turnovers to have one paint color for all of the units. Enough said about that!

Payment System. I've fallen victim of the whole "pick up a check" thing many times. You have to coordinate a time with the tenant, drive all the way to where they are, drive all the way to the bank, wait in line for that one teller that is filing her nails (OK, maybe that part is not true but you get the point). It's a huge waste of time even if the tenants mail you the check to your house. Personally I don't even accept checks anymore and I have trained my tenants to either deposit directly to my bank account, use PayPal or use a online payment processing company called Vertical Rent. Both PayPal and Vertical Rent deposit directly to my bank account within days and are extremely cheap. I personally am looking to switch from Vertical Rent to another platform called Tenant Cloud but there are a gazillion different sites out there that can do the same thing (Buildium, Appfolio, Cozy, etc etc). Some of these sites also offer a ton of other great functionality like accepting online rental applications, background checks, credit checks, rent rolls, expense tracking and much more. Choose whatever systems work for you but make sure it's easy and you're not spending time running to the bank each month. Oh and for goodness sake, please don't accept cash, the risks and headaches involved are not worth the convenience.