7 Ninja Moves to Manage Your Rentals

As a landlord, I am always looking for ways to improve processes so I can reduce time and effort it takes to manage my rentals, so that I can focus more on growing my rental business.  I am not a large landlord (yet) so I haven't moved into full management software like AppFolio, so I have have found these apps and websites that have been pretty great in assisting me in managing my rentals to this point.

1. SurveyMonkey is an online survey company. SurveyMonkey provides free (up to 10 questions per survey), personalized surveys or you can do a monthly paid plan to have more questions in your surveys.  Since I am a budget conscience landlord, I choose to go the free route.  I use this tool to track and record answers from prospective tenants.  I ask the same questions from every prospect to ensure that I am never discriminating and have the records to prove it.  It also allows me to use the recorded answers as a baseline when checking the application against the initial answers given in the pre-screen.  You don't want a resident who lies to you from the beginning right?

2. Magic Plan is an app that lets you create floor plans fast and easy.  It uses the camera of your device and while turning around, mark the corners of your space. When you are finished, the app aggregates a floor plan.  I pay to get the large sized, non-watermarked floor (but it isn't expensive).  Most people in my market don't show floor plans, so I believe it makes my rental ads stand out, as well as show that I am running a professional business.  In turn, I get more calls, and better residents.  You can do a basic floor plan, or you can add items, like beds and tables to personalize it even further.  

3. Google Voice.  If you are giving your personal phone number out to your residents, stop reading this post and go get a Google Voice number.  Having a dedicated business number projects a professional image, and allows you to train residents that you have operating hours that they need to call within, rather than receiving calls at all hours of the day and night.  The other advantage of Google Voice is the ability to keep a record of all incoming and outgoing calls as well as texts and voicemails.  You can even record incoming calls (so you can train others how to screen calls for you when you are ready to outsource that step).  Currently there isn't an option to record outgoing calls.  You can make calls from your cell phone using your Google Voice number, or make calls from your desktop that route through your phone.  You can also choose to see your Google Voice number show up as an incoming call so that you know the call has to do with your business, and can answer your phone appropriately.  Having a dedicated business number helps project a professional image.

4. Zillow Rental Manager.  This area of Zillow allows those of us with less than 50 units to post on Zillow, and syndicate partner sites for free.  Zillow Rental Manager also creates an HTML ad that you can copy and paste into Craigslist, which gives your Craigslist ad a bit more flair than just the standard paragraph of text.  All correspondence received through Zillow or the partner sites is all put in your Inbox on Zillow, so there is no need to need to go to each individual partner page to find messages.  Zillow is a big name, and gets a lot of prospects looking on the site, so it is a definite must-use tool for any landlord.

5. Facebook Marketplace.  A new area for posting rental listings is in Facebook Marketplace.  Most of the Facebook sales groups allow rental listings, so you can gain great exposure to a lot of people without having to pay to boost your post.  Ask to become a member of local online garage sale groups, post your listing in Marketplace, then click to post to other places, and then share with all the groups where you are a member.  If you have a business Facebook page, doing this will also drive more traffic to that page.  I have found that every time I have posted a new listing, I get a spike in hits on my business page which is great, because people can learn more about my business and see before an after pictures of work we have done on our buildings, which helps build our credibility as a professional organization.

6.  MileIQ.  Next to MagicPlan, MileIQ is one of my favorite and most used apps.  It uses your location services to track where you are driving.  It doesn't give you a route map, but does give you start and stop points, which I have found to be the data I need for tax time.  Why waste time with a paper log that you forget to fill out half the time?  With MileIQ, it tracks your first 20 trips each month for free, or you can upgrade for $60 annually, and it will track every trip you make.  In 2016, I tracked $1850 worth of business drives, so the $60 for the annual fee is totally worth it.  It also generates nice reports you can give to your accountant or CPA.  To use the app, you swipe left for personal drives and right for business drives.  You can even edit locations that you frequent, so when you drive there, it is already a named location.  I couldn't ask for more with this app. 

7.  Google Drive.  This is a great tool because you can keep all of your files at your fingertips, no matter where you are or what device you are on.  I have my standard file structure set up in Google Drive for each one of my business entities, and have peace of mind that if my computer dies, that I wouldn't lose all my data.  You get the first 15GB free, can see old revisions of files, share files either by changing permissions, or giving a link to another party to access the documents you are sharing.  Google Drive is a very powerful tool with a large number of features that can really assist you in running your business with ease.     

There are many tools available to us to make our lives easier, and run our businesses more efficiently.  If you have tools that you love and couldn't live with out to run your rentals, please share.

Stay motivated and keep crushing it!