All Forum Posts by: Ben Travis

@Steve Zidzik Wow!  First of all, I hope all gets better in Panama City, as the rest of us forget how natural disasters impact our rental process above just the property damage. 

Oregon doesn't get such storms but echo everything you say for our rainy season. TenantCloud is where I manage 22 rentals and every once in a while chat with their customer support. Anxious to see the faster payments coming, which they say will be less than 24 hours from tenant to my bank account. 

It seems lawyers are the only people who ever recommend the whole LLC structure. I still haven't been convinced even with the new tax code. I operate all as a sole proprietorship still. Over 20 properties and 15 years in.

I do however have some properties that I track separately (more for 1031 reasons), so much like LLCs for properties and track a group of properties (portfolio) separately than others. I use TenantCloud as well and just create different owners for each group or you can do it per property.  This way you don't need different bank accounts just set them up as different owners. TC will do all the accounting for you automatically in separating out each owner and the properties connected to each, but then in other ways allow you to combined them when looking at all properties. 

I do have two separate bank accounts in TenantCloud, but one is for deposits that I hold separately than my property checking account, but I do have all my properties cash flow through one bank account. 

Hope that helps. 

I pay the $9/mnth for up to 150 units and includes full e-signature lease agreements and templates as well for that. I have 20 properties and with total gross rent of about $28k/mnth.  None of my tenants pay any transaction fees or anything and TenantCloud even coordinates the lease signing in their app.  I also pay all my contractors with TennatCloud as well, which is an average of about $9k/month and there are no transaction fees for me or them either, so for $9/mnth you can really do a lot.   

I did use the free version and integrated PayPal and stripe, but each charge almost 3%, so I switched quickly. 

Have a property in Texas and can't believe how much the valuation went up.  Will be protesting for sure. Wish they played a zero-sum game, where the tax appraiser gives the appraisal and runs the risk of buying at that prices:).  I'd sell for this price any day. 

I use TenantCloud and payments are usually 3 days. When I turned on stripe it took 7 days, but only for the first payment 2 days after that and it is included in my TenantCloud account for free. Customer support said they are working on next day payments. 

I have used TenantCloud for over a year now and would be careful of "windows" type layouts. I have over 20 units that I still self-manage part-time and the best part of TenantCloud has been that my tenants use it. 

Having an app and easy layout where I can do listings, e-sign leases, rent collection, communication, and maintenance request has been a life changer in regards to time savings. What I used to do for hours in excel is now done automatically in TenantCloud. 

I use TenantCloud and it posts all of mine to Zillow, Trulia, and the others.  You do have to get verified before they will list due to the fraud stuff on zillow.  

I do background checks with Rentprep (they have 3 offerings, but I usually do the one where they call previous landlords). I buy it on TenantCloud and it also allows me to charge applicants an application fee, so they end up paying for it. I have seen the TenantCloud has Checkr for sale as well, but haven't bought it, so not sure on that one, but do like Rentpreps reports.  

Will check out SmartMove, maybe TenatnCloud (hint) can add them, so it is just as easy when I buy the others. 

@Zachary C. depends on the operation. I am one person shop, so organizing the tenants and their payments along with the maintenance is my key focus. TenantCloud does this great with invoicing, late fees and accounting all built-in and included. They say they are about to add e-signature for lease signing and then it will do everything the others do. 

If you have a lot of employees and focus on multi-family than paying for a Buildium type service might be a better fit. Hope that helps. 

Don't know which pdf application you're using specifically, but I took a pdf myself and recreated it for mine. Disclosure verbiage was cut and pasted in the verbiage section and then I added in all the specific custom questions I wanted for yes/no or comment questions. You can also attach the pdf. I think the only way to get a tenant a digital version of an actual pdf is with an adobe account or docu-sign, which both are expensive and only give you a pdf when you're done.  The nice function about the TenantCloud application feature not having to reenter all the information for a background check or creating the lease and accounting because it is already in the application.  Hope that helps.