All Forum Posts by: Harrison Harner

@Elizabeth Pare

This is a series going on in the area:

https://www.meetup.com/I-84-NY-CT-corridor-Real-Estate-Investors-Networkers-Meetup/events/

Hi Guys. I recently went through my first turnover and used Rentalutions.com for the whole re-renting process. I want to share my review of the service for anyone that might be considering it.

Executive Summary: Rentalutions seems to have fuller functionality than most of its competition. It handles everything from the listing and screening to maintenance tickets and rent collection. There were some minor bugs, especially in the listing stage, such as a failed listing syndication. The interface is user friendly; I only received a couple questions about usability from applicants in the 25+ applications I got. The mobile website looks great and it’s almost as easy to use from your phone. You can get more functionality by individually using other, narrow core competency services, such as Trulia or Transunion SmartMove, but it’s nice to have everything in one place. I plan to continue using Rentalutions, but will use other sites for the listing process in the future.

Listing: Rentalutions syndicates to the Zillow network: Zillow, Truilia, Hotpads, as well as their own website. Listing status is provided for these sites. Replies to your listing from all these sites come into a central location. You can reply to prospects once, directly through the site, but there is no conversation history shown. I didn’t receive a single response from any of the 50+ listing replies I replied to. I don’t know if this was a bug or coincidence, but I started replying outside of the site and had a much better response rate. Additional “partners” are listed without status’ and links such as: PadMapper, Apartments.com, lovely, apartable, apartment list, and Zumper. I couldn’t find any indication that my listing showed up on those sites, so I posted to them separately. Upon renewing the listing after the 14 day expiration, the listing failed to syndicate to the primary partners, so I listed separately on those as well. I found that some of those sites, when used separately, offer nice features such as quick pre-scripted replies and prospect resumes sent right to your inbox from their first inquiry.

Applications: The application is standard and not editable, but mostly complete. I collected a “pre-application” so I could invite them to the application via email and to collect their social security numbers, among a few other basic pieces of information. The applicant pays for and completes the credit and background checks on their own. The results provided, although they’re through Transunion, appear to include less information (no resident score or eviction report) and costs more than SmartMove ($45 vs $35).

Leases: The lease template is advertised as federal and state compliant with state specific clauses. It did appear very similar to my previously used, attorney created, lease, however I did find one conflict with state law about when a late fee can be collected (5 days in lease, 10 days per CT state law). It was easy to add a few clauses that I felt were missing. The lease is signed digitally.

Payments: My new tenant prefers to pay with a physical check, but I am able to keep track of when he has paid. There are automated email reminders sent to the tenant and me when rent is due, past due, and late.

Maintenance: Again, my tenant prefers more traditional means of requesting maintenance, but I am able to enter requests myself for record keeping.

I'm in Danbury as well and would attend a meetup.

You can set up direct deposit through sites like Rentalutions or Cozy. The tenant can continue to pay rent through these sites as well. Other sites like Dwolla are not geared specifically to landlord/tenant, but can accommodate bank transfers.

 I can attest to exactly what you said. I bought 2 years ago and as I'm trying to buy another property, I have been watching prices rise faster than rents since. 

Don't accept any more partial payments. This could be held against you in court. It's seen as an agreement to accept a lower rent and you can't claim non-payment of rent.

Start the eviction immediately.

I don't own property in Boston, but I did live there (and rented) for 5 years. This is a bit anecdotal based on my own experience as a renter, but I can tell you that the location, and features (i.e. laundry, deck, yard, driveway, etc.) were more important than finish for my roommates and I. As long as it's not in complete disrepair, I would leave it as-is. Chances are you're going to rent to college students or young professionals that are more worried about what bars and shops they can walk to than what the finishes look like.

I cover the water bill and consider it included in the rent. If the apartments are not seperately metered, it doesn't make sense to charge a fee for water. Just charge market rent.

Like Susan M., I'm currently using the landlordlocks system and I highly recommend it. I too only carry one master key that opens all doors. Swapping a core takes less than 10 seconds. Their customer service is great and a quick phone call gets you new components that match your key set. I keep extra keys and cores in a small tacklebox.