Hello,
We own 43 doors, mostly class C. I've read every thread and article I could find about how to efficiently collect rent. Many of our tenants do not have a bank account, none of them have any savings to speak of. About 2/3 of them receive some kind of welfare or other subsidy, not all of these come at the beginning of the month.
I understand the principal of the tenants being responsible to "bring me the rent." and agree in an ideological sense, but from a practical stand point I need to get the rent out of their hands before they spend it, so I need to make it easy for them. Most of my tenants "need" to pay rent in cash, and work odd hours when a bank may not be open, and I am willing to accommodate this. Some of them do not drive. I do not want (and haven't yet) gone to their door after hours to collect cash rent, and very rarely do collect cash rent during normal business hours.
Our current collection method is to require them to go to the bank, deposit rent and send me (actually our property manager) a picture of the rent receipt. We do typically have people pay rent late, we do typically collect late fees. Pitfalls of this method:
-Labor on our side to track everything.
-Banks aren't "always open" and drop box doesn't provide receipt (harder to track, and they lie about depositing the rent in the dropbox on the last day of the grace period, when in fact they deposit it a few days later, I can't prove it)
-Tenants forget to send receipts, and our bank electronic banking does not allow us to see deposit receipt so they cannot write their name or property number there.
-They need to drive to the bank, I realize with cash somebody needs to drive somewhere, but I think some of the tenants who don't drive to have a bank account could do online payments, online payments aren't required for the solution we come up with, but would be nice to have as an option.
-Bank doesn't show a statement to the tenant of what's owed.
As I said I've read just about everything I can on rent collection, I know many of you believe this should be the tenant's "problem", our business is highly lucrative partially because we deal with the lowest quality tenants, and we are willing to shift this burden onto ourselves, please don't comment trying to convince me otherwise.
I've been looking at moneygram, pay near me, other similar local services, but I'd like some advice.
I need a service that:
-Allows tenants to deposit cash rent, 24/7 or at least more than typical banking hours.
-Provides a receipt immediately.
-Tracks the amount due, IE: on the sixth of the month adds a $30 late fee, if there is any rollover from the previous month shows that as well. I want the tenant to be able to see this balance due at the payment location, If this really is not possible, I guess it would be OK for them to see it on their smartphone only.
-I don't care about how long it takes for me to receive funds from the service provider, but I do need to be able to know almost immediately when funds are deposited.
-I need to be able to print a report that shows all my tenants and who owes what at what time.
Suggestions?
