All Forum Posts by: John Morris

In a nutshell, the most popular ones if you have up to 20 units are Cozy, Okupied, AppFolio, TenantCloud.  If you need just rent facilitation, then Cozy, as well as Zelle, Venmo or other free tools can work well as they are free.  However, with them, you will still need to manage separate spreadsheets or another app for expenses, lease renewals, etc. 

If you want to not only collect rent but track expenses, generate IRS reports, and get phone reminders for events, then Okupied is your best bet.  We have been using it for a year now and it is very user friendly.  

If you want additional features such as tenant screening, maintenance requests, documents upload and e-signatures, and a bunch of other features, then AppFolio and TenantCloud could work, but they are not user friendly at all.  

So it the end, it all depends what you need accomplished besides rent collection.  I am always on the go, so for me a mobile app works great, but some people like the convenience of desktop applications. My suggestion is create a free account and just test them out to see which one you are most comfortable with and is easier to use. 

We use Okupied, it's an iPhone app that we track our finances with and collect rent. It is very simple to use and free which works for us.  I believe the rent collection feature was $5 a month and it includes a tenant website, where they go and pay.  Not too many features but our tenants love it. 

I agree with Dillon. Its more of an asset protection than having any impact on taxes if you are a sole owner.  

I agree with Dillon. If you are single owner it is more of an asset protection and should have no impact on taxes (besides the extra paperwork). 

I agree with Mary's point.  I think you should just ask them and approach this from a different angle.  Also, inspections every 3 months is indeed a bit excessive. The easiest way is, instead of calling them inspections, to just ask to go replace the air filter or say you are doing an annual checkup on the hot water heater. It's a benefit for them (safety) and a benefit to you (you get to check out the property inside), without being intrusive. 

We use an app called Okupied.  It's easy to use and perfect for a few properties.  We tried several others but they were too complex for what we needed. 

This is tough. Generally in a duplex you need a thermostat and an AC for each unit, unless there is a way for them to control the temperature another way. The hot water heater is easy to maybe split the payments equally, as in many cases it makes a small difference of the usage on the bill.  

for the AC, one easy option is to put adjustable vents in the units and move the thermostat out of one of the units and make it set to some permanent temperature (e.g. 72 degrees) which you can control. This can be accomplished with a Nest thermostat or putting a locked cover over it.  This way each unit can open and close the vents when the temperature must be adjusted.  There are some smart vents on the market you can get and give control to the tenants: 
https://www.postscapes.com/wireless-vent-keen/

Hope this helps

We used several in the past but started using Okupied some time ago and we love it. It's an iPhone app and super easy to use. We like it because of a few reasons: it has a robust expense management which makes it easier to track expenses and capture receipts with your phone, supports next day payments so when my tenants send a payment i get it in my bank account within 1 business day, but most of all, it is a dedicated mobile app.  I am a part time rental units owner and i like the ability to handle the business on the go.  Like someone said, it saves time and time is money. Others you can check out are TenantCloud and Buildium, but for us they were too complex. Hope this helps. 

 Yes and HVAC. Big one too. 

I would say if they are a good tenant you may lower it at your discretion. But when increasing the rent to account for any pets, it is not that you are charging extra for the "space" but rather the "damage" that the cat would potentially do. So the math is something like: $50 extra per month x 12 = $600 per year. Cat pees all over the carpet and let's say destroyed a couple of blinds (the more common damage I can think of), you will get a professional cleaner for$400-500 to clean the carpet plus let's say $200 for the blinds.  The money you spend is pretty much covered by what she paid extra over 1 year.  

The cat lived there for 3 months before dying, that means there could be some damage already done. You may need a new carpet or new blinds. If you only collected $150 (3 x $50), then you will be paying for the repairs out of pocket.  Since the amount was already agreed upon and part of the rent (not a pet deposit), then you don't have to lower it until the lease expires. Lowering it you will basically have to rewrite the entire lease as the rent is a major component of it.