All Forum Posts by: Olivia Blake

Cannot thank everyone enough for all the replies—some differing opinions, which I appreciate!

As mentioned, I ended up telling her she can finish out the remaining 5 months of her lease via Zelle, but with the expectation that we switch to Avail if she renews (and Avail will be required for all future leases).

I wasn’t sure about the legality of forcing her to switch to Avail since it wasn’t mentioned in the original lease I inherited from the last landlord. Anyone have thoughts on that?

Lastly, I’ve asked her 2-3 times what repairs she’s referring to, whether there are any outstanding issues from the old landlord, or if she has new repair requests she'd like to submit, but I haven’t heard back. I’m also trying to get some maintenance/repair history from the previous landlord to make sure I’m covered. Right now, it feels like this might just be a way for the tenant to try and take control of the situation.

Thanks for everyone's responses - this is all helping me to learn. For some extra context, their lease expires in about 5 months, so this landlord transition happened midway through their leases. 

"Clawbacks" were my concern but good advice to put an eviction notice in the lease should this happen. 

I ended up letting the tenant know that I understand their concerns and validate their questions. I said we can finish out this lease on Zelle if it makes them more comfortable with the intent to transition to a management software upon renewal (if they choose to renew the lease). It's less about the time it takes me to conduct a transaction this way, and more about automating the process for myself and creating structure and organization for tracking purposes. 

I appreciate everyone's advice and am open to hearing more if anyone has differing opinions or anything to add. 

I’m a first-time landlord (just signed my first fully-occupied LTR in Jan 2025) and have already run into my first potential tenant issue. I have two long-term tenants in the duplex—one for 5 years and the other for 7. I met both of them and provided a letter with my contact info, my property manager’s contact for repairs, and instructions to sign up for Avail to pay rent (the previous landlord used Zelle).

One tenant was cooperative and signed up right away, but the other sent me this text:

I understand you're the new owner and want to use Avail for rent payments. However, it seems that when I accept the invitation, I’ll be authorizing you to review my credit history amongst other things, and I’m not sure I want that yet, as we’re still unsure about renewing the lease. We need to know if repairs will be made and what the rent will be for next year? In the meantime, I will send rent via Zelle.

How should I respond? I want to avoid mistakes as a new landlord so hoping to learn from all of you! This is a good tenant of 5+ years, and I don’t want to cause unnecessary friction (I’m just trying to set up automatic systems for myself). However, I did take issue with the tone of the message, especially the part where they told me how they’d be paying rent.

For context, there are no outstanding maintenance or repair issues, so I’m unsure what the tenant is referring to.