Between marketing vacant rentals, screening applicants, creating lease agreements, managing maintenance requests, collecting rent, and keeping track of accounting, landlords always have a lot of balls in the air.
Ensuring these balls don’t come crashing down is essential for all property managers, which is why we’re here to help you keep the act moving along smoothly.
To do so, we’ve laid out 11 actionable tips to help make managing rental properties simple.
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Landlords and property managers wear many hats, and their tasks can vary wildly from day to day. Here are a few of the most essential landlord responsibilities:
As a landlord, it’s vital to market available properties to the public and drum up interest among potential renters. To do so, you’ll need to produce high-quality photos and detailed descriptions of your properties and understand where to advertise them.
Filling your properties with trustworthy tenants who honor their leases is paramount to your landlording success. To improve your chances of landing a dream tenant, you must thoroughly screen applicants by accessing their credit reports, criminal history, rental references, and more.
Once you’ve selected an applicant to live at your property, you’ll need to make the agreement official by entering into a rental contract with them. Ensuring you create a detailed state-specific lease agreement is critical, as it will be legally binding for both parties.
Collecting rent payments is one of a landlord’s most important responsibilities. Doing so can often be a chore, though, which is why you must know how to accept digital payments, assess late fees, and encourage tenants to make automatic payments.
Landlords must always maintain habitable standards within rental properties for their tenants. It’s a key component of successfully managing rental properties. Failure to do so could result in legal action from the tenant, which is why property managers must coordinate repairs and conduct maintenance in a timely fashion.
Lease agreements are legally binding, and landlords must understand how to enforce them. As a property manager, it’s your job to understand your state’s landlord-tenant laws, document relevant tenant interactions, and swiftly address lease violations.
Staying on top of accounting and keeping books in order can be a balancing act for property managers. Doing so means keeping business and personal finances separate, using intuitive real estate accounting software, and reconciling bank statements regularly.
Being an effective landlord, handling multiple rental properties, and streamlining your property management operation doesn’t always come naturally.
Here are a few of our top tips to help elevate your real estate management game:
When someone searches for a new place to live, they’ll weigh the price of your rental against that of your competitor’s nearby properties. And much of the time, a property’s monthly rent cost is a crucial tiebreaker they’ll consider when choosing.
If your rent prices are too high, you risk losing tenants to competitors and having your rentals linger on the open market.
If your rent prices are too low, you risk attracting undesirable tenants and collecting less rent than your property can demand.
To set a competitive rent price, research similar properties in your neighborhood, monitor market trends closely, consider offering rent concessions, and use a customized rent estimate tool designed to dial in your pricing.
You could have the world’s most attractive portfolio of rentals, but they’ll sit vacant if you don’t get the word out about them. And vacancies, as we all know, halt revenue and kill profits.
Thankfully, there are abundant online platforms where you can advertise your rental properties to a wide audience for free. Needless to say, you’re selling yourself short if you don’t market your properties on as many of these mediums as possible.
So, once you’ve taken high-quality photos of your rental, written an engaging property description, and assembled a rock-solid property listing, it’s time to cast a wide net.
Post your listing across dozens of renter sites — think Zillow, Apartments.com, Redfin, Homes.com, etc. — and watch the leads pour in.
The federal Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, and familial status. So, even landlords with the best intentions should take extra care to create an even playing field when selecting tenants for their properties.
One area where landlords commonly breach the Fair Housing Act, whether intentionally or not, is within the rental applications they issue to prospective tenants. Leading questions in these applications that attempt to reveal protected details about a tenant are illegal.
To avoid perceived discriminatory practices, landlords should:
While there’s no way to predict exactly what type of tenant awaits behind their application, enough due diligence should help paint a reasonable picture of who you’re dealing with.
When sorting through a stack of applications to decipher who is the best fit for your property, painstakingly vet everyone before selecting a tenant. To do so:
Landlords who take their time to carefully screen tenants stand a much better chance of landing reputable renters than property managers who roll the dice on the unknown.
Once you’ve agreed to rent to an applicant, you’ll need to enter into a lease agreement with them that includes all of your state’s mandatory disclosures. Failing to inform tenants of these disclosures is illegal and could get you into hot water down the line.
For example, did you know that New York landlords must inform tenants if their unit has a sprinkler system and must also provide the exact date of its last maintenance and inspection? Leaving out seemingly minor details like these could have serious repercussions for landlords.
The good news is that creating airtight state-specific rental contracts is easy. Simply use an automated lease agreement generator to ensure your rental contract includes all up-to-date landlord disclosures.
As we mentioned earlier, extended vacancies eat into a landlord’s bottom line and must be avoided at all costs. One surefire way to minimize empty rental units is to encourage desirable tenants to renew their lease agreements and continue renting from you, their trusted landlord.
Retaining great tenants is a crucial piece of the landlord puzzle, so get creative and employ a variety of different strategies to convince reputable renters to re-up on their contracts. Here are a few of our best techniques to retain desirable tenants:
Property managers should always possess a deep understanding of their state’s landlord-tenant laws. By studying relevant legislation, landlords stand a better chance of avoiding legal issues, protecting their property, and handling potential squatter situations.
Here are a few relevant questions to ask yourself:
To educate yourself on the numerous landlord-tenant laws where you live, visit this page, click on your state’s icon, and begin reading. Fifteen minutes of your time now could save you a headache or two down the road.
If you’re the type of landlord who requires tenants to pay rent by dropping a check in the mail, I’ve got some news: You could improve the process and help ensure on-time payments.
These days, landlords who allow tenants to pay rent online are far likelier to receive on-time payments.
Why?
Because paying rent on a phone or computer is much easier than:
To get up to speed, read our article on the best ways to collect rent, consider your options, and choose a method that makes sense for your property management needs.
It’s your duty as a landlord to ensure that all of your rental units are inhabitable for all of your tenants at all times. Property managers who can’t live up to these standards risk breaching their lease agreement and facing legal action from tenants.
Needless to say, landlords who are too busy, unorganized, or overwhelmed to conduct essential repairs and maintenance are taking a huge gamble. Furthermore, properties that don’t meet habitable standards force tenants to endure substandard living conditions.
To stay on top of your repair requests and maintenance needs, consider utilizing property management software to gather quotes, coordinate repairs, and organize work orders on your behalf. Doing so could free up time, alleviate stress, and keep tenants satisfied.
Real estate investment is a numbers game through and through. Landlords who lose sight of their numbers will have a tough time determining their cash flow, ROI, depreciation, vacancy rates, and other crucial property management calculations.
Landlords who pay close attention to their numbers, however, will enjoy accurate reporting, increased profitability, reduced audit risk, and numerous other financial benefits. All property managers should take accounting and bookkeeping seriously from day one.
To streamline your books and ensure your financials are airtight, use real estate accounting software to do the heavy lifting for you. Doing so will help you make better-informed investment decisions, set customizable rules, and put your rental numbers on autopilot.
Property managers have a slew of responsibilities.
They must advertise rentals, track and follow leads, show properties, create rental applications, screen tenants, generate lease agreements, coordinate maintenance and repairs, understand landlord-tenant laws, collect rent, manage accounting and bookkeeping…
… the list goes on.
Overwhelmed landlords with too much on their plate are bound to make mistakes that damage their business, so we recommend streamlining as many responsibilities as possible.
All-in-one property management software can do just that.
Check out TurboTenant’s list of helpful features to see how to put your entire property management operation on autopilot today.
When it comes to managing rental properties, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Different portfolios call for different approaches, so owners must get creative to keep their operations running smoothly. Here are a few different options to consider:
Property owners often hire property management companies to take over all essential responsibilities. These companies handle everything from advertising, tenant screening, lead tracking, property showings, lease signings, and more.
The do-it-yourself approach lands on the far opposite end of the spectrum of hiring a property management company. DIY landlords take on every single responsibility themselves, no matter how large their workload becomes.
Though stressful at times, this approach is popular among those with tight budgets and small portfolios.
Many rental owners outsource nearly all essential duties to property management software. While managing rental properties is never truly 100% passive, enlisting property management software can be the most automated, hands-off approach on this list.
Many landlords prefer a hybrid approach, which allows them to choose which tasks to handle in person and which to delegate to software. This method allows property managers to strike a balance between hands-on control and streamlined task automation.
The fine art of juggling and managing rental properties doesn’t happen accidentally.
Whether creating rental agreements, screening tenants, generating lease agreements, collecting rent, or balancing the books, we landlords must use all the tools at our disposal to keep the act moving along seamlessly.
One such tool is property management software.
Sign up for a free TurboTenant account to see how we can help synchronize all of your rental responsibilities today.
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