Many landlords use property management software to help with their daily responsibilities instead of employing the services of a resident property manager or a property management company.
Managing your properties on software is more affordable than hiring another person or company to stay on top of your landlord tasks, and it also saves you so much time and money from having to complete your tasks manually.
In this article, we’ll be going over five reasons to use software for managing rental properties.
- Online Rent Collection
Digital rent collection is generally the most common reason landlords start using software. Collecting cash or check payments in person quickly becomes a hassle, especially if you manage multiple tenants.
With online rent collection, you no longer have to coordinate schedules, make additional trips to the bank, or hound tenants for payments if they miss the deadline. With property management software, your tenants can submit payments remotely using a credit card, a debit card, or their banking information. They can also turn on automated payments, which saves them from having to remember to pay every month and decreases the likelihood of late payments.
- Digital Lease Management
Using software cuts your lease turnaround time exponentially. Hardcopy leases require printing, coordinating schedules, sending documents back and forth through the mail, and lots of waiting.
Software enables you to finalize leases in no time. By creating reusable templates, your leases will be ready to sign in seconds. All you need to do is send the document to your tenant in the property management software platform, and they’ll be able to start reading it and signing it electronically. When it’s signed, the document is safely stored online, where you and your tenants can access it anytime.
- Tenant Screening Tools
Screening tenants is one of the most important property manager duties landlords have because the rest of your business will suffer if you don’t find great tenants to begin with. Tenants who damage your property or miss rent payments will cost you time and money in the long run.
Property management software provides you with all the tools you need to conduct thorough tenant screening. Information found in credit report, eviction histories, and criminal records are essential in determining whether a tenant meets your standards. You can also accept rental applications and important documents (such as proof of income) online, which not only makes things easier for you, but it increases the likelihood that someone will apply.
- Maintenance Management
Most landlords agree that one of the worst parts of the job is maintenance. While, nobody wants to spend money and energy addressing maintenance issues, it’s essential. Your goal should be to make the process as quick and easy as possible for everyone involved.
This is where software comes in. When one of your tenants runs into a maintenance issue, they can let you know about it immediately in the platform instead of having to track you down. In their maintenance ticket, they can upload photos and write a description of the problem that way you have all the information you need to get the proper vendor or personnel on the job. Software streamlines maintenance for both you and your tenants, which enables the issue to get fixed as quickly as possible.
- Listing Syndication
Even before you have a tenant to manage, there are several landlord tasks that need your attention. One of them is marketing. If you don’t market your property effectively, you won’t be able to find a quality tenant for you lease.
Nowadays, the most common way renters look for rental properties is on listing sites like Zillow and Apartments.com. To reach the widest pool of renters possible, you should get your property on multiple listing sites.
Individually posting and tracking a property listing on several sites can get time-consuming, tedious, and overwhelming. When you use listing syndication software for landlords, you only have to make one listing. The software then automatically posts the listing to multiple sites, all of which you can access from your property management software platform.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for any of the five features discussed in this article, look no further than property management software.
With software, you can save yourself so much time and energy on tasks that would be a lot more intensive to complete manually.
Software is also your most economical option compared to hiring a property manager or property management company. Some platforms are even free to use.
