9 Ways Your Property Management Tool Can Improve Your Business

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When it comes to managing your tenants and properties, you want to make sure you’re doing it efficiently. Not only does it help your business stay organized, but it also helps foster a good working relationship with your tenants.

Fortunately, you are not alone when it comes to running your real estate business. Using property management software can be an advantage when it comes to cultivating a good landlord-tenant relationship and simplifying how you manage your property.

1. Screening of tenants

Finding and screening tenants is a critical step in managing rental properties. So, you want to make sure you’re doing it right. Fortunately, property management software can help you manage the process every step of the way – from Pre-examination to the App for full background reports.

When using pre-qualifications, applications and tenant offersInformation is collected and stored in a central location. Security checks performed with property management software will provide you with credit, criminal and eviction reports. Then, you can dive into each application and identify wholly qualified tenants for your rental property based on your requirements for credit score, income, pets, etc.

2. Build a tenant database

If you have more than one tenant, it’s hard to keep track of who lives where, who paid what, and who owes money. Using property management software is a great asset when it comes to building a tenant database that manages all of this information for you so you can access it at a glance.

Another benefit is rent and document storage for tenants. You can use property management software to upload electronic documents and store them in the app so they are easily on hand at all times, especially if you use cloud-based software. The property management software also enables you to send these documents to your tenants electronically so they can store them in their tenant app as well.

This helps your business stay organized, so you can stay focused on managing your rentals and not track down tenant information or search for paper lease agreements.

3. Charterers on board

When it comes to setting up your tenants, review your property and lease rules to make sure your tenants understand their responsibilities to your rent.

Of course, when the tenant signs the lease, you might assume they’ve read it. However, it’s still a good idea to sit down with the tenant and do any specific duties they may have, such as mowing the lawn or making sure the trash is taken out on trash day. Talking about property rules and agreements with tenants ensures that both parties understand who is responsible for the various aspects of property maintenance.

In addition, going beyond these responsibilities is a great way to show that you are a stickler while building a professional relationship with your tenants.

4. Connect with your tenants

Often, landlord-tenant relationships become fraught with tension when misunderstandings occur. Fortunately, property management software can be a great asset when it comes to making sure that communication with your tenant happens after you’ve completed the initial setup process with them. Property management technology usually comes with features you can use to notify tenants – such as push notifications (in-app) or email.

These notices are useful for conveying necessary information to tenants. For example, if a tenant submits a repair request for a water leak, you can use property management software to send an in-app and email notification to the tenant when maintenance is due to fix the problem. You can also use the software to send notifications such as automatic rent reminders so that you can reduce the likelihood that tenants will forget to pay rent on time.

5. Helping tenants pay rent efficiently

Collecting rent can be messy and difficult. You might have a tenant who wants to pay with cash, another with a check, and another with an app. Fortunately, property management software can handle all of your rent payment preferences. Yes, even cash-paying renters!

Property management software can have partnerships with companies like Chime that enable them to create accounts, deposit cash on various personal sites, and then send payment through their tenant app. In addition to that, you can also offer your tenants the ability to pay with ACH and card so that you are covered when it comes to all types of payments.

6. Report rent payments on time

Some property management software comes with features such as credit reports that enable tenants to report on-time rent payments to the credit bureaus. This helps them build and improve their credit score, which is important for many renters in today’s society.

This can be a great incentive for tenants to pay rent on time and also shows that you are able to offer progressive features that tenants simply cannot access outside of using a property management system.

7. Renters purchase insurance

Another important benefit that property management software can offer tenants is renters insurance. Many renters don’t feel the need to purchase renters insurance because they mistakenly believe that your landlord’s insurance covers damage, theft of personal property, and liability issues.

However, it is important to clarify that renters insurance is what renters need to protect their property and personal liability for their rental. Fortunately, property management software can enable renters to purchase renters insurance directly in the app, making it easy to obtain coverage for their properties.

8. Manage maintenance and repair requests

Another major hurdle facing the landlord-tenant relationship is maintenance. When tenants notice a problem, they’ll want a way to communicate with you easily about how to solve it. Property management software is effective in that it provides a way for tenants to send their maintenance requests via an app directly to you. Then, you can select the next steps to fix the repair.

On your end, you can easily assign the repair to the maintenance staff or handle the repair yourself and use the aforementioned notification features to notify the tenant when they expect the problem to be resolved.

9. Better tenant management with property management software

By using technology to manage your rentals, you are not only simplifying and organizing your business, but you are also offering your tenants a lot of benefits of using technology as well. Property management software can also be used to improve the tenant’s rental experience. This can include different rent payment options, credit reports, renters insurance, and maintenance requests.

Overall, property management software is an effective solution that you can use to manage your tenants and real estate portfolio. even better? RentRedi has property management software that is offered free to BiggerPockets Pro members, who can sign up directly from their Pro page. Manage an unlimited number of tenants and properties, collect rents, screen tenants, list properties, sign leases, and handle repairs – all from one app. If you are not a BiggerPockets Pro member, sign up for all the additional content, tips and products you can use to manage your entire real estate experience.

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Note by BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.