I own with my father a 30 unit building. With that, let me just address the tagline: "Connect with tenants effortlessly, automate rent with online rent collection, organize work orders, and much more!"
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Connect with tenants effortlessly - Not a good thing, Usually leads to excess work orders, more "asks" and petty squabbles about this and that.
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Automate rent with online rent collection - Not sure how this is going to work. We have a option for people to pay rent via CC, but most people opt to do it in cash/check. Since only a fraction would use this, I would have to add to my work load to manually enter their transactions in here to have data integrity.
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organize work orders- Definitely dont want this. If they need something done, they just go the manager and ask. Taking away that element will just create unneeded work orders. We already have a internal system for tracking needed work. I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things.
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...tasks, contacts and more!
I guess this is cool, but we never really have a need for this. You already have to file their rental application and other work anyways, so its not like you wont have this.
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I guess I just dont see the appeal. Its cool to have a nice online interface for this, but I know we wouldnt use it and even my friend who runs a 400 unit complex hates moving stuff to tech. Unfortunately, they always add more work then they solve. The last thing ANY land lord needs, is /MORE/ paper trail :)
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If you get anything from this, get this- I am a technical, HN user that owns a apartment building. I am (what you would assume) your absolute ideal customer.
And with that, I wouldnt use your product without significant changes.
I'm not trying to attack you personally, but your response is typical of the real estate industry, and exactly why there's a hole in the market worth billions. For whatever reason, customer service is almost uniformly bad in the real estate industry. It's so bad, people don't even realize how bad it is, because they've never had anything else to choose from. For example, this kind of attitude makes me really sad:
I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things.
This is the same kind of disdain-for-customers attitude that leads web developers to build paid services that are really hard to cancel.
The marketing and branding in real estate are also a joke, but it's the customer service thing that really gets me. There's a huge opportunity here for someone to do it right.
Disclosure: I'm an active real estate investor with three small properties.
How did you come off saying that our customer service is bad? Thats a pretty big jump without knowing me or our business.
Dont assume that because we dont want to induce more work orders / complaints that we have bad service.
What you are saying is "bad" is akin to me asking why sites dont have a "Dissatisfied? Click here for a refund" button on every page. Providing absolute ultimate customer service will cause you to go out of business. Customers will take you to the cleaners if they can get away with it and you need to have boundaries to stay afloat. You can find a great middle ground and keep everyone happy doing it also.
Again, don't take it personally, but I've been doing real estate for the last six years and I've spent tons of time talking to other investors and landlords. I also still rent because the returns in SF for buying are so abysmal. So I've had plenty of exposure to the way the real estate industry works. And the customer service is almost uniformly terrible. I read your statement as saying that you didn't want to make it easier for customers to contact you, because they would just whine and complain about stupid stuff. What makes real estate different than any other industry in this regard? What company with good service is determined to not "make it easier for their customers to complain"?
And there are guys out there doing this right. I've lived in building that had online portals for customers to submit complaints and it didn't seem to be a problem for them. And I've talked to landlords across the country who run extremely efficient operations with low marketing costs, low vacancies, and high rents because they kick ass for their customers.
Please don't take offense, but you are going to run into tenants eventually who will call you DAILY to fix things or complain. Maybe they feel the bedroom is colder today than yesterday, or they saw a spider in front of the building, or maybe they don't like the shape of the clouds overhead on Thursdays.
Until you rent to enough people to start getting these renters, you've been isolated.
Every business has these kinds of customers. Hopefully your only plan for dealing with them is not to make it more difficult for all of your customers to contact you, including the 99% who never bother you.
Nope. We answer the phone the same for everyone. And we already have a web portal that does all of this. But none of our customers use it. They want to complain in person or over the phone.
I get that making it easier to file complaints can be bad, but there seems to be a software solution here. Things like prioritizing the work orders from tenants that seldom file complaints, or use the work order history to calculate to total cost of the tenant and price the lease renewal accordingly. This might all be impractical for legal reasons, but having the data seems like a good first step to solving the problem.
I think one issue here is that the majority of tenants do not see entering in a work order online as a viable or quick resolution. If someone's toilet overflows at 3am, they need someone awake and responding right then if possible. To them, entering a request for plumbing repair seems like getting in line at the DMV, and to be honest, it would feel like that to me as well.
Not decrying a software solution, but while I pay almost every bill online, most of the tenants I've had just pay cash or check, and we have an online option.
I stayed at a place where you could place online work orders. That was a much better interface than calling up. I did not place more work orders because of it, but I did them sooner. So, the number of days that the garbage disposal did not work or the smoke alarm battery remained dead went way down. It shouldn't be difficult to screen for spurious work orders such as "dangerous spiders".
I think the secret to great customer service is to avoid the low end of the marketplace. My apartment complexes website does all of this stuff this stuff. Yet, I have submitted less than 1 work order a year for the last five years because well maintained appliances rarely break. They might charge more than the competition but vacancy rates are something like 3% for a reason.
Dan, all of your comments in this thread seem to assume that if you can't hear a customer's complaint it's not a real complaint; and, more importantly, that if you can hear a customer's complaint you have to fix it.
Just like any business, you have to set boundaries on how much you will do for free. But why not set those boundaries intelligently, based on how the customer's actual desires match up with your ability to provide services?
Sure, There is a line somewhere to be crossed/not crossed. The only example I can give is maybe along the lines of google. There is no support whatsoever, yet people remain happy for the most part when things break. People love google. But you cant call and complain- You have to jump through a few hoops and fill out forms first. Thats all I am saying- If you make things too easy, your costs will go up with no additional return on revenue in either the short or long term.
Google may not have an easy support system, but it's unrealistic to expect expert service from free products/utilities. When you're paying anywhere from $500-several thousand dollars a month for something, I think you're entitled to complain as often as you're upset and should be able to expect things to be taken care of.
It may not be bad, but it sounds like there's zero accountability. If I ask my building manager to fix a leaky faucet, there's no paperwork, and if he ignores me for two months, what's my recourse - assuming that my property owners aren't as on the ball as you and your dad?
That's why you have a lease. It should outline the manager's responsibilities re: maintenance. Your options for recourse are numerous, from filing a lawsuit to not renewing your rent and moving on.
Sure, but you don't have any paper trail proving that you made any of these requests, unless you actually make your own paperwork, make copies, and submit that.
Maybe something in a WO System could be intelligent help... Do some natural language searching to see what kind of question is being asked, and provide a canned response.
So, "Can I have [more then \d+|a dog|\d+ cats]" automatically gets them a "Your lease only allows for 2 small animals. Does this answer your question?" type response.
I do not know either of those things. However, you are a landlord. To me, it is highly likely that your customers don't like your customer service.
I have hated every single landlord I've ever had. They have no online payment systems. I can't lodge tickets easily. I have no transparency if work is being done, if my ticket is moving.
The reason your customers whine is because they LIVE in those properties. You're making a fair chunk of money from having someone live there, and for the most part it seems the estate agents just want to take their cut and have the customers leave them alone.
It's so prevalent that I now assume it's the default case for real estate: sucking.
I think he was trying to say that you should want to help your customers. You should be happy to receive a work order from them because now they are a satisfied tenant that can praise your apartments to their friends who have been trying to get their sink fixed for a month.
My friend is a renter and he has wanted a renters interface like this for years.
> I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things.
and
> "Dissatisfied? Click here for a refund"
are options that are miles apart. When you said that you don't want to maintain an easier communication channel with your paying customer, it is a good sign that customer service isn't your greatest selling point. One doesn't need to buy every product in a shop for 10 years before concluding whether the service is good or bad. A few customer reviews / purchases should suffice.
Dan isn't a bad guy, I can almost guarantee you. Tenants can be difficult to deal with, and there's just a certain status quo in the industry that everyone has come to accept. I'm just saying that there's a better way, and things like RentPost.com and RentMonitor.com are a step in the right direction.
Congratulations. Calling someone a slumlord just because they own property and are willing to discuss their business online does not give you the right to slander them.
The problem is the landlord-tenant relationship is asymmetrical. As a tenant you want to live in a particular place, whether its for location, or amenities, or price etc.
When you lease an apartment, the landlord's record of customer service is almost never a factor in signing the lease. It just never comes up. And the cost of moving is so high that its unlikely someone will leave a unit because the landlord sucked (I know this from experience). So the landlord doesn't have to compete with other landlords based on customer service, they compete based on the price, location and amenities of the units they offer.
So there's really no incentive for most landlords to be better landlords. The only ones who try, are mostly just doing it to follow the law or out of a sense of fairness.
The market just doesn't really reward landlords enough for their customer service ability...
I've lived abroad quite a bit and when you're not sure how long you will be in a city renting is pretty much the only option unless the local turnover is very high (and barring market collapse).
As a consequence I've had a fair number of landlords over the years, from owners that let out the top floor of the house they owned to apartments in high-rises.
The funny thing is that there is no hard and fast rule that says landlords can't be great, I've had absolutely fantastic landlords and really terrible ones and not always in the place where you'd expect them.
I see the customer service issues in the real estate industry (especially property management) as being created by two issues (and disclosure: I've worked in real estate for the past 11 years, from the front desk to franchise ops manager to consulting back to the industry):
* High staff turnover
* Procedures that suck staff time, instead of supporting them
Being a property manager is, for the most part, an awful job. If you sell real estate, you deal with the owner giving you grief; when you manage a property you have the owner, the tenant, and the suppliers all wanting a piece of your time, and rarely to say thank you. Because you don't need to be a rocket surgeon to work in PM, the pay is low, and most staff are young people looking for something better. When they leave, they take with them most of the corporate memory about the tenant and the property. If you hate your property manager, chances are it's because several times in the past year you've called and been put through to a different person every time.
Lack of procedures is linked to lack of investment in this part of the business (also reflected in low salaries and high staff turnover). Most real estate offices are run by salespeople, current or former. They see one sales commission worth $000s as being infinitely better than one tenancy worth $16 / week. So they don't invest in systems, processes, staff development, or great software. This is the market hole you speak of - but while there's a gap in the market, there may not be a market in the gap...
...EXCEPT that, ironically, a rent roll is traditionally the only asset a real estate business has to sell - without it, you just have a sales team who could go next door and open up tomorrow. PM departments also provide a regular income when sales decrease, which has been the case over the past two years in most of the world affected by the recession / GFC. I don't have enough evidence to support a claim that owners are more willing to invest in their team, particularly property management, as a result of this; but I hope it's the case.
This response indicates to me that you truly do not understand what it's like to manage a building with hundreds of tenants. It's not that I don't want to fix real problems (broken sink, heat, disposal, etc) but I can tell you that if have this accessible of a system its only going to make a landlords life worse. Perhaps if you had an option to send in a work-order based on a set of predetermined orders that the tenant could only check off and submit rather than an open comment box it would make my life easier. However, giving my tenants an open forum to tell me they want a new coat of paint, or to install an ac, or fix a small dent is going to make my life a living hell.
Disclosure: I spend 8-10 hours a day managing and talking to other landlords.
Question: without testing, how do you know that an automated "accessible system... its only going to make a landlords life worse" ?
Have you evidence this is true? I work with web hosting and clients can send support tickets at any time, but rarely do. They have the option of asking infinite questions such as, I made a change why did my website break, why is my site not in google for [insert impossible keyword here], I want to change the background color, why is the email from my mom spam... but it almost never happens.
I think any business with strong customer lock-in, infrequent purchase decision, and an immutable monthly cost/revenue evolves into a business where the company tries to minimize support. Think of the level of support you get at a bank, cell phone company, etc. Awful.
I'm not sure about the opportunity there. If you spent 2x on support costs, what would you get out of it? Tons of referrals when people are moving out? Probably not-- movers are busy and rarely have friends handy who are in that rare moment of hunting for an apt/condo.
Now, SERVICES on the other hand... Certainly there's room for apartment buildings that have great gyms, social events, etc.
I'd like to start off with saying that most HN members are NOT the typical renters that landlords deal with.
Most HNers are very intelligent, hard working and understanding/reasonable. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Not all renters are like that.
Unless you've been a landlord or worked closely with one, it's hard to understand some of the frustrations of dealing with renters. Owning property is not the same as being a landlord.
Some things that we'd think are unreasonable, a renter might think is reasonable. I've had one renter try to not extend lease AND not pay for new month's rent, just because they were only staying for 2 weeks of new month. It's not the landlord's fault they didn't secure a new place in time. The final compromise was to allow them to pay 2 weeks rent. Did it work? No. Think it's easy to get people to pay? No. Think the eviction process is simple and quick? NO.
I think this app would work best in places with atypical renters. Places where the rent is higher than market and the price covers the landlord's time to deal with everything.
That's as good an advertisement for 'iterate' early and often as we'll see around here. Two years of development and that's the first response you give, I guess either you're not the target market or maybe they should have connected with actual users a bit earlier.
So this makes me wonder, was this product developed on the 'they will come' methodology or was there actual end-user involvement and piloting with early adopters during the development phase?
If the latter then you're simply not the target market.
Where I live if you have a property that is 'to let' you contract out the handling of all the details to an agency that manages a large number of properties and you just pocket the cash every month.
Ok, cool. The title and the homepage made me suspect otherwise.
What's interesting to me is that all the people that I know that own rental properties have outsourced the handling for a %age of the rent. That may be a cultural thing though, but from what I know about the market typically landlords are interested in the monthly payment, not in dealing with the tenants, if they can afford it at all they'll get someone to do it for them.
Maybe that's the market this is aimed at, agencies rather than DIY landlords?
We're targeting both, landlords are smaller, and property management companies are larger. Their needs a very similar though. To get our base established, we are mostly targeting somewhat tech savvy landlords and small property management companies. We'll grow into larger and larger property management companies over time though.
Having worked, trained and coached property management businesses, I think much of your review is valid - especially the work order elements. It's not about (as some of the other responses say) being a crappy landlord or ignoring a small fix that turns into a ten grand piece of work - many tenants (maybe not you, dear reader, but when you have a rent roll of hundreds or thousands) do make inane requests. These aren't so much maintenance things as requests - now that I've signed a lease for this cheap house, can you install air-conditioning, build a fence, and re-do the bathroom, and I'll approve a $10 rent increase at the next renewal.
Your response to other elements contacts, tasks, and automated rent collection says to me that the product isn't designed for you. When I've got a team of 4-5 property managers, 600+ properties, some on fixed leases and some on holiday letting schedules, time lost to paperwork is enormous. Actually, I've not worked with an office that hasn't had some sort of technology for contact and property data; managing work orders, automating payments, assigning tasks to other managers are all fairly common now as well (and I see other key selling points in the product, so that's not to be taken as a criticism for 2 years' work).
You make a good point on the work orders. You have full control over deleting, closing out, changing the priority, etc of them.
Think of work orders as a support request for an online company. You get a lot of junk support requests as well, but you have to have something, and the tools to organize as needed. And this is WAY more efficient than speaking with someone over the phone or in person, or taking emails!
It would be a fine line to balance. As we know, it's a lot easier to write a super-critical anonymous comment on Yelp than to say it face-to-face. Closer together in that continuum is placing a work order online v having to make a call (or even send an email).
If it's easier, the PM will get more of them AND those extras are unlikely to be the important ones. (If your hot water system blows, you pick up the phone; if you don't like the shade of green in the living room, you send a web message.) And if you're a good manager, you still have to respond to them all.
I'm raising this as a genuine fear for a customer reviewing the product. It would be interesting to have some user stats that overcome that fear - eg, "support requests rose by 10% BUT the time taken to respond to all requests actually went down by 20%, saving managers three hours each week, AND this feature was identified by many tenants in their improved satisfaction reports."
It's undoubtedly a legitimate fear. But compare this to a company like ATT for example who has way more clients than most any property mgt company. Do you think they would prefer to deal with online support requests from clients or talk to them in person at their store?
Having an in person or live conversation is almost always more costly. Yes, it likely cuts down on the number of miniscule requests that you will receive, but you are likely to get a large number of those via telephone, unless you don't offer that as well, which would be impossible for offsite property managers.
So, in short, yes, I agree with you that the number of silly requests may go up, especially initially. However, to counter this, sorting them takes all of 5 seconds a piece instead of 5 min to listen to them ramble on the phone, the benefits of online rental payments saves you time and money, and the instant organization that comes from having this all flow into one system is in our eyes, priceless.
Uh, ok. This is a product marketed to land lords, not to tenants. I am giving the opinion for the target.
Im sure the same thing could be said about attorneys. Its the way the world works. Tenants like asking for misc bullshit and landlords hate doing them.
This is also how your units end up with leaking sinks and tens of thousands of dollars in repair costs. It depends on how you want to run your business. Many companies WANT work orders, and with the system you can read over them, prioritize and determine if you need to address or dismiss. You also don't have to take the call or deal with any of that, they just come into your feed.
You're getting pretty defensive in the face of a potential customer. If I were you I'd take the opportunity to try to understand what WOULD make the OP's life easier. There is, often times, some easy ways to turn an initial detractor into a proponent. At the minimum it won't be the last time you hear feedback like this, so use it as an opportunity to understand the REASONS the OP feels the way he does. That way you can formulate a better response than, "if you don't use my product you're a shady property manager and have a crap maintenance record", because that's basically what you just said.
#1 we have in place 2 similar systems to track maintenance per unit and rate your units by this number. And another report to be even more granular to the tenant level :)
Yea, I assume you do both of those things. My point is eating your own dogfood in this case is owning a 400 apartment complex not renting at a 400 unit complex.
Landlords care more about how much it's going to cost to service the elevator(s) vs replace them. When it's cheaper to replace a refrigerator than repair it. They don't care about how efficient the refrigerator is unless they bundle electricity cost into rent.
Tennents care about how much electricity that refrigerator costs them and how quickly they will have a working refrigerator.
Landlords don't like hearing from tennents because it's costing them money. Automated emails are great if the landlord was going to send it anyway and pointless if they don't already do it. Automated rent payments don't really help them when they can collect a late fee in a few days etc. However, automated printing of those late fees is vary helpful. :evil:
PS: Hidden fees don't just pad the bottom lines for CC companies and banks; apartment complex love that action.
Why would you not be able to say no (with appropriate reasons) to "misc bullshit" requests online via Rentpost, versus doing the same on phone/in person?
Also, wouldn't receiving payments online rather than via checks/cash be easier for you, even if you, say, disable the tenant complaints portion of the site?
PS> I am not affiliated to Rentpost in any way, just amused by your dismissing their effort in strong words.
Landlords love providing that. You'd be aghast how many tenants don't want it - based on the fact that once they've lived in it, it's not a nice place any more.
I had a rental house for a couple of years. I had dirt ground into the kitchen floor that took me two days to clean, I had holes punched in the walls, I had the washer stolen, I had the back door broken in when they lost the keys (despite me living five minutes away with another set of keys), I had a shed literally packed full of garbage, I had evictions that took six months (after flat-out non-payment for months before that, and partly because the sheriff "couldn't find them"), I had fleas in the carpet from a dog that was explicitly forbidden in the lease. I had one whole year where I made zero dollars due to three successive deadbeats - still had the mortgage, of course.
Rental is hell on Earth. I can't imagine doing only rental as a career. I'd end up in the loony bin or up in the bell tower taking out as many as I could before they got me.
My current apartment complex has a portal where one can pay via eCheck and it's pretty awesome. Do you have a "convenience fee" for paying by credit card? How well do you advertise it?
> I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things.
Kinda sounds like a place where I don't want to live. How are your ratings on ApartmentRatings.com?
You might not. Its not about not fixing things when they break or keeping the place clean. Those things are legitimate concerns and are taken care of.
Its about when a tenant complains because he wants all new appliances because he thinks they use too much electricity. Its about when a tenant wants to get 100$ off his rent every month because he now has a sick uncle living with him. Its about when a tenant wants to have huge Christmas decorations in the front of his door but his neighbors dont like it.
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Its easy for people on here to idealize a perfect "landlord and me are buddies!" dream, but its not how it works in the real world. A apartment building has costs, salaries and other expenses to keep afloat. If we listen to every complaint from a tenant (and as such, make it easier for them to do as such) we start losing money.
You might say "Well, it will be a better place to live then!" - Great, great for the tenants. But this is a product to be sold to land lords, NOT tenants. You will have a tough time selling me on "Make your tenants happier and make less money doing it" I'm fine (and they are fine) with the current situation.
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This is not a restaurant. We do not depend on referrals, walkins or other methods. Dont apply the restaurant methodology to owning a building because it doesn't work. In a restaurant, you keep everyone happy so they come back again. Spilled something on you? Free meal. Steak was cold? Come back for half off.
As a former tenant, I have never asked my landlord for all new appliances or asked them to discount my rent just because they feel sorry for me. I have been in situations where I wanted to contact the landlord about legitimate issues, ranging from “the guy living three floors above me puked out the window onto our walkway” to “the living-room window is still cracked and there’s no heat in the bedroom”, and found it difficult to do so. In the latter case, after getting no response from the landlord after weeks of complaint, I went to the city health inspector, who discovered a long list of code violations in the apartment, including a bunch of things that I personally would never have complained about if the landlord had addressed my immediate problems.
I don't think most HN members are the typical renters that landlords don't like. (Heck, I sometimes think all NYC HN members live exclusively in Manhattan paying $3000/month rent. I know it's not true, but Manhattan seems very popular.)
It's very different being a landlord and thinking about how a landlord 'should' do things. There are just things that being a renter you never get to experience or just hear about in passing. You never get to experience dealing with completely unreasonable renters or constant complaints.
Ever had to deal with a renter that thought it was OK to not pay (at all) if they 'only' stay for 2 weeks into the next month before moving? Good luck trying to reason with them. Good luck going through eviction process which is long and time consuming. Good luck getting the money.
I admit that I have never been a landlord per se, but I do understand that a Tenant From Hell can exploit the law to screw well-meaning landlords.
I also once had a Roommate From Hell who paid a token amount of rent to me rather than to the landlord... thus turning him into my Subletter From Hell... and when I tried to get him to pay the rest of his share of the rent, he gave me a lecture about how screwed I was. (And because of the damage that his chain-smoking did to the house’s lobby area, I lost my security deposit.) I called his successor the Roommate From Limbo because on the one hand, he had WHITE POWER tattoos, played the same Hank Williams Jr. tape incessantly, and had loud s/m sex with his girlfriend, but on the other hand, he paid his rent on time.
At any rate, I’m not sure a tenant who bombards a landlord with incessant frivolous complaints through a trouble-ticket system is really that much more annoying than a tenant who does the same bombardent by telephone.
" This is not a restaurant. We do not depend on referrals, walkins or other methods. Dont apply the restaurant methodology to owning a building because it doesn't work. In a restaurant, you keep everyone happy so they come back again. Spilled something on you? Free meal. Steak was cold? Come back for half off.
Just doesn't work like that in renting."
It could work like that if there was Yelp For Landlords.
It depends on the rental market. Here in Pittsburgh, more landlords in the city are bad because it's such a heavy student population. What's the incentive to be good or to update apartment features? Every apartment gets rented out anyways.
About 1/3 of our city's population is students as well.
I have heard nightmare stories about 'Turn' taking weeks to complete because of the high turnover rates in our city.. As well as managers being at whits end 1/2 the time because of workload. We really tried to develop our software to ease these tensions. In some of the companies we have studied, we were able to reduce the workload of the company and reduce the stress.
And in doing so, hopefully we make a happier rental env for everyone :)
Managers spend massive amounts of money trying to find new tenants for a unit. If you have yearly turnover b/c you intentionally stay disconnected with tenants, this will increase your overhead, not the other way around. Hire a college kid to sort through the work orders and prioritize them accordingly.
It's not overly difficult to adjust your mental model of what a good rating is, and read the reviews people leave to see what the common complaints are.
It probably also depends on the area - my complex hovers around 70% and I didn't bother with anything below 50%.
Maybe not, but with more information available online now your next potential tenant will be able to take that into account. (And don't think I didn't notice you dodged the ratings question). Places with better reputations will attract better tenants and have better occupancy rates.
Setting up tenants for an online account is optional. Heh, I wouldn't want to create more work either. However, if tenants are setup w/ an online account w/ rental collection online, the amount of paperwork would be slashed to a fraction. Every thing would automatically be digitized and collected, and your staff that normally collects the 800+ checks a month (400 units * 2 tenants) will have more time to sit at the local starbucks and browse hacker news :). Oh, and that is for non 'turn' months. 1000+ unit managers spend weeks during turn. We can turn those weeks into days :)
I own some units and I LOVE the fact that many of my tenants pay me automatically through their Chase billpay or whatever that automatically deposits money in my account. This is so much better than me collecting checks
Now, what if they were automatically reflected on the tenants account balance and all notifications were handled, etc. Also, if they didn't pay on time, they'd get an automated reminder email letting them know they are late, auto assessment of late fees making the system the scapegoat and in turn increasing your on-time collection ratio, etc. We think that's worth a few bucks a month...
If you want to take your business seriously and stay organized and stay on top of things, aside from rolling out your own system, there is no other way. You can't keep up with it all.
I'd address each of these things but I am tied down at the moment. Basically, it sounds like it isn't for you, and it won't be for everyone.
I see what you are saying about the use of this system; particularly in terms of complaints/work orders.
But if you could get people to use this system surely it would be easy to program (assuming such a system could be added by rentpost) responses to common questions - that surely would save time in the long run (i.e. a 2 minute call turns into 10 seconds selecting the right response).
As an ex-tennant and now a home owner I have always thought that the real estate and rental markets need a serious shake up. I realise the problems faced by people renting property in terms of fussy customers and time wasters. BUT that is a problem for "you" to fix, it shouldn't affect me (a hypothetically sensible, non-fussy, customer).
I've always thought; if the contract says I can do X, making it a bit hard to do X is just not providing the full service. Random example; when we had a minor wiring issue in one house I lived in it took about 3 days to talk to the landlord properly, and another three for someone to come and do the half hour fix.
This was for two reasons; firstly the maintenance system my landlord had was complicated and disorganised (basically, a list he gave his "guys" each day and they did as and when...). And the reason it took three days to get the problem to him was because of the soft blocks he had put between him and his tenants to discourage time wasters.
Modern banking, and the expenses that go along with it. I'm not sure that it's actually legal to do this but almost any service like this (particularly rent and school payments) includes a "convenience fee" to offset the service provider fees, or for the middle-tier provider to make a profit, or both. Checks, electronic or physical, don't incur fees beyond whatever your agreement is with your bank.
I have all of those with my credit union in the US. Heck, every bill I pay using online bill pay gives me rewards points typical to what using a CC would do. This includes paying bills where the credit union ends up mailing a physical cashiers check.
All of the above with no charges, although they may have a requirement to have direct deposit set up.
In the UK using cheques for anything is the rare exception. The plan is to phase them out within a few years, but already hardly anyone uses them any more.
It's the exception for banks, but credit unions are generally good to their customers. The few dealings I've had with BofA for example left me wondering why anyone would ever deal with them. At my credit union the people are friendly and when I used to go to a branch they actually knew me.
My bank's automatic billing system prints and mails a check in my name to my landlord. So I'm using both modern banking and checks. They are not mutually exclusive.
An electronic transaction can be customer-initiated, as well. In the EU most billpaying has been through direct account transfers for a long, long time now. Nowadays payments work across the union, too.
In the UK, we have a "direct debit guarantee". Basically if anyone ever takes too much in error, you just call up your bank and tell them to put it back, and they do.
I would shy away from doing this. The bank has no obligation to uphold the post-date that you write. I once sent in a post-dated rent check that was dependent on a deposit clearing, and the landlord (accidentally) brought it in earlier and it was accepted by the bank. Luckily, the bank covered it for me, but I still had to deal with overdraft fees and such. The bank manager explained to me that post-dating is typically honored by a bank.
Banks charge 1-2% as a credit card fee, but no fees for using checks. In my building, they pass the fee along to me (the tenant), so it's in my best interest to pay by check.
You've gone straight from "why the hell are people still using cash/check to pay bills in this day and age?" to "it's in my best interest to pay by check", via the assumption that the only alternative is credit card.
Why not, say, just log into your online banking and arrange an electronic transfer to the landlord's account on a set day of each month?
I think this was parent poster's point - that in some countries (even those less advanced than America in other ways) the banking system allows much greater convenience. Most people in Western Europe have the option of paying their rent electronically without writing a cheque and without incurring extra fees.
I should have clarified, I lumped electronic checks in with physical ones in understanding the parent's point. I use electronic checking transfers to pay my rent, not physical handwritten checks. Most bills in the US (including rent) have an E-Check option, and that's what a lot of people use. I assumed when the parent was talking about alternatives to cash + checks, they meant credit/debit.
sounds like perverse incentives - surely there is a lot more cost (human review, for one) to processing a check than an electronic transfer. here in NZ the bank fees for automatic payments or debit card like transfer is less than checks and consequently checks are phasing out fast, almost gone
As a tenant to several both tech and non-tech complexes in SoCal I would like to say that because you wouldn't use the product, because you worry about a paper trail, I would rather not live at your complex.
The difference in customer service between say, an Archstone community with amazing online customer service from online bill-pay to online maintenance requests to say, a complex that runs by paper and phone calls, is night and day.
This service solves such a big problem that I myself have been rough drafting a similar website but looks like these guys are way ahead of the game. Congrats and I hope it does well, I know I certainly would use it as a tenant.
You have an option to allow tenants to pay rent with a credit card?!? I am shocked about two things. First, doesn't it hurt you to lose the processing fee off the top? Second, why on earth are tenants still paying with a check when they could pay with a credit card and reap insane rewards points. Getting airline miles for such a large, regular expenditure is a free flight per year (not to mention charging and paying off rent each month probably would help increase your credit limit and credit score).
Yea, the fees would either be passed to the tenant or absorbed by the manager (in order to improve their collections, better to get it with a fee than not)
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Connect with tenants effortlessly - Not a good thing, Usually leads to excess work orders, more "asks" and petty squabbles about this and that.
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Automate rent with online rent collection - Not sure how this is going to work. We have a option for people to pay rent via CC, but most people opt to do it in cash/check. Since only a fraction would use this, I would have to add to my work load to manually enter their transactions in here to have data integrity.
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organize work orders- Definitely dont want this. If they need something done, they just go the manager and ask. Taking away that element will just create unneeded work orders. We already have a internal system for tracking needed work. I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things.
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...tasks, contacts and more! I guess this is cool, but we never really have a need for this. You already have to file their rental application and other work anyways, so its not like you wont have this.
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I guess I just dont see the appeal. Its cool to have a nice online interface for this, but I know we wouldnt use it and even my friend who runs a 400 unit complex hates moving stuff to tech. Unfortunately, they always add more work then they solve. The last thing ANY land lord needs, is /MORE/ paper trail :)
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If you get anything from this, get this- I am a technical, HN user that owns a apartment building. I am (what you would assume) your absolute ideal customer.
And with that, I wouldnt use your product without significant changes.
~fin