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When it comes to investing in real estate, you may be tempted to stick close to home, and that’s understandable. You’re more likely to understand the market and feel more comfortable being around when looking for tenants or collecting rent. It may sound daunting, but many real estate investors find it tempting to seek out markets in other cities or states to secure more affordable investment properties.
Now, there are several options available to you when it comes to managing a real estate investment: manage yourself, hire a property manager, or hire a property management company. Regardless of which you choose, in our technology-driven world chances are some type of software will be employed to conduct business operations.
The installation of software or technology to manage your properties ensures that you present yourself as a competent and professional landlord when it is time to place a tenant in your rental and when it is time to find tenants and collect rent. Present—even from miles away.
Tenants can apply for your rental online
The first step you will need to take after securing your long distance rental property is to actually find tenants. Naturally, the easiest way to do this is to list your investment property on syndication sites such as Zillow, Hotpads, Trulia, Realtor.com or Doorsteps. People searching for apartments or rental properties frequent these popular sites. You can use property management software to syndicate listings with the push of a button. Keep in mind that if you use sites like Zillow to post your rental, you will be charged a posting fee. It is rolled out by Zillow for all 50 states.
From these sites, applicants can request to apply for your rental. Typically applicants will fill out a form with their name, phone number, email address, and a message. After you have gathered this information, you can use property management software to generate an invitation for a formal application if you are interested in the applicant.
Additionally, you might consider using Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, as potential renters often use these sites to search for rentals as well. If you’re using sites like Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, potential renters will send you direct messages, but you can collect their contact information to send applications.
screen tenants from miles away
When it comes to screening tenants from long distances, there are several steps you can take. The most obvious is the rental application. Landlords usually create or download an application that they can use to collect more information about the tenant. Typically, this application will host a host of tenant information such as personal information, employment history, financial information, and anything else that may be relevant to determining whether or not the tenant would be a good fit for your rental.
Along with an application, the landlord will usually conduct a background check of the tenant. If you’re not sure how to conduct a background check, most property management software will have a built-in background check process that you can use to easily screen tenants. You can also use sites like TransUnion to screen tenants.
If you’re long distance, all of these—rent applications and tenant checks—can be conducted online, so you don’t have to be on site to hand out paper applications.
rent in another city or state
Importantly, collecting rent is an important process in managing rental properties and technology may be most beneficial if you are long distance. After all, you won’t be able to use plain old paper checks or traditional methods of physical cash.
However, as technology becomes more prevalent in the world of real estate investing, you can easily collect rent online without physically being near your investment properties. And, property management software is a great way to collect rent (versus apps like Venmo or PayPal) because it offers so many more features for landlords than money transfer apps (for example, the listing and application process described above. to complete.)
Property management software can be used to generate rent charges for the term of your lease, set up automatic transfers of money to tenants, track all your payments in one place, and even It can also supply accounting features that help you during tax time. Your tenants can typically pay with their bank account or card, so rent is deposited electronically and no hand-off or driving to pick up checks or cash is required.
Software to help you manage long-range investment properties
If you’re interested in adopting technology into your long-term asset management process, one software that can help you manage all aspects of your investment properties is RentReady.
When it comes to listing your unit and collecting applications, you can use RentRedi’s software to list on Realtor.com and Zillow. These sites allow applicants to express interest in your property. After you’ve vetted potential tenants interested in your rental, you can use RentReady’s software to invite the tenant to formally apply to rent your unit using RentReady’s in-house application. (This makes it handy that you don’t have to dig around or build your own application.)
Importantly, after your potential tenant completes the application, they can complete a TransUnion background check from RentReady which provides you with credit, criminal and eviction checks. When you’ve chosen a tenant to fill your unit, you can use RentReady’s software to send, sign, and store leases. Then, collect rent with automatically populated rent charges for the Tenant App and Tenant Auto-Pay. You can also set up maintenance personnel with free Teammate accounts or sign up for Maintenance Coordination which enables you to completely outsource maintenance requests, so you don’t have to be on site for maintenance issues. No need to worry about either.
All of these aspects of managing investment properties can be done online with property management software like RentReady.
RentReady is offered for free to BiggerPocket Pro members, who can sign up directly from their Pro page. If you’re not a BiggerPocket Pro member, consider signing up for all the additional content, insights and tools you can use to manage your investing process—from buying to managing.
Get started using RentReady today!
This article is presented by RentReady
RentReady is a modern, end-to-end property management software that is changing the real estate and rental property industry.
RentReady Online rent collection, tenant screening, Zillow and Realtor from over 15,000+ landlords.
For renters, RentReady’s easy-to-use mobile app allows them to pay rent, set up auto-pay, report rent payments to TransUnion, pre-qualify and sign leases, and submit maintenance requests .
Note by BiggerPockets: These are the views expressed by the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BigPockets.
