What does it take to become a stress-free landlord?
Maybe it seems impossible. After all, there’s rent to collect and vacancies to fill and preventative maintenance services to schedule. How can you not feel a little bit stressed when you’re leasing, managing, and maintaining a Colorado Springs rental property?
It doesn’t have to be this way. You can achieve a lot less stress, more peace of mind, and maybe even earn a bit more money when you integrate some automated solutions into your process. We’re highlighting five of them today.
Here’s where you should get started if you want to enjoy your rental property more and manage it less.
1. Syndicated and Automated Rental Property Marketing
Keeping your rental property occupied and profitable requires effective marketing. If you’re struggling to get a listing put together, late in responding to tenant inquiries, and unable to schedule showings on your time schedule, you’re going to face longer vacancy periods and struggle to place a good tenant.
Automation tools can help you reach potential tenants effortlessly and keep your property visible in a competitive market. When you automate and syndicate your marketing, you can enjoy a wider reach. You’ll get a single listing shared on multiple websites, allowing more tenants to find you and your rental home. You’ll also get consistent updates about how many people have viewed your listing, asked for a showing, or sent a message.
Listings will also stay up to date when you have an automated system in place for sharing them and responding to interest. Monitoring performance will allow you to adjust your pricing or other strategies as necessary.
You can utilize any number of automation tools that are out there specifically for listing rental properties. Try Zillow Rental Manager to syndicate your listing across Zillow, Trulia, and HotPads. You’re likely listing your Colorado Springs home for rent on Zillow anyway. You can also explore platforms such as RentPath and Avail, which will automatically post your listings on various websites.
Remember that you’ll still have to create the listing yourself. Put some effort into taking and choosing photos and writing descriptions that will get the attention of good tenants. Don’t forget to include details like rental amount, security deposit requirements, and how to get in touch with you.
2. Digital Keypads and Smart Locks
For rental property owners, digital keypads and smart locks are an accessible form of smart home technology that offer a range of benefits that can streamline operations, enhance security, and improve tenant satisfaction. If you’re looking to automate leasing and modernize your property management approach, this is a good way to start.
- There’s extra security with digital keypads and automated entry. With features like encryption, tamper alerts, and automatic locking, these devices ensure that access to your rental property is secure.
- The ability to control access remotely is another great benefit to automation. You can lock and unlock doors as needed, whether a tenant is arriving for a self-showing or a vendor needs to complete maintenance during the turnover process. There’s no need for you to meet anyone there with a key.
- Keyless entry is a benefit to tenants and owners. Tenants don’t have to worry about losing their keys or getting locked out, and owners don’t have to deal with the hassle of rekeying a property between tenants.
From enhanced security and convenience to cost savings and improved tenant experience, these smart devices are a valuable addition to any rental property. By integrating digital keypads and smart locks into your property management strategy, you can automate leasing, streamline operations, and stay ahead of the competition.
3. Accept Rental Payments Online
Online rental payments are pretty common now, and if you’re still requiring a paper check to be written, it’s time to modernize your rental property operations.
There are many compelling reasons for landlords to switch to online payments. It saves time. Manually collecting rent can be an exhaustive process involving multiple steps—from sending reminders to tracking down late payments. Automating this process frees up valuable time, allowing you to focus on other critical aspects of property management.
You’ll also have fewer errors and disputes around rent payments. Human error is inevitable in manual processes. Whether it’s misplacing a check or entering incorrect data, these mistakes can lead to financial discrepancies and tenant dissatisfaction. Online rental payments minimize these risks by automating data entry and payment tracking. There’s no check that will get lost in the mail. And, it’s more secure. Paper checks are vulnerable to fraud; anyone can copy down an account and routing number. Those online payment systems are secure and encrypted.
Collecting rent digitally can also improve your cash flow. It increases the likelihood that rent will be paid on time, which can significantly improve your cash flow. With online systems, tenants receive automated reminders, and funds are directly deposited into your account, reducing the likelihood of late or missed payments.
Today’s tenants expect convenience. Offering an online payment option meets this expectation and can improve tenant satisfaction and retention rates. An easier, more straightforward payment process means happier tenants who are more likely to renew their leases.
Choose a platform that works for you. While Colorado Springs property management companies already have extensive software systems in place that easily allow for online rent collection, you may have to be more creative as an independent landlord, especially if you’re only renting out one or two homes. There are plenty of ways to do it, however. Take the time to research and choose a platform that best fits your needs and budget. Even an online payment app like Zelle or Venmo can work.
4. Digitize Your Colorado Springs Lease Agreement
Streamline the leasing process by using digital lease agreements. This not only speeds up the process but also provides a convenient way for tenants to sign and store their lease documents. There are several benefits to automating your lease agreement, including:
- Quick Turnaround. Your digital signature and your tenant’s digital signature allows for rapid execution of lease agreements. You can email it to them to review and sign, and they can send it right back to you.
- Secure Storage. With an automated system for signing and storing the lease agreement, you’ll keep all of your tenant’s personal information securely stored in the cloud, accessible from anywhere.
- Paperless Process. Less paper is good for you and it’s good for the environment. Why not keep everything digitized so that you can reduce the need for physical paperwork and make the process more eco-friendly.
You can still take the time to discuss key parts of the lease agreement with your tenants. When you email them the lease document, highlight the most important areas so that they understand their own responsibilities. You’ll want to highlight the rent collection policy, the process for requesting maintenance, and all the rules and requirements that need to be followed. Invite questions, have discussions, and enjoy the fact that you can both view the lease document on screens while talking about what it means to the tenancy.
The most popular automated lease program is DocuSign. This is widely used for secure and legally binding digital signatures. You can also experiment with Adobe Sign, which integrates seamlessly with other Adobe products for document management. A new product on the market is PandaDoc, which offers customizable templates and an easy-to-use interface.
5. Invest in Building Management Systems
Automating maintenance is just as important as automating leasing and rent collection. The first thing to do if you want to streamline maintenance is to invest in a Building Management System. You’ll earn more money by saving more money. You’ll also save a lot of time and resources.
One of the newer property maintenance technology trends that is gaining traction is building management systems (BMS) technology. This is new and improved technology that can easily provide the information that a property owner needs to make better decisions based on usage and tenant behavior.
Invest in a software system that allows you to follow and work with the physical environment of any building. We use BMS, and we can tell you that this has been a huge help to property managers and building managers. With an excellent system, we can follow specific analytics, such as temperature, moisture, lighting levels, heating and cooling, and security systems. We can track when doors are opened, how long they’re opened, and whether a building is unusually humid or hot or drafty.
This makes a difference in your ROI and it also makes a big difference when it comes to keeping your building more secure and better maintained. We can access the necessary data in real time, which means we can respond right away to potential problems and eliminate any concerns our owners may have over deferred or unreported maintenance.
Colorado Springs Property Management and Efficiency
By working with a property management partner in Colorado Springs, you’ll find that a lot of this technology is already in place. You’ll truly become a stress-free landlord when you have experts taking care of all the leasing and management as well as the maintenance and automation.
If you’d like to learn more about how to automate Colorado Springs property management, please contact us at Muldoon Associates.
