Being a landlord is more than a full time job and for most of us - we only do it on the side. To make life easier can mean more time with family and friends:). One of my new secrets for saving time and making life easier is a paperless application. The signs were right in front of me to go PAPERLESS as I would go through my normal application process that would take days.
My previous paper process:
- Post the vacant property on listing sites like Zillow, Trulia and Rent.com
- Answer phone calls from potential applicants and schedule appointments for showings
- Provide a paper application to the potential tenant
- End up meeting them again to pick up the application and fee
- Responsible for caring for paper with the applicant’s sensitive information
- Leaving everything I want to do behind to screen the tenant instead
- Entering the information into a tenant background check site
- Searching through facebook, linkedin and twitter for the applicant pages
- Storing the paper application in a safe place for at least 7 years
Now I am paperless and use technology on my phone that allows me to click a button and market my house on all the top listings sites, including my own free website. It also allows potential tenants to send digital applications right to my account. Applications that have all of the needed information, which includes customized questions that I created. I can even charge an application fee and it goes right to my bank account and registers in my accounting without me doing anything.
I now get notifications via email when an application comes in and can quickly open it and do a background check - right there. If I approve the tenant - I hit “approve” and it lets the tenant know. Storing information is easy and safe, because I never have to deal with a paper copy getting lost. All I did was to set up an account for free.
A process that once took an entire weekend is now done in minutes with TenantCloud. When I think back to doing paper applications I can’t believe it took so much time. I now require any tenant to fill out the online application because it is so easy and helpful. I can go from talking to a potential applicant to moving them into a unit and a lease just by clicking on my phone a few times and don’t have to type anything in, because the tenant filled out the application and the tenant screening company help verify it.
Weekend here I come ;)
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