The romantic concept of being a landlord unloading rent checks, making money on your rents, and watching your investments grow can often feel weighed down by reality early morning eviction calls, struggling best small landlord software bookkeeping, and the myriad administrative tasks involved in running a property. For the small landlord, “the hassle” quickly exceeds any financial gains. But what if you could automate rent collection, screen tenants to verify their creditworthiness, and generate all of your property management financial reports for you? It’s not that farfetched: its possible today with small landlord software. These platforms are built specifically for individuals and small portfolios to make property management a simple part-time business as well as an exciting business model. Here’s a look at the best options available in the market for helping you find the right digital partner for your time and sanity.
Why Every Small Landlord Needs a Digital Assistant
Before we get to the specific software itself, let’s also discuss how they can transform your small landlord business. Many small landlords start with a spreadsheet, a physical ledger and a handful of emails. And when something goes wrong this is how it normally goes… until it doesn’t. Your tenant pays late, you have to manually follow through, you have a lot of trouble managing maintenance requests and, at tax time it feels like you’ve lost all your organization. Small landlord software removes these aspects from your workflow. It puts them into one dashboard. Then, it automates the most time consuming process, lets you interact with tenants professionally, and offers you an auditable record of all the activities you’ve done for your money. Simply put, small landlord software acts as your 24/7 property manager, so you never miss a thing and can manage your properties from anywhere in the world.
The Gold Standard: A Closer Look at the Market Leaders
There are many different property management tools available, but a select few stand out for being intuitive and feature-rich. At the core of it, these tools know that a small landlord doesn’t need all the enterprise-level features of a major corporation; they just want simplicity, power, and affordability. When looking at how the most basic functions in property management can be combined with powerful financial tools, it stands out as a high-performing choice for the modern small landlord. It is built with a clear understanding that at the center of every rental property is a business, and it has to be profitable and well-organized. Baselane’s clients get their own dedicated business banking accounts that include Visa debit cards that automatically categorize every transaction to make management of expenses easy and eliminate the hassle of having to manually enter receipts. The way they collect rent is already fully automated, yet it is also exceptionally fast. Often funds are available within just one business day, compared with the slow turnarounds of some competitors. Also offers some powerful cash flow analysis and insight that shows you exactly where your money is going and how each of your properties are doing financially. Baslane now has high-interest accounts on your security deposits and operating cash, so your money is working even if it’s sitting idle. With its amazing suite of features that includes everything from listing your property and screening tenants to banking and analytics, is truly an all-in-one solution that helps demystify the financial side of being a landlord. It will help anyone that truly wants to treat their rental property as a business.
Key Features That Define the
Once you’ve made your choice, the only thing you’ll need to know is which features are the most useful to you. The best small landlord software is going to excel at four top-notch areas that directly address the pain points that most people have when it comes to their rental business: automated online rent collection This is the number one feature that will save you hours of administrative work on a monthly basis, eliminate the headache of chasing down checks, and allow you to provide a predictable, consistent stream of cash to your tenants. Boasting integrated tenant screening many people will argue that just having tenant screening added into their rental software is not enough. It doesn’t stop there. You can pull a credit, criminal and eviction report directly through the platform and then pay the applicant for it, but the peace of mind that brings, not only peace of mind over your own leasing decision, but peace of mind among your tenants as well. Three or four of these are incredibly important factors that make a difference, and when all three combine seamlessly, you’re on the right track for making a platform a true asset to your rental business.
Streamlining Your Finances with Precision and Ease
The most stressful part of owning a small property can be dealing with the money and taxes. That’s where the makes your investment pay off. There’s more to it than just collecting rents, but the best small landlord software offers much more than that. This provides insights into your finances and organization capabilities. The next step should be looking for software that will automatically create income statements and expense reports for you, categorizing every transaction for you. You don’t want to do all of this work yourself in a spreadsheet. It could take lots of time but if you get the information in a report that you’re serious about then your accountant will love it! Many software platforms, like, will add integrated banking – meaning your income and expenses for your property are automatically kept separate from your personal financial information. You can have a clear picture of your finances, help track profitability per property, and make sure you’re picking up every possible deduction. By automating and eliminating a lot of the jargon around finances, these tools not only save you time but also you can get a better view at what your investment is doing for you.
Making the Right Choice for Your Portfolio
With plenty of great options out there it really comes down to your specific needs and the volume of properties you have. Think about what are the major problems you have. Is it finding good tenants? Turbo Tenant might be ideal. Is it accounting/division of funds? Baselane integration with the financial software is a massive advantage. Is your budget really tight and you need a free, reliable core service? Apartments is a great option. And you should also take advantage of the free trials offered by most of these services. The time to get to know the interface, test out a rent payment, and test out the maintenance request module is huge. The best software is the one you’ll actually use on a regular basis. It needs to feel intuitive and fix more problems than it creates. Spend a little time getting this done and you’ll be thanking yourself for the time spent.
The Future is automated: Embracing Digital Management
It’s no longer a luxury to be a small landlord, and technology is about to propel the evolution. You can’t survive as a cash-flow-strapped landlord, slow, unproductive, low profit if you can still rely on paper and pencil. Instead of worrying about running your own software, investing in a dedicated small landlord software platform is not enough. You need to get one, if you are serious about building a profitable, reliable rental business that will make a difference.
Conclusion
A small landlord isn’t always the solution to running a property. Paying late rent, helping out with repairs or even dealing with financial problems can be solved quite easily with the right digital tools. Companies like Baselane, Turbo Tenant and Apartments bring the ability to manage your rental properties to a single platform. Assess your situation, put your property into place with the right software and you’re on your way to building the passive income you need. Take the time to assess your own business and then take full advantage of all of the features of these platforms, from automated collections of rent payments to integrated banking for all kinds of business needs and you’re on your way to building the passive income you need for yourself and those you rent out.
