As a rental property owner, the success of your investments relies upon the tenant paying their rent in full and on time. Although paper rent payments had been the most common way to pay for some time those could result in a number of hassles. Even if you have a property manager who handles the paper rent checks for you, and although you can’t necessarily force your tenants to do so, the best practice is to encourage tenants to pay online. Not only are paper rent checks more time-consuming to handle, they can also easily cause interruptions in your monthly cash flow. Whether the payment is delayed, a check bounces, or a tenant is committing outright check fraud, by accepting paper checks you could run the risk of investment returns suffering.
Added Costs and Fees
In addition to inefficiency, another reason why paper check payments are such a hassle is that they can easily result in added costs and fees. If your tenant does not have enough funds in their bank account to cover the rent check, the check will bounce. Your bank will reject it and could charge you a fee. If that happens, you will then need to spend more time tracking down that missing rent payment, not to mention charging and collecting late and non-sufficient funds (NSF) fees from them.
Fraud
Check fraud is another reason you may want to encourage tenants not to make paper rent payments. Unfortunately, it’s all too common an issue. There have been instances where tenants intentionally send paper check payments that they know won’t clear, just to buy themselves more time to get the funds in the bank. Others may not have any intention of paying the rent, a fact you won’t know for sure until after the check has bounced and your tenant is unable or unwilling to rectify the situation.
Online Rent Collection
With all the problems that paper rent payments can bring, it’s no wonder that property owners have started looking for more efficient and secure methods of collecting rent. Fortunately, technology has advanced so much in recent years that online rent collection has become both affordable and increasingly popular. By encouraging your tenants to pay their rent online, you can avoid the many hassles of paper rent payments. Online rent collection can help you ensure consistent cash flow every month, as well as immediate access to your funds.
At Real Property Management, we understand that timely and convenient rental income collection is crucial to owning successful rental properties. We make rental payments quick and easy for you and your tenants so that it’s more likely that they’ll want to pay online instead of by check. We do this by using the online payment software Appfolio. By offering your tenants a way to make secure, convenient, on-time rent payments online – and giving you instant access to your financial information and funds – we might just revolutionize your rent collection process. For more information, please contact your nearest Real Property Management office.
