Is rent collection on your to do list this week?
Is rent collection on your to do list this week?

Oh no: it’s time to collect the rent again. While rent collection should be the culmination of a month of successful tenant-landlord interactions, it’s not always a smooth process. Being a landlord can be stressful, and rent time can be the most stressful time of all. Whether it’s a tenant who forgets to pay or someone who’s angry about a maintenance project that’s not completed, you can have a lot of headaches around rent collection. Streamline your processes and save yourself the pain of rent collection by working with a rental property management agency.

Manage Tenant Screening

Collecting the rent begins long before you receive your first rent payment. When you work with a property management agency, you can ensure that you have proper tenant screening. Tenant screening should include criminal screening, an examination of the tenant’s history, and a credit check. This helps you make sure that you have a tenant who will care for your property and your finances and pay you promptly. According to the Bigger Pockets blog, your most important investment of time should be in a quality property manager: “you need to understand how important they are in the success of your investment and you need to know what qualities to look for in a manager.”

Maintain Smooth Relationships

As you enter into a tenant-landlord relationship, you set a foundation for the future of that relationship. The processes that your property management company has in place will set you up for success. For example, your rental property management company will organize repairs and maintenance, so that tenants will feel that you care for them. They’ll be more likely to pay rent promptly when they have a good relationship with your company. A property management company may also have incentive programs that recognize tenants for their consistent payment history, encouraging others to be more consistent in their payments as well.

Make Rent Collection Easy

According to the RentPrep blog, “landlords are particularly vulnerable to suffering from stress because they combine the role of entrepreneur and manager at once.” A rental property management company has systems in place to make rent collection much easier. It’s not an ad hoc plan to call a tenant if the rent is late. According to Renters Warehouse, landlords seeking relief from the rent collection burden can turn to the systems of a management company: “a property management company can set up an automatic withdrawal from a bank account or credit card so rent is paid on time more often.”

Professional rental property companies have systems in place to follow up with tenants who do not pay on time and policies to follow in the case of persistent nonpayment. As an individual landlord working with an individual tenant, it can be stressful to manage payment processes, follow up with tenants who do not pay on time, and follow through with eviction notices if tenants have persistent problems.

Are you looking for a professional rental property management agency? Contact Lori Gill and Associates. We’ll give you the remedy for the monthly rent check headache and much more. Work with us to streamline the process of being a landlord.