Accepting Rent Payments

[Flyingstache]

Hi Everyone!

Apologies if this has been covered before but I have a quick question about the best way to accept rent payments from tenants.

Last year we jumped into the real estate investing game by buying a rental property & then keeping our primary as a rental when we moved across town. We had talked about doing this for awhile & the situation was made easier by the fact that we had family friends/great folks lined up who needed a rental for a year. Because of our relationship with the renters, they dropped off their payments to our home (1 paid cash, 1 paid with check) each month & it was a very easy process.

Those wonderful tenants are now moving out this month & we will be working with new tenants. My question is this, how do you guys collect your rent payments? Is it cash/check & its dropped off or mailed to you? Do you use Venmo or some other app? Do you them set up direct payments from their bank?

Just looking for suggestions & ideas to keep things simple & convenient for everyone involved!

Thanks so much & have a great day!

[uniwelder]

Ours do direct deposit from their bank. 

I've been wary of Venmo because I'm told if the amounts are over a certain limit, it is reported to the IRS.  I report all my rental income, but I've always been concerned that might trigger some extra scrutinizing, or needing me to do an extra step with taxes, and its been easy to avoid using it altogether.

We used to collect a physical check from the house so we'd have an excuse to look at it from the outside (grass cut, no cars parked on lawn, etc) once a month.  Since you live close, you might want to do that until you fully trust your new tenants.  Or you might live close enough that you'd see the house anyway as you're driving by on other errands, so maybe not relevant.

[Dicey]

One tenant direct deposits cash, another sends a check via snail mail, another uses Zelle, which requires payment of half one day and half the next, because of Zelle's daily limit. It's worth noting that these tenants are Seniors.

[oldladystache]

I used to give the tenants a stack of deposit slips and bank envelopes. They would put the check in the mail and I didn't have to do anything except look online to see that the check had been deposited.

I'm retired from the landlord business now.

[Freedomin5]

My tenant uses Interac etransfer. She can access it from her banking app, and it gets deposited directly into my bank account.

[YttriumNitrate]

I require my tenants to do electronic transfers through apartments.com (formerly Cozy.co).

[Flyingstache]

Thanks so much for all the great answers & information! I really appreciate it!

[aasdfadsf]

I used Cosy.co, and then they got bought out by Apartments.com, and after that the accounts were automatically and seamlessly switched over.

I can't say I've ever had any problem or wouldn't recommend them.

I can think of a few minor quibbles; the interface could use some improvements, I've had glitches that forced me to redo the tenant payment setup a few times (probably the tenants' fault), and they delay the payment by several days to benefit from the float. But it's all free to me and the tenants, so I don't begrudge them that.

It's way easier than any other way of doing it, and there is a reliable record of everything and it's all above-board, so no one can mess with you on account of that at least.