Best Way to Collect Rent Electronically?

[joer1212]

- Cozy is no longer accepting landlord accounts.

- AppFolio charges a whopping $250/month for their property management software.

- Zelle, Paypal, Venmo, etc. have low limits on how much you can transfer at a time (plus other bad features). Since I currently have 10 rental units in 4 properties (7 of which are rented and pay me the first of each month), these are useless to me.

- Tellus seems to be designed for mobile devices, and I don't do official business on anything but my desktop computer.

These properties are out of state (about 3 hrs away).

I'll elaborate as the questions and comments come in.

Thanks

[Papa bear]

I was going to check out hemlane as a possibility.  Cozy has been kind of a pain for me lately.  And I don’t like collecting through Venmo/cash app/zelle but have been with a few tenants. 


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[IsThisAGoodUsername]

Stripe or Square? (Both are going to charge you fees as the vendor. They can be configured to automatically deposit the money into your bank account after X days.)

[joer1212]

Stripe or Square? (Both are going to charge you fees as the vendor. They can be configured to automatically deposit the money into your bank account after X days.)

I'm going to check them out in more depth, but these seem designed for mobile phones. I've also never heard of them, so are my tenants going to have issues with compatibility?
Do these have a cap on how much you can transfer at once?

[Papa bear]

If you demo hemlane please update here.  They told me, by phone, free online rent payments.  Plus a host of other online functions like applications, documents, and maintenance requests. 

Much cheaper than appfolio, I think we we’re going to be in the 70-80/month range with 20+ units as the family.  We would be able to be under the same umbrella with multiple bank accounts set up as to keep it all separate. 

I haven’t gotten around to actually demoing the software.  Been busy on an addition.


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[joer1212]

If you demo hemlane please update here.  They told me, by phone, free online rent payments.  Plus a host of other online functions like applications, documents, and maintenance requests. 

Much cheaper than appfolio, I think we we’re going to be in the 70-80/month range with 20+ units as the family.  We would be able to be under the same umbrella with multiple bank accounts set up as to keep it all separate. 

I haven’t gotten around to actually demoing the software.  Been busy on an addition.


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Most of these property management sites have transfer limits, like 5k at a time. I'm not even a big fish, and even I exceed that. It's ridiculous.

[Papa bear]

If you demo hemlane please update here.  They told me, by phone, free online rent payments.  Plus a host of other online functions like applications, documents, and maintenance requests. 

Much cheaper than appfolio, I think we we’re going to be in the 70-80/month range with 20+ units as the family.  We would be able to be under the same umbrella with multiple bank accounts set up as to keep it all separate. 

I haven’t gotten around to actually demoing the software.  Been busy on an addition.


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Most of these property management sites have transfer limits, like 5k at a time. I'm not even a big fish, and even I exceed that. It's ridiculous.

Yeah I’m getting close to pushing that on 1 double! Please update us on anything you find out.


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[norajean]

How about just give the renters your bank routing and account number and let them do the transfer every month?

[joer1212]

How about just give the renters your bank routing and account number and let them do the transfer every month?

That would have been my preferred method of collecting rent. It would have been simple and straightforward. But, I've read that, should I need to evict a tenant, he can simply deposit $1 into my bank account and prolong the eviction process, and I couldn't stop him from doing it, unless I closed my account. This would legally be considered a 'good faith' attempt to pay rent in many states. Not sure what the law on this is in Massachusetts, but even if it's not the case there, it could become the law at any time.

[norajean]

Haha, that sounds very far fetched and even if true would probably apply to all electronic and non electronic payments.

[IsThisAGoodUsername]

Stripe or Square? (Both are going to charge you fees as the vendor. They can be configured to automatically deposit the money into your bank account after X days.)

I'm going to check them out in more depth, but these seem designed for mobile phones. I've also never heard of them, so are my tenants going to have issues with compatibility?
Do these have a cap on how much you can transfer at once?

I don't know, but I found these links through some quick Googling. You never said how much you're looking to transfer per transaction, so I'm not sure if these are appropriate for you. Both should allow you to send an invoice to the renter via email and they can pay with a credit card on the website.  Also, you can get a POS device and/or a dongle for your phone to swipe a card to process a transaction. Regardless, perhaps try reaching out to each of these companies to see if they are a good fit for your needs.
https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5079-best-practices-for-accepting-card-payments#:~:text=All%20Square%20merchants%20have%20a,amount%20charged%20for%20each%20installment.
https://stripe.com/docs/rate-limits
https://support.stripe.com/questions/exceeded-ach-payment-limit-error-when-creating-an-ach-charge

Also, I had a family member who rented an apartment when he was in college. The apt complex used Rent Cafe and he paid monthly on the website. I don't know how their fee structure works, but it might be worth checking out as a possibility.

[ca-rn]

i use venmo for a couple of rentals. 

and bill pay (with same bank) with another thats farther out- they have my account number and send rent money through bill pay. 

if you want simple and electronic- give them your account number and routing as some one already suggested.  easy if you have a separate account for each building and all accounts with same bank.

[ca-rn]

Heads up for those receiving electronic (rent) payments-

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/taxes/cash-apps-to-report-payments-of-600-or-more/

I currently use Venmo for personal and business and Zelle for business.  I plan to either migrate all business to Zelle or open another Venmo for personal use only for easier accounting.  For those house hacking/roommate situation may need either good documentation that its not rental income or another way to get paid.

[Jon Bon]

I use zelle and venmo almost exclusively.

I don't care about them reporting the transactions to the feds because I am a good boy and report all my revenue anyways. What is going to suck is when Venmo starts to charge. I mean My volume in venmo has got to be about 10k a month? I mean if they start tacking a 2% fee on transactions I am not going to be paying that.

I too would rather not give out my banking info to tenants. That being said paper checks are still free. So that is always an option. Not nearly as cool as me getting text messages saying I am thousands of dollars richer, but cashing a check on my phone is not the end of the world.

[clarkfan1979]

- Cozy is no longer accepting landlord accounts.

- AppFolio charges a whopping $250/month for their property management software.

- Zelle, Paypal, Venmo, etc. have low limits on how much you can transfer at a time (plus other bad features). Since I currently have 10 rental units in 4 properties (7 of which are rented and pay me the first of each month), these are useless to me.

- Tellus seems to be designed for mobile devices, and I don't do official business on anything but my desktop computer.

These properties are out of state (about 3 hrs away).

I'll elaborate as the questions and comments come in.

Thanks

I haven't had any problems with limits on Zelle. I have 4 doors. Two tenants pay me every month with Zelle ($2450 & $1950). I think the limit on Venmo is $2999.

[Mrs. Sloth]

We use Zelle and Apartments.com.

Zelle- We have learned that there are different limits with different banks from experience. You can google the limits for each bank.

Apartments.com- We used to use Cozy but Cozy transferred our account and properties with them to Apartments.com. It is free as well. We have also started using it to advertise our rentals for free. Loving it so far.

[srad]

We use Zelle and Apartments.com.

Zelle- We have learned that there are different limits with different banks from experience. You can google the limits for each bank.

Apartments.com- We used to use Cozy but Cozy transferred our account and properties with them to Apartments.com. It is free as well. We have also started using it to advertise our rentals for free. Loving it so far.

How long does Apartments hold your cash? 

[Mrs. Sloth]

We use Zelle and Apartments.com.

Zelle- We have learned that there are different limits with different banks from experience. You can google the limits for each bank.

Apartments.com- We used to use Cozy but Cozy transferred our account and properties with them to Apartments.com. It is free as well. We have also started using it to advertise our rentals for free. Loving it so far.

How long does Apartments hold your cash?

We haven't been tracking closely since we are more concerned with the date that rent hits our bank and so far, all the tenants have been making payments early enough to hit our bank before it is considered late.  When a tenant makes payment, you will also be notified via email there is payment activity with an estimated date of arrival and so all we do is look at the estimated date and then go over to Mint to make sure it has hit our bank by that date (so far so good).

Here is what I found on their website to address your question though https://propertyhelp.apartments.com/article/278-how-long-do-rent-payments-take-to-process.

[bacchi]

Currently using Venmo and Apartments. If Venmo starts to charge, I'll have those tenants switch to Apartments.