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Avail co-founder Laurence Jankelow discusses new legislation in New York that bans the declawing of cats, what it could mean for his own rental properties, and how it might affect landlords in New York and rentals around the country.
On Monday, New York passed a law banning the declawing of cats. I don’t understand enough about cats and the procedure to weigh in on whether it’s a humane practice or not. Let’s just assume it isn’t humane — I wouldn’t want someone pulling off all my fingernails.
Instead, as a landlord, my initial reaction was … should I continue to allow cats in my rentals given the likely increase in damage they may cause? The economics of the law is what caught my attention, so here are some of my main concerns and thoughts on the new legislation and what it could mean for landlords.
Why Do People Declaw Cats?
The short answer is to prevent scratching. Declawing has been a standard practice among many indoor-cat owners for decades and still is, typically to stop cats from scratching their owners and damaging furniture. Some vets recommend that owners with compromised immune systems declaw their cats, too — usually to prevent health complications that can come from being scratched by a cat.
According to American Veterinarian, around 25% of cats in North America are declawed, and about 70% of vets in North America perform the procedure. However, declawing has become highly controversial; Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver were among the first cities to ban the practice completely, with the California cities banning it in 2010 and Denver in 2017.
And it seems like the controversy is expanding, with New York state being the first state to completely ban the procedure. The new state-wide legislation brings about potential complications for landlords and their tenants.
Will New York Landlords Continue to Allow Cats?
The question stems from the likelihood of increased damage that a cat with claws can do. Last year, I installed new cabinets and flooring in several of my units. I expect those enhancements to have a decades-long useful life. And I also imagine that a cat can do a lot of damage, ultimately reducing the life of my investment.
I wasn’t sure if I was alone in this thinking, so our team reached out to landlords across the U.S. to find out their thoughts on New York’s declawing legislation.
Not too surprisingly, feedback varied. But most of the landlords we spoke with already had cat (and pet) policies and would keep them in place, even in the face of new laws.
Patrick Britton, who owns 10 units in Chicago, said he allows cats in his rental units now and will continue to do so.
“I think declawing is a viciously cruel thing to do, and I would never insist on an owner doing that to their pet,” Britton said. “So quite frankly, I’m for the New York law, but I always charge extra for pet owners and get a larger damage deposit,” he added.
On the other hand, some landlords who already don’t allow cats won’t be more inclined to do so if legislation like this passed in their home state.
“I don’t allow any pets, cats especially,” said Darin Collins, who owns 2 units in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. “But it’s mostly because of the mess they leave.”
Will Pet Fees and Deposits Increase?
Like a lot of the landlords we spoke with, I’m not entirely ready to stop allowing cats. Pets are part of the family. But I have to weigh that against the reduced lifespan of my investment. So to me, that means likely increasing the monthly pet fees I charge, or adding more to the non-refundable pet deposit I require.
Aaron Marshall, a property manager and landlord in Salt Lake City, said about half of his owners don’t allow cats, and he personally never allows cats in the rental properties he owns. Claws aren’t the only issue Marshall has with cats — it’s also the mess that cats are notorious for leaving behind.
“We charge additional pet rent and an increase in rent for animals,” Marshall said.
But before you hike up fees and deposits for cats in your rental, be sure to research your state laws. In some states (like California), non-refundable pet and security deposits are illegal. And if you’re planning on increasing the security deposit, know your legal limits — many states have strict guidelines on how much you can charge your tenants.
Alternatives to Declawing Cats
The penalty for declawing your cat in New York is $1,000. You could take the risk and still get the procedure done, factoring in the $1,000 as part of the cost of the procedure. I don’t personally think this is a good plan, and isn’t really an alternative, since it continues to make cat ownership expensive.
So are there ways to continue having a cat without declawing them, all while avoiding increased pet fees and deposits?
I sure hope so. Here are some of the ideas that I would entertain as a landlord to mitigate this issue:
Cat Training
Some cat owners are able to train their cats to stop them from scratching things they shouldn’t be. Providing the cat with alternative objects to scratch can keep them away from the couch and other furniture, and reinforcing good behavior can work, too.
Scratch Posts
Scratching posts are a cat owner’s best friend. Because the material on a scratching post helps the cat remove the outer layer of their nails and stretch out their whole bodies, your cat will grow accustomed to using the post. Just make sure you buy one that’s durable, sturdy, high enough, and provides both horizontal and vertical surfaces for the cat to scratch. Get a few, and put them in the rooms your cat spends time in.
Nail Caps for Cats
Nail caps are an alternative to declawing and prevent your cat from scratching your belongings or home interior. Developed by a vet, the nail caps are glued on over the cat’s nails with a safe adhesive and are blunt enough to stop scratch marks. They usually last about four to six weeks, but they should only be used on indoor cats.
Deterrents
Other deterrents, like toys, sprays, and materials to cover your cat’s favorite scratching spots can help break scratching habits. Try covering targeted parts of the couch with double-sided tape or aluminum foil to deter the cat from scratching it, or spray objects in your home with a citrus-scented spray — cats don’t like citrus odors.
Get a Dog
This is a half-joke that I’m sure will fuel the dog versus cat debate. I look forward to your comments.
Tell Us What You Think
It will be interesting to see how things unfold in New York and across the U.S. as landlords and tenants have to change their behaviors. Will it lead to fewer places for cats? Or will it lead to increased pet fees? Time will tell. Leave a comment below with what you’re planning on doing with your rentals when and if this law comes to your state. And if you’re a tenant, talk to us about your cat and how it has fared with its full claws.
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I hadn’t expected a busy day, and I certainly hadn’t expected a call from one of the tenants in my three-flat building in Chicago with the news that the furnace wasn’t working. Despite it being April, it was only 10 degrees outside — this wasn’t an issue that could wait.
To be honest, I’m not sure that I ever thought about how a furnace could just stop working, changing the direction of any given day. But it can. And that unpredictability comes with the territory when you become a landlord.
As I stood by the technician working on a fix, my tenant still wearing the coat she’d slept in, I considered how there are some things I wish I’d known before buying my first rental property.
With that in mind, I thought I’d share six of my biggest lessons-learned, in the hopes that you’ll find them helpful as you embark on the journey of becoming a first-time landlord.
Lesson 1: You have a tremendous impact on your tenants’ quality of life.
When the call came through about the faulty furnace, I knew I’d need to act quickly, getting space heaters set up to prevent the pipes from freezing and causing further damage. But more immediately, I knew I needed to do whatever I could to take care of my tenant.
Low temperatures aren’t just uncomfortable, they’re dangerous. It was up to me to make sure my tenant, who was just trying to go about her day, didn’t freeze to death.
As a property manager, caring for the building is your responsibility and so is caring for the people living in it. Doing that to the best of my ability not only allows my tenants to sleep better, it gives me peace of mind too.
Lesson 2: Combatting wear-and-tear and general depreciation of the building is a constant battle.
Rental property is an investment. But with age, as well as the wear and tear from tenants and moves, it’s generally a depreciating asset.
Knowing when a band-aid solution will do the trick or if it’s time to invest in a more expensive fix isn’t easy, and the decisions never stop.
But keeping up with maintenance and repairs can actually extend the life of your appliances, limit the need for expensive overhauls and set the tone for tenants that you work hard to keep the building in great shape and they should, too.
The preventative maintenance routine I follow for my units involves scheduling a technician to check the furnace and A/C system every quarter, replacing air filters every two months, and constant monitoring of bathrooms for excess moisture or mold issues, as well as general pest control.
Don’t underestimate the impact of your efforts on your tenants, either. People are less careful around cars that already have dings and dents, which means once you get one, you’re likely to get more. The same principle applies to rental property. If you don’t make the effort to keep your units in great shape, your tenants won’t either.
What counts as normal wear-and-tear? Determine if it’s time to upgrade your rental to fix damages and keep quality tenants.
Lesson 3: Some aspects of managing a rental are out of your control and you have to plan for that.
You can’t always control the timing of expenses, but you can try to plan ahead with a capital life inventory. Mine is a spreadsheet where I log costs and track the estimated remaining lifespan of appliances. For the A/C unit, for example, I’ll log when it was purchased, how much it cost, the expected lifespan, and the maintenance steps I’ve taken to keep it in shape — like replacing its filters. That keeps upcoming costs on my radar and limits surprises.
Other things you can’t anticipate, like when a pipe burst in one of my units last year and caused flooding damage, or when property taxes go up.
The only way to prepare for those costs is by keeping a healthy contingency fund. Setting aside 35-50 percent of the monthly rent for operating costs is typically a good range. You might go toward the lower end if it’s a newer building that’s well maintained, or shift to the higher end if it’s an older building with lots of deferred maintenance costs.
Use this preventative maintenance checklist to help predict rental maintenance costs.
Lesson 4: Tenant expectations are high — and they expect you to handle everything.
If there’s a minor issue in one of my units, it usually starts with an email. If they don’t hear from me right away, I’ll get a follow-up text within an hour and within the day, I’ll get a call.
I expected that with bigger issues, but I underestimated the difference in my tenants’ and my perception of what’s a concern that needs my attention versus an issue they could solve themselves. Even issues they caused — like a clogged drain that resulted from removing the hair catcher I had in place — are things they call me to handle, ideally that same day.
Keep in mind that while some issues may seem trivial to you, they’re important to the tenants that call your unit home.
Check to see who’s responsible for repairs and who should pay.
Lesson 5: Raising rent might actually cost you money.
Any time you raise the rent by any amount, you create an inflection point for the tenant where they begin thinking, “should I stay, or should I leave?” Even if they’re happy and planned to renew, this new variable may make them reconsider. Almost every time I’m renewing a lease and I suggest raising the rent, even by just $50 a month, the tenant ends up moving out.
The cost of tenant turnover — in terms of actual dollars, hours and risk — is so much higher than that extra $50 a month, that it’s not worth it.
Renewing your existing tenant for another year means you don’t have to spend another 20-30 hours in the span of a month soliciting new tenants, doing showings, reviewing paperwork and drafting leases. Plus, every time you raise the rent you narrow your potential tenant pool, meaning it takes just a little bit longer to fill the vacant unit than before.
Skipping the rent hike in favor of renewal also means you don’t have to spend money to repaint or change the locks, and you save your unit from the physical toll of another move-out/move-in cycle.
Make sure you can justify raising the rent before you risk losing tenants.
Lesson 6: It’s the second month’s rent that matters the most.
To secure the lease, your tenant will pay the first month’s rent well in advance of moving in. The real test of the reliability of a tenant then is the second month’s check. If that payment arrives on time, there’s a better chance they pay every month’s rent on time.
To help improve the odds, give your tenants multiple avenues to make payments, including online. Nothing slows down a check like requiring your tenant to jump through hoops to get it to you.
Find out how online rent collection can encourage on-time payments.
Use Landlord Software to Help You With Every Step of Being a Landlord
Owning rental property is an investment, but it’s more than just monetary. You’re investing your time, energy, and emotion into the business, too. Take the time to think through what that will mean for your life before you commit. If you’re up to the challenge, it can be a rewarding way to build your wealth while providing a good home to others.
Becoming an independent landlord doesn’t mean you have to do it alone, though. Platforms like Avail assist with every stage of the rental cycle — including listing your rental property online, screening tenants, drafting state-specific leases, collecting rent online, and managing property maintenance. Plus, Avail is free for unlimited units.
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You can stop reading this article right now if you are a believer that working long hours leads to burnout. You won’t like what I have to say, and certainly won’t appreciate the advice held within. And that’s because as a society, the idea we have about burnout is all wrong and it’s hurting both younger generations who are new in the workforce as well as those who are trying to manage them.
I’m going to tell you burnout is NOT caused by working hard. Never has been. Never will be.
In this article, I hope to convince you what burnout actually is and what’s behind it — helping you understand the core differences between stress due to hard work and that of burnout — so that we can be more effective as employees and as managers.
What really is burnout?
Maybe I’ll start with what burnout isn’t.
Working on Sunday evening from 9 p.m. to midnight because I have a client call with people in Tokyo and feeling tired in the morning when I still start my normal day at 7 a.m.…not burnout.
Working until 10 p.m. every night for the last two weeks because I’m in a rush to deploy an upgrade to the rent payments feature that helps landlords collect rent more securely — and all before the first of the month…not burnout.
In both cases, I’m working hard, and I may be tired, but it’s not harmful because I’m engaged by that work, seeing its purpose and personally getting a lot out of it.
With that in mind, there’s a simple test I like to use to determine if I’m at risk of burnout. I call it the “vacation day test.”
If after the two-week sprint to get that payments feature complete, I take a vacation day, do I come back feeling refreshed and ready to go again? If so, it’s not burnout. Burnout cannot be solved with vacation days.
If instead, I were to take that vacation day and come back still embittered, sluggish, and unmotivated, then I may be going through burnout. And likely the cause is not due to working longer hours.
I believe burnout has almost no relationship with hours worked.
This distinction is important. If you’ve hit a wall at work and finding it difficult to stay focused, opting for the wrong solution won’t solve anything. If I don’t enjoy the people I’m working with, then no amount of vacation days is going to change that.
Let’s talk about why burnout is not the same thing as being tired, or even overwhelmed and stressed.
Burnout is a feeling of profound disconnection from your work and its value. And it’s this disconnection that leads to a specific kind of stress. According to psychologists, this kind of deep disengagement often stems from several key factors that go beyond common stress:
Missing the meaning in your work.
If you can’t see the vision guiding your work or the reason why what you’re doing is impactful, it can severely limit your motivation and happiness. Being on a call Sunday night at midnight isn’t the issue. The issue is if the call was pointless to begin with. But closing a deal that keeps your business alive. That’s powerful.
A lack of control.
The ability to have influence over your work has a major impact on your enjoyment of it. Having to constantly battle with a manager over the way something should be planned is going to make me not want to think about how things should be planned. That’s a loss for me and the manager. But having my plans be what mostly gets implemented is going to make me spend more time planning.
Unclear job expectations.
Not knowing what your supervisor or others expect from you means operating in perpetual unease. This breeds negative stress and undermines your ability to thrive. It’s hard to work on something correctly if we don’t all agree on what “correctly” means, or even worse if no one can define it.
Dysfunctional workplace dynamics.
Toxic social dynamics, an office bully or a micromanaging supervisor can also cause negative stress on the job. We’re all spending a significant amount of time with our butts in these chairs next to people we have to talk to all day long — we can’t sit for as long if we don’t like the people next to us.
Extremes of activity.
When a job is monotonous, it’s a struggle to remain focused. On the flip side, constant chaos with no reprieve can cause fatigue.
Lack of social support.
Feeling isolated at work or at home can contribute to burnout. This is simply because we’re social creatures. We’ve evolved to live, work and play with other people. When we aren’t around others, we feel depressed.
It can also be obvious — if you’re looking — because symptoms of burnout range from the emotional to the physical, and unlike stress, they don’t typically go away when you clock out. They linger with you until the root cause is solved.
People suffering burnout often report feeling increasingly cynical or critical at work, sometimes becoming uncharacteristically short or irritable in interactions with others. They struggle to concentrate on tasks and feel unsatisfied by achievements. They may also suffer unexplained headaches, stomach trouble, or changes in sleeping patterns.
When it’s not just stress, but true burnout, the questions you wrestle with grow from discrete concerns like, “How can I just get this done quickly and move on?” to bigger thoughts of disillusionment like, “Why am I doing this job?”
Can managers prevent burnout?
Yes. And it’s not hard to do. Managers who provide their employees with challenging but achievable work, ownership over their approach to getting it done, and a supportive community where they’re part of something bigger, will successfully prevent burnout.
Let’s look at why this approach is so effective.
Experts identify five specific things that are essential to engaging work:
- Tasks that feel challenging, but achievable
- A sense of progress, meaning, and pride in one’s work
- Autonomy
- A sense of belonging
- Job security and pay that reflects value
These are somewhat universal items that everyone needs to feel happy at work.
Put simply, when managers focus on keeping these five essential qualities of engagement at the forefront of their employees’ work lives, burnout is a non-issue.
But not all roles are created equal when it comes to engagement. Some necessary tasks — like answering customer emails — aren’t going to offer the same exciting challenges that others, like a site redesign, do.
One challenge then for managers is finding ways to look out for the people handling rote but essential tasks.
At my company, we protect our customer service personnel from burnout by giving them variety. No one person answers phones all day, every day. Instead, everybody on the service team takes a shift on phones, then switches to something new to break things up.
The variety is stimulating, and it turns constantly renewing tasks (like fielding customer emails) into achievable daily chunks that offer a sense of completion.
Other departments might involve more naturally engaging work, but require hours or settings that leave people feeling removed from the rest of the company, or the value of their work.
Our engineers, for example, often do more creative problem-solving. But they also do it wearing noise-canceling headphones, working atypical hours, and without seeing the impact of their work on the customers directly.
That’s a different challenge for managers. My team handles it by emphasizing community across departments and having every person, especially engineers, spend about one week per quarter in a customer service rotation to connect directly with the customers.
Managers might assume their best employees are least likely to burn out, but that’s only true if those employees are challenged. If an employee grows but their role doesn’t, burnout is possible.
If there’s an opportunity to invest in an employee’s growth, take it. A marketer taking a company-sponsored night class in data analytics will have longer workdays, but if she’s learning something new that interests her, she’ll be more satisfied and feel more valued.
What can employees do to avoid burnout?
Don’t conflate hours with burnout. If you’re feeling bored, unmotivated or undervalued in your role, get to the bottom of why. Take a week and make a note when the feeling hits at work. What are you doing? Who are you with? How often does it happen?
Seeing the pattern can help you come up with a solution, or at least talk it over productively with a manager to get their help. You’re going to grow a lot in the course of your career and it’s important to be part of a team that encourages that by consistently providing you with challenges, opportunities and pay that recognizes your value.
The reason not to shy away from hours is that often, by adding a few extra hours to work on a project where the value is easily seen, burnout can actually be reduced. Or taking a few hours a week to continue building skills can dramatically improve your happiness.
If you do get burned out — again, a less common reality than people think — make sure you identify whether it’s the environment or the work itself that’s to blame. Switching companies but remaining in a role you find fundamentally unsatisfying won’t fix anything. In that case, it might be time for a career change.
Changing careers is a big undertaking, but it can pay dividends. After all, the goal is to find that sweet spot where you feel ownership of your work, are satisfied by your progress, recognized for your efforts, and are able to see the value in the way you spend your days.
Do that and you won’t burn out. You’ll thrive.
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The online lease signing process is easier than ever. Avail features have streamlined the steps in the leasing process, from approving your applicants to collecting your first month’s rent and security deposit at lease signing.
Let’s walk through some of the features and tools that can help you easily draft an online lease and efficiently communicate with your tenants.
Save and Reuse Your Lease with Lease Cloning
We’ve always allowed you to start with our lease templates and customize them for your personal needs. But when you’re ready to sign new tenants, you usually have to customize the lease all over again.
We’ve eliminated that problem with Avail Lease Cloning — when you’ve tailored your perfect lease, it’ll be there for you next year or for your other units. You can simply clone and sign the cloned lease, which dramatically reduces the time it takes you to sign new tenants.
New Local Assist
Will Help You Build a Local-Specific Lease
Local Assist, a reimagining of our already robust state and city-specific lease templates, is our comprehensive tool to help you navigate the legal and functional aspects of managing a rental property given various local requirements.
Local Assist has been enhanced to provide guidance, advice, and references to legal requirements specific to the state and city that your property is located in. You’ll find Local Assist embedded through our screening and leasing features. Where applicable, Local Assist will provide essential notes and documents, including localized ordinances, lease clauses, disclosures, and attachments.
We understand real estate is a local business that requires localization, which is why we’ve also compiled extensive guides on state landlord-tenant laws. Local Assist is entirely based on your property’s address and exists to make landlording more approachable.
In-App Messaging With Tenants
Use in-app messaging when you need to communicate with your tenants about the lease you’re sending to be signed or when you want to remind them to upload proof of insurance.
Phone calls, voicemails, and texts can be a lot to handle, and hard to officially keep track of. With in-app messaging, you can communicate with your tenants directly in your Avail account. When you’re not online, you’ll be alerted via email if your tenants send you a message.
Transition Tenants More Easily
Once you sign the lease, the process isn’t quite over. There are a lot of things that need to be done before your tenants move in.
You have to collect first month’s rent, move-in fees, and security deposits before handing over the keys. And you’ll need to actually coordinate that key exchange, too. When and where will your tenants pick up the keys?
We’ve laid out several next steps after the lease has been signed to help the transition process from lease signing to tenant move-in. These steps can be completed directly from your account, too, and include:
Collecting the first month’s rent: We’ve seen that its fairly typical to collect first month’s rent and deposits well before the tenant receives the keys to the property. We recommend that these first payments should be received within 7 days of the lease being signed, and no later than move-in.
Coordinate move-in and key exchange: This is something that creeps up on us as landlords, and before we know it, tomorrow is move-in day for a new tenant and we’ve forgotten to figure out when and how we’ll give them the keys. Now you can coordinate this directly in your Avail account.
Receive proof of renters insurance: Our lease templates, by default, require renters insurance. This is so when accidents happen, tenants aren’t coming to you and hoping that your landlord insurance policy will cover their damages (it won’t).
We’ve found that although most leases require renters insurance, only 14% of tenants actually follow through with it, usually because they simply forget. Not anymore.
Help tenants transfer utilities under their names: We’ll help you and your tenants transfer utilities. It starts with reminding tenants which utilities are their responsibility. And then you can provide them the service provider that’s recommended for your home or building.
Receive completed move-in inspection checklist: On move-in day, landlords should have their tenants complete an inspection checklist to mark down any pre-existing damage. At the end of the year, the landlord can look back on that checklist to see what may have been the tenant’s responsibility. When a landlord forgets to do this, move-out and security deposits become a nightmare.
Post-Signing Checklist Will Guide Your Tenants
After signing the lease, your tenants will see a similar list of actionable items as described above, where they can complete all the steps necessary to have a smooth transition into their new home. They’ll be able to:
- Pay first month’s rent
- Coordinate move-in and key exchange
- Provide proof of renters insurance
- Set up utility transfer
- Complete the move-in inspection checklist
These steps will help your tenants complete all the tasks that are typically a requirement for receiving the keys to the property. And as a landlord, you’ll have everything you need to feel comfortable when you do hand over the keys. It’s a win-win for you and your tenants.
Lease Customization and Optional Clauses
Avail offers several lease customization options, including the ability to easily click-and-drag the order of lease clauses and rules.
We also offer a few pre-built lease clauses that you can elect to add to your lease and are popular among our landlords, including:
- Requiring renters insurance before move-in
- Enforcing completion of the inspection checklist within 72 hours of move-in
- Requiring that rent be paid online using Avail
To add any of these additional clauses, all you need to do is select the option and it will automatically be included in your lease.
Improved Integration with Online Rent Collection
As soon as you finalize your lease, you can also set up online rent payments. Our online rent collection tool offers receipts, reminder emails, payment tracking, and autopay for your tenants, all to ensure rent payments are easier for both of you.
Next Steps
If you have more questions about the the online lease process, read our Complete Guide to Rental Leases and get started by setting up your online lease today.
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]]>The post How to Stop Accepting Payments for a Lease appeared first on Avail.
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As a landlord, evicting a tenant is both stressful and financially painful. You’re spending a lot of time and money to resolve a situation that’s largely out of your control. To make matters worse, you still have to pay your mortgage every month, but you’re not receiving rent from your tenants.
If your tenant offers to make a payment (even a partial one), it can be tempting to accept the money and think, “Receiving some money is better than no money at all.” While receiving a payment may temporarily make you feel better, do not do it! Here’s why not and how you can stop payments from a tenant.
Why Shouldn’t You Accept a Partial Rent Payment During an Eviction?
In most states, if a landlord accepts a payment from their tenants, they are acknowledging a new agreement has been reached with the tenants. This will void the evictions proceedings.
This means that to actually evict the tenants, you’ll have to start the process all over again.
How to Prevent Partial Rent Payments from Tenants
If you collect rent payments through Avail, then you can accept or a deny a tenant’s payment — which is extremely important in the case of eviction. Here is a step-by-step walk through on how to prevent a rent payment from tenants in Avail.
- Click on the “Payments” tab
- Select which unit the payment is for
- Click on “Settings” to enable the “Stop Payments” button
The “Stop Payments” prevents any new payments from being scheduled by your tenant, which should only be used in the case of an eviction. If your tenants already have future payments scheduled or AutoPay activated, then please contact our Customer Care team at support@avail.co for assistance.
Screen Tenants to Help Avoid Problems
As with most things, your best bet is to try preventing problems before they occur.
In the case of evictions, you can help prevent these situations by following a thorough tenant screening process. To limit the chances that you’ll have to evict a tenant, you always want to require a rental application, credit and background check and eviction report.
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Our team of highly skilled software engineers have worked hard to upgrade our integration with TransUnion. This upgraded integration has three benefits for our landlords: improved evictions reporting, unbundled pricing, and control over who pays for the screening reports.
For landlords who have used Avail to screen tenants, the change means that we are now giving you more information and more control for the same low price.
These updates are designed to help the 150,000+ landlords who use our platform to be efficient and profitable. If you’re not already using Avail, get started for free now.
Improved Evictions Reporting
One of the best ways to deal with problems is to avoid them before they occur. As a landlord, the most important thing you can do is avoid problem tenants. These tenants will cause hours of headaches and cost you thousands of dollars.
Fortunately, if you follow a thorough tenant screening process, you’ll be able to identify problem tenants before signing a lease.
One of the best ways to tell if a tenant will cause problems is knowing if he or she has ever been evicted from another rental property.
An eviction oftentimes means that the tenant caused damage to a rental or refused to pay rent. As a landlord, renting to these people is not worth the risk.
To help you avoid renting to tenants with prior evictions, we are now providing you with easy access to Nationwide Tenant Eviction Checks.
Our eviction reports pull from millions of records of eviction data from across the United States. You now have all the information you need to make an educated, informed decision.
Tenants can authorize you to view their eviction reports in just a few clicks. As soon as they complete the authorization, the reports will be available instantly inside your Avail landlord account.
Knowledge is power. Be a powerful, informed landlord.
Updated, Unbundled Pricing
One of the questions that we frequently receive from landlords is whether they can purchase only the credit report or only the criminal background report. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been possible in the past. Things are different now.
We are excited to introduce a la carte pricing for our credit reports, nationwide criminal background reports, and new nationwide eviction reports.
In the past, there was only one option – to purchase the credit reports and criminal background checks together for $55.
We are now giving you the option to purchase the credit report for $35, the criminal background report for $30, and the eviction report for $35. If you want just two reports, the cost is $50. If you want all three reports, there’s a large discount, for a total cost of only $55.
This new pricing provides more flexibility to you, our amazing landlords.
Despite offering unbundled pricing, we still encourage you to thoroughly screen all prospective tenants by requiring each person to authorize all three reports.
It’s still 100% free to request online rental applications from prospective tenants.
Don’t already use Avail? It’s free for your first unit. Get started today.
Control Over Who Pays
Although I require all prospective tenants to pay the tenant screening fees (I use the small fee as a way to screen tenants and see who’s serious), I understand that some landlords prefer to cover the costs themselves.
Based on the significant number of landlords asking for the ability to pay for the reports themselves, our team built this functionality.
Landlords who use Avail to screen prospective tenants now have the ability to choose whether to pay for the reports, or to require tenants to pay for these fees.
More than 150,000 landlords use Avail to manage properties in 17,000 zip codes across the United States. If you haven’t given our platform a try, you can get started here for free.
In addition to screening tenants, you can also create online rental listings to find tenants, create and electronically sign rental lease agreements, and collect rent online.
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]]>The post Redesigned Tenant Mobile Interface, Applications & Renter Profiles appeared first on Avail.
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At Avail, we strive to make renting easy for everyone. More individuals in the United States are renting than ever before, and the Urban Land Institute estimates that nearly 60% of all new households formed between now and 2030 will be renters. We are excited to design and build software that helps all of these people!
As the Head of Product at Avail, I’m the first to admit that our tenant interface hasn’t always received the attention it deserves. That changes tomorrow, December 13, 2016. Tomorrow morning, I will sit down at my computer, type a few lines of code and, within minutes, your Avail account will be transformed.
The code that I type will publish the 51,523 lines of code that my team and I have been working on for months, setting off a technological chain of events. Within seconds, each of our servers, which are located in secure, private data centers across the country, will be updated with the new code.
When you load your browser, your browser connects with one of our servers and, once the page loads, you’ll see a new interface that will forever change how you manage your rental journey.
So what’s changing? Well, a lot. This new interface is more intuitive, functions better on mobile devices, protects your sensitive information, provides you more control of your applications, saves you time and saves you money. This is just the start. Keep reading below to learn about each of the enhancements and what they mean for you.
New Account Layout
The next time that you log in to your Avail tenant account, you’ll notice a new layout. The main navigation bar is now on the lefthand side. This menu is designed to automatically get out of the way when you don’t need it, and to re-appear when you need it. Your account settings menu is now in the top righthand corner, where you’ve come to expect it.
You’ll also notice a few cosmetics tweaks too. First, you’ll notice our handsome blue menu on the left. Second are more distinguished icons throughout your account, so that you can easily navigate to where you need to go.
Improved Mobile Experience
Over the past few months, we have spent significant time studying how tenants use Avail. It was interesting learning that 70% of tenants access their accounts from mobile devices.
As a result, we designed the new tenant interface with a mobile-first approach. Our platform is now the best way for tenants to manage their rental journey from a mobile device. This includes applying for properties, managing multiple applications, signing leases, paying rent, and submitting maintenance requests.
Protecting Your Information
We continue using 128-bit, military-grade encryption to store your sensitive personal information. By applying for properties with Avail, not only is your data secure, but you have complete control over who has access to it.
You are able to share your rental application with landlords whose properties you are applying for, but you can just as easily revoke access at any time. The shared applications are also automatically archived after 30 days, so you don’t have to worry about prospective landlords having access to your information indefinitely.
Finally, we never have, and never will, share your social security number to anyone. In fact, your SSN never even hits our servers at Avail. As soon as you enter this into your Avail account, the social security number is encrypted and transferred directly to TransUnion.
Rental Applications
When we launched Avail a few years ago, we focused on helping landlords easily request rental applications online. We recently revisited how tenants complete these applications, and how we can improve the experience.
During our research, we learned that the average tenant looks at six different rental properties, and ultimately submits applications for two.
Each of these applications, though, typically requires a separate application fee. This made no sense to us, and we’re doing something to change it. The application, credit report and background check information is yours, after all.
We think you should be able to complete these forms once, pay one application fee and share those forms with as many landlords as you want. This will save you countless hours of writing the same information over and over. It will also help you avoid paying multiple application fees (within 90 days).
In addition to a mobile-friendly interface for you to enter information, we are now giving you an easy way to upload and manage attachments. Common application attachments include pay stubs, tax returns and employment offer letters. If you want to delete anything that you’ve uploaded, you now can.
To share your completed rental application with a landlord, all that you have to do is type in the address of his or her property, provide the contact info and we’ll take care of the rest.
After sharing your rental application, we give you all of the tools that you need to manage your multiple rental applications in one place. On the same page, you can also view all of the applications that landlords have requested from you. It’s easy for you to view the status of applications and to add roommates to your applications.
We understand how important your credit score is, which is why we work hard to help you protect your credit score. We worked closely with TransUnion to ensure that the credit reports we obtain only trigger soft inquiries, not the hard inquiries that damage and lower your credit score. Upon obtaining your credit score, we also pass along suggestions from TransUnion for how you can improve your score.
Renter Profile
One of our ah-hah moments during this whole process was realizing that renters don’t just fill out multiple applications at the same time (when applying for multiple properties), but that they often have to write out the same information year after year. That’s why we are automatically generating a Avail Renter Profile for you.
This profile is a beautiful representation of the best things about you as a tenant. You can easily add a profile image and cover photo, along with a brief bio that let’s potential landlords know a bit more about you than simply where you’ve lived and how much you earn.
Your Avail Renter Profile is a living document that can easily be updated as your rental situation changes. Your Avail verified rental history will automatically be added.
Better Communication
In addition to building these updates for your Avail account, we overhauled our email communication around these important tasks. Going forward, you’ll see more direct communication between you and your landlord and prospective landlords.
Going Forward
We are committed to making renting easy by developing elegant software for landlords and tenants. We spend countless hours every week brainstorming, designing, wireframing and writing lines of code. If you have any feedback or suggestions for what should be next, please let us know.
Happy Holidays!
Laurence
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A 2014 poll from the Insurance Information Institute found that 37% of renters don’t get a renters insurance policy. Are you surprised by this? We were surprised, so we did our own investigation to find out why nearly half of renters don’t protect their belongings. What we found surprised us again, because the reasons tenants cited for not purchasing renters insurance were mostly all myths and misconceptions.
If you’re a renter and you are reading this article, you may ask why we care whether renters get insurance. After all, aren’t we a service geared mostly towards landlords? Well, yes, sort of. We certainly help landlords. But we were renters once too and so were most landlords.
We also deeply care about our renters, which is why we designed many of our services around renters specifically. You’ve got belongings, and most of them are likely worth a decent amount of money. Don’t you want to protect those belongings from events that are outside of your control?
So we wrote this blog to help renters, like yourself hopefully, clear the fog of misunderstanding so that you can re-evaluate whether its time to purchase renters insurance. Here are the top five reasons cited for not buying renters insurance.
- I’m covered by my landlord’s insurance
- Renters insurance is just too expensive
- My stuff isn’t worth insuring
- It’s just stuff. My stuff.
- It takes too long
Let’s talk about each one:
I’m Covered by My Landlords Insurance
Nope. That’s just not true. Most policies for landlords cover just two things: 1) the physical structure of the building, and 2) liability should someone be injured on the property (not inside your rental unit). There’s not much in his/her policy to cover your personal belongings or liability within your space. The exception to this is when damage is done to your personal property as a result of the landlord’s negligence (he knew about a leaking pipe, took too long to fix it, and now it ruined all of your clothes). In that case, you could seek reimbursement through the landlord’s policy. However, you would be left uncovered should the property flood due to an otherwise sudden pipe bursting, or should there be a fire, vandalism or theft.
There’s also the fact that a landlord doesn’t own any of your belongings. So even if he wanted to help you out and have a claim be filed for your stuff, the insurance company would most likely determine the landlord doesn’t have an “insurable interest” in the lost/damaged/stolen property. He would then subsequently be denied, which means you would be denied.
It’s also important to note that landlords are not required by law to have a landlord insurance policy. So many tenants may think coverage exists in general where none does at all. Still, if the landlord does have a policy, it wouldn’t cover your personal belongings anyway.
Renters Insurance Is Just Too Expensive
Is it? Did you know you can get renters insurance for as little as 50 cents per day? The national average for renters insurance premiums is actually $12 per month. That’s only $144 per year, less than a leather jacket (and that’s just one jacket, not your entire collection of clothes if you needed to replace them all). The average policy provides for $30,000 of property coverage as well as $100,000 of liability coverage.
There are also levers you can pull that adjust the total expense. You can adjust the deductible (when you make a claim, the amount you pay before the insurance carrier pays anything) – the higher your deductible, the lower your annual or monthly premium payments. You can also increase or decrease the total coverage you want/need. A lower property and liability coverage also means a lower annual or monthly premium.
Rather than thinking that the cost of insurance is too expense, I’d flip that thinking and consider replacing all of your stuff out-of-pocket at one time is too expensive.
My Stuff Isn’t Worth Insuring
Please rethink this. You’ve got a couch you’re sitting on, a TV across from you, and probably a laptop or tablet that you’re reading this blog from. There’s a good chance, you’ve also got some nice clothing hanging in your closet, dozens of shoes, and nice jewelry or a watch. You may be thinking that those were all “hand-me-downs” and aren’t worth anything. It’s tempting to think in terms of what you paid, but in reality, you should be thinking in terms of what it would cost to replace those things.
So even if your TV was a hand-me down when your parents upgraded their TV, if it was stolen, you’d still want to replace it wouldn’t you? And that replacement cost is what you should consider.
It’s Just My Stuff
Unfortunately, this isn’t true either. Well, yes, you would be insuring your stuff. But it’s more than that. Let’s say you’ve got a rug you love. It’s one of those rugs with a lion’s head attached to one side. Your friend comes over, trips on your lion head rug, and breaks a leg. It’s not just stuff anymore when you receive the $30,000 in medical bills. You have to consider that you’ll have guests over who could hurt themselves because of a weird piece of furniture or unusual furniture placement, or even because they had too much wine.
It Takes Too Long
Okay. We have to give credit where credit is due. This certainly is true. In today’s world, something that takes a full 5-10 minutes may just be too long. But, knowing what you know now from the above, don’t you think it’s worth the five minutes to feel and actually be more protected?
Having a change of heart? Hope so because renters insurance is a must. Check out Lemonade and get a quote in seconds.
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Renters insurance is likely one of the last things on your mind when you’re moving or signing a new lease. There’s so much going on — filling out rental applications, packing, finding movers, shutting off and re-initiating utilities — that it’s easy to forget about renters insurance. And once its back on your mind there are so many questions that the momentum stops and you procrastinate getting renters insurance until you’re months into your lease (or sometimes you never get it).
But renters insurance isn’t complex. It’s not expensive. And it should’t take more than a few minutes to get. That’s why we’ve created this guide — to help you figure out the process, get the momentum back on your side, and feel safe in your home knowing that your property is protected.
What Is Renters Insurance?
In the most simplest terms, renters insurance results in a cash payout to you if your property is lost or destroyed. It’s financial protection against the loss or destruction of your possessions when you rent a house or apartment. It’s not much different than other insurance in that it protects you from having to pay huge sums of money out-of-pocket to replace all your possessions.
The distinction that its “renters” insurance simply means that what’s covered is only the value of your belongings (furniture, electronics, clothes, jewelry, etc.) and not the physical building. And thats fine because your landlord should have his own policy that covers the building (and which does NOT cover your personal belongings).
The typical renters insurance policy defines what events you’d be covered under, and includes things like: fire, smoke, lightning, vandalism, theft, windstorms, and water damage (not floods though).
It’s important to highlight that your renters insurance will only cover your belongings from the events listed in the policy (also referred to as “named perils”). This means that if the damage or loss of your property was not due to one of the named perils, you won’t be entitled to a cash payout. Don’t be too concerned about that though, because typically the named perils are the types of events you are most likely to face as a tenant.
Renters insurance also covers you for liability suits that may arise if a guest in your home injures themselves. You never know when a visitor may trip over a piece of furniture and break a leg. But you’ll want to have insurance help cover the medical costs and any personal liability lawsuit that may arise .
What Are Premiums and Deductibles?
The premiums are what you pay for the insurance policy (typically monthly, but could be every six months or even yearly). It’s simply the price of the policy and is determined based on what perils are covered, the value of your possessions, and how much liability coverage you want. When making a claim (reporting losses), the deductible is the amount you will pay upfront before the insurance company will cover any/remaining costs. The amount of the deductible is flexible, but the lower the deductible, the higher your monthly premiums will be. Most renters elect to have a deductible in an amount that they find manageable to cover at a moment’s notice, one that wouldn’t “break the bank”.
Do I Need Renters Insurance?
Short answer, yes! Just ask yourself, when unexpected events occur, could you afford to / want to replace everything you own? Or if you were sued, would you have enough money to pay legal fees and possibly settle the suit? Chances are you can’t, wouldn’t want to, and would benefit from the protection that renters insurance brings. The idea of insurance is to cover you for things where the value, or cost to replace those things, would be high enough that you wouldn’t be able to do it on your own. Very few people can afford to replace all their belongings should they be lost in a fire or another disaster. Surprisingly enough, we found that nearly half of all renters don’t get insurance. And the reasons they gave for not getting renters insurance were surprising. However, you’re here so you won’t be one of them.
Landlord insurance policies don’t cover your personal property and the landlord doesn’t have an insurable interest on your assets (he doesn’t own them, therefore can’t insure them). So if you’re relying on that, you would be out of luck if a catastrophe occurred. In fact, most landlords try to make this very clear to their renters because many tenants wrongly believe they are covered by their landlords’ insurance. Most lease agreements require that you purchase and maintain renters insurance, often going so far as to require you to provide evidence of such, including the type of coverage, its limits and its expiration.
And since renters insurance doesn’t cover the physical structure of the building, it’s relatively inexpensive, meaning price shouldn’t be a barrier for you.
Lastly, most renters insurance will cover your personal property regardless of where it’s located. In fact, one of our founders, Ryan, had his car broken into in Silicon Valley with thousands of dollars worth of stuff stolen. It wasn’t his auto insurance that covered his stolen property; it was his renters insurance policy.
How to Select From the Various Insurance Options?
Insurance Providers
When choosing between insurance providers, you should first consider the reputation, financial standing and reviews that are available for that provider. You can check your State’s department of insurance to make sure they’re licensed and have done all their filings. You can also check J.D. Power, A.M. Best and the Better Business Bureau to see how the companies stack up against each other. What’s important is to make sure the company has the financial standing to be able to pay any claims you’ve made, and the history to show that they DO pay claims fairly.
You should also compare quotes from a few different providers to see how they compare. Some providers have leaner operations, fewer middlemen, etc. and can pass those savings onto you as the customer. This will often be reflected in the different quotes you receive. However, it’s important to make sure that you’re comparing apples-to-apples here. Make sure that one policy doesn’t just appear less expensive because the premiums are lower. Consider what the deductibles and coverage limits are when making the comparison.
Reach out to friends, colleagues and trusted sources to see what they recommend. Oftentimes, people who have first-hand experiences with their insurance carries, especially after a claim, can give you some visibility into the carrier. Here, at Avail, we often get asked if there’s a company we recommend. In fact there is. We’ve done the research we recommended above, spoken with our renters, and vetted many different carriers. We recommend working with the folks at Lemonade to get a quote in seconds.
Actual Cash Value Vs. Replacement Cost
When determining the type of policy, you’ll elect whether your payout for any claims will be based on actual cash value or on replacement cost.
- Actual Cash Value is the value of your property minus any depreciation. Depreciation factors in the age and condition of the property. So a computer you paid $1,500 for three years ago may, after depreciation, only result in a payout of $700. The actual cash value is likely not enough to allow you to fully replace everything – or at least not with the same level of quality as your property that was lost, damaged or destroyed.
- Replacement Cost, on the other hand, is the actual cost of replacing your property (depreciation is not factored in here). So the laptop you paid $1,500 for thats been destroyed, you’d be paid on the amount you actually must pay to replace your laptop with the same one or a comparable one.
Because the replacement cost type of policy covers you more fully, it also means your premium would be higher than the actual cash value policy. However, this increase is not typically substantial and most renters should elect to select the replacement cost policy.
Property Coverage Limit
You’ll want to figure out what coverage limit to have on your property (or how much your property is worth). The best way to do this is to take an inventory of your property and its value. You can do this on a sheet of paper and sum up all the values. Do this for your clothes, shoes, electronics, furniture, jewelry, etc. When you get to the end and sum it all together, you’ll be surprised. Your property is usually worth a lot more than you’d initially think. According to State Farm, the average renter has more than $35,000 worth of property in their rental. This can be considerably more depending on the number of bedrooms and people living in the unit or house.
As you’re creating your inventory list, you should consider also taking photos or a video describing the items, when/where you bought them and how much you paid for them. This will come in handy should you need to do a claim in the future. And since you’re already going around the apartment making an inventory list, you might as well create the evidence at the same time.
One important note here is that there is usually a limit per single item, particularly around jewelry. For example, most policies will have a $1,000 limit per piece of jewelry. So if you have jewelry and other items that are more than the standard limits for a single item, you’ll want to consider adding to your policy to cover those specific items individually. This is known as adding a rider to the policy or a personal articles policy.
A higher property coverage limit will directly increase the total premium you pay.
Liability Coverage Limit
The typical liability coverage limit is for $100,000. This is the coverage that kicks in if a guest is injured while in your rental home, and covers medical costs associated with the injury. Claims here don’t typically have a deductible apply, whereas claims for damage to property always do. However, many insurance agents recommend increasing the liability insurance amount past the $100,000 average as medical costs and liability suits can go quite high.
How this impacts my premiums…
A higher liability coverage limit will increase the total premium you pay.
The Deductible and Premium Tradeoff
As mentioned earlier, the deductible is the amount you’ll pay when you submit a claim before the insurance carrier’s coverage kicks in. Another way to think about it is your share of the claim. As an example, if you have a claim for $10,000 and a deductible of $500, then you’d be reimbursed for $9,500, with the remaining $500 being your share of the liability. The deductible is something you can adjust higher or lower when you’re first creating your policy. If a $500 deductible is too high for you, then you can lower it. However, a lower deductible will mean a higher premium. Some renters prefer to have a higher deductible so that their premiums are lower.
This is a tradeoff that you’ll want to consider and adjust based on what you’d be willing to pay out of pocket if a disaster occurs and what you can afford, or be willing to pay, monthly in premiums.
How to Get the Best Deal on Renters Insurance
There are a few other items that can help you get the best deal and lower the cost of your renters insurance policy. Here’s a quick list:
- Ask for a smoke alarm and fire extinguisher discount. If you have these properly installed/placed in the apartment, many carriers are willing to offer a discount. In many places, it’s actually a legal requirement that the landlord provide smoke alarms and fire extinguishers, so these should be an easy discount.
- Have a security/alarm system in place that monitors for break-in, vandalism, etc. This deters theft and should help you lower your monthly premiums. There are several companies available that offer affordable, flexible and moveable alarm systems so that you can take the system with you when you leave.
- Pay your renters insurance bill in full, upfront, rather than in monthly installments. There’s typically a discount for prepayment.
- Buy your car insurance or other lines of insurance with the same company. There’s usually a discount, called a “multiline” discount for having multiple lines of insurance with the same carrier. The additional benefit here is that with a company like State Farm, you’ll also be building a relationship with an agent who can provide more than just insurance options.
6 Questions to Ask Your Insurance Agent
When you’re ready to dive in, these are the questions you should ask your insurance provider so that you make sure you have the right coverage and understand how claims are handled.
- Is all my stuff covered?
- What perils are covered?
- What happens if someone gets hurt in the apartment?
- Does the policy cover all roommates?
- Is my dog covered, too?
- How much will the policy cost?
These are all the basics. If you have more specific questions or needs, check out more information here.
About Avail
Our online rental software helps do-it-yourself landlords be more effective, fair and honest with online tenant screening, digital leasing, and online rent payments. Tenants find the software user-friendly, intuitive and enjoy the transparency that Avail brings to the rental process.
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]]>The post How to Screen Tenants Even When Signing the Lease appeared first on Avail.
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The lease itself is the last and final opportunity to screen tenants before turning over the keys.
But, at the lease signing, it’s not too late to rip up the lease and move on to another applicant if needed. In fact, it’s not too late until you hand over the keys and the tenant moves in. While it’s not ideal to have to let go of a tenant at this stage, especially given how far into the process you are, it will be far easier and less painful to remove a tenant now than once they have the keys.
Here is a recap of the screening process and how to continue the screening even when you’re both signing the lease.
A Quick Recap: Five Stages to a Good Screening Process
Stage 1: First Contact — The prospective tenant calls you for more information about the property and the lease. Ask some pre-screening questions to make sure this prospective tenant isn’t going to waste your time.
Stage 2: The Showing — The prospective tenant has passed stage one. Now, you’ve scheduled a showing and will meet the prospective tenant(s) for the first time. Watch out for these red flags.
Stage 3: The Application — Your prospective tenant is still interested and so are you. Have them fill out a rental application that includes references from prior landlords and employers. Run a credit report and background check.
Stage 4: Approval Process — This tenant seems like a good candidate. Accept him or her and gently decline all other applicants. Until you have a signed lease, though, you’re not done screening.
Stage 5: Lease Signing — This last screening step serves two purposes: 1) to remove any lingering doubt about the tenant, and 2) set expectations and embed the tenant with the right mindset and behaviors around the rental.
1. Review the Rental Lease With the Tenant
When reviewing a rental lease, start with the important terms like the rental amount, when rent is due, any late fees, the security deposit that’s required, when they can move in, and when you expect to have the tenant move out. If there are pet fees, utility fees, etc., make sure to cover those, too.
Once you’ve talked about the major terms, you should continue reviewing each of the clauses in the lease, at least briefly. You should be familiar with the clauses enough to know what your rights are as the landlord, but also to be able to field questions from the tenant.
Finally, you should review the rules and regulations section of the lease, spending more time here so that the tenant knows you take these rules seriously. Let them know what the penalties are for violating these rules (fines, fees, evictions, etc.)
2. First Month’s Rent, Security Deposit, and Move-In Fees
It’s quite typical that at the time of lease signing, the tenant is expected to pay first month’s rent. A security deposit and/or move-in fee might be required at this point, too. If so, make sure to communicate this to the tenant before you both review the lease.
The tenant should have the payments with them (or within a couple days if they’re making their payments online). You can sign the lease, but then afterward, immediately deposit those payments. After about three days, all those payments should have cleared.
Does the tenant have enough income to accumulate savings to cover a deposit? Does the tenant’s check for the first month’s rent and deposit clear?
That’s why the first month’s rent and deposit should be taken prior to handing over the keys and allowing the tenant to move in. Give yourself at least seven days for payments to clear, but note that it’s far more typical that a lease is signed about 2 weeks to 30 days before move-in.
A signed lease is considered voidable should the first month’s rent and/or deposit checks fail. It’s quite easy at this point to void the lease (and not hand over any keys). If you allow the tenant to move in, however, it’s no longer an issue of whether the contractual obligations were met — you now have to face tenancy laws and can’t simply kick them out.
3. Set a Deadline
If the tenant isn’t signing the lease while onsite with you (or will be signing a digital lease), then make sure to communicate a deadline for signing the lease. It’s not uncommon for a tenant to feel pressured and not want to sign on the spot. That’s normal, so instead, give them a deadline to sign the lease. This should typically be 24 hours to 48 hours, but this depends on how much time they need to properly review the documents.
4. Comply With Local Ordinances
It’s easy to miss something small (i.e., not providing a lead paint disclosure pamphlet) that essentially allows your tenant to have the lease be void at will. This could give the tenant an option, unknown to you, to back out of the lease at any time, even after they have moved in. This puts you in a tough spot and could leave you with an unexpected vacancy.
The following are things you should make sure to do at the time you sign the lease:
- Comply with local ordinances. You should look online and grab the ordinances for your state and city (not every city has its own ordinances, but many major cities do). Read these and be familiar with them. You should do this before the lease signing process.
- Provide all the required national, state, and local disclosures documents and forms. All leases are required to include a lead-based paint disclosure and pamphlet. Most states then require a mold disclosure and pamphlet. Larger cities typically now require a bedbug disclosure.
- Provide receipts for any payments, especially around the security deposit. Most states require that you provide a receipt for a deposit. You should generally do this for all payments you receive.
Need Help Finding and Screening Tenants?
Avail helps you find and screen tenants. Every step mentioned in our five-part screening process has been moved online, with clear steps and automation to make it fast and organized. If you want to learn more about how we help landlords, read about our tenant screening tools here or access our comprehensive tenant screening checklist.
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