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Rental property management comes with no shortage of responsibilities – from sharing your listing online, screening tenants, collecting rent payments, and more, it can be challenging to handle each task without the proper resources.
Thankfully, Avail provides convenient tools to meet the needs of independent landlords. We’ve highlighted these features to help you better understand how Avail helps landlords manage their properties.
What Is Avail?
Avail (part of Realtor.com®) is a property management software platform that offers every tool landlords and their tenants need to make renting easier. Landlords can advertise rental properties, screen tenants, access lawyer-reviewed lease agreements and lease documents, manage rental property accounting, and more from one convenient platform. Meanwhile, tenants can build a personalized renter profile, pay rent, and submit maintenance tickets online.
Landlords using Avail have two subscription options: Unlimited for free, and Unlimited Plus for $7/unit per month. The former offers syndicated rental listings, credit and criminal screening reports, state-specific leases, online rent payments, and maintenance tracking. An Unlimited Plus account includes everything in Unlimited, plus premium features like next-day rent payments, waived ACH fees, custom applications and leases, and more.
How Does Avail Work?
The easy-to-navigate dashboard lets landlords manage an unlimited amount of rental properties, communicate with tenants, and complete rental tasks.
Whether you’re a seasoned landlord or new to renting out your property, our system walks you and your tenants through the rental process to learn how to use Avail. For more assistance, you can access our library of educational articles or reach out to our customer support team through email, phone, or live chat, seven days a week.
Here’s a breakdown of all the tools we offer:
1. Rental Listings
To create a rental listing, fill out the requested information and upload photos of the property. Rental listings through Avail are shared across some of the top rental listing sites.
Landlords can create and edit the details listed below:
- Rental terms
- Unit details
- Amenities
- Utilities included
- If pets are allowed
- Unit photos (you can upload an unlimited amount of photos)
- Headline and description
Once you’ve created a listing, Avail automatically posts it to sites like Realtor.com®, Apartments.com, Apartment List, Doorsteps, and more to help you get as many tenant leads as possible.
Once your listing goes live and you begin to receive leads, those leads will automatically populate in your account. From here, you can pre-screen prospective tenants for further information before scheduling a property showing or invite them to fill out a rental application.
2. Rental Applications
An Avail rental application can help landlords determine if a prospective tenant will be a good fit for their rental property. From your dashboard, you can request an application for your specific property. Simply include the applicant’s full first and last name, email address, and phone number. To include multiple names, simply click the “Add Applicant” button.
Landlords can edit the application to view all the information being requested and omit some of the standard questions if needed. If you have an Unlimited Plus account, you’ll also have the option to add up to five custom questions for your application.
After you’ve sent your document, Avail will notify your applicant with a text or email. Once the’ve completed the form, you can review the information and decide if you would like to move forward with the process.
3. Tenant Screening
With Avail, landlords can request tenant screening reports such as a TransUnion credit report, background check, and eviction history to verify an applicant’s history and make it easier to select a reliable tenant for your rental.
Reports can be purchased individually or bundled for a one-time fee, and you or your prospective tenant can cover the cost.
Tenants enter their social security number to verify these reports, and once completed, reports are pulled immediately, and results are displayed in your account.
Tenants have the option to compile their reported information by creating an Avail Renter Profile. Shareable via an online link, this profile can be shared with other landlords to help simplify the application process in the future.
Learn more about tenant screening with Avail.
4. State-Specific and Lawyer-Reviewed Rental Lease Agreements
Once you’ve selected a new tenant, you can access our library of state-specific and lawyer-reviewed rental leases and other lease documents. Our system leverages Local Assist
to ensure our lease templates include all the locally-required attachments and disclosures needed per local landlord-tenant laws.
Landlords can customize the lease with specific details like the start and end dates of the tenancy, rent amount, and fees. For the ability to further customize a lease by editing, removing, and adding your own clauses and rules, upgraded to an Unlimited Plus account.
Landlords can also create lease amendments to modify the terms of an active lease and upload addendums if a new situation arises that isn’t covered in the original lease. These documents can be uploaded to your account and paired to the lease for convenient access.
When you’re ready to collect signatures on your lease, Avail keeps the process simple and organized with electronic lease signing. Landlords can mark where to sign on their uploaded documents before sending them to the tenant. The tenant will be notified via email and can e-sign on any device or browser.
After all tenants have signed the lease and associated documents, you’ll be prompted to countersign. This will finalize the lease, and a copy will be emailed to all parties for personal reference.
5. Online Rent Collection
With the online rent collection tool, landlords can receive on-time rent payments deposited directly into their linked bank account. The funds are typically available after three business days, which is faster and more efficient than traveling to the bank with mailed paper checks. For an even quicker turnaround, landlords can upgrade to FastPay and have rent deposited as soon as the next business day.
The rent collection tool provides automatic rent reminders for tenants, rent receipts for each payment, and the ability to set up multiple bank accounts for deposits. Tenants can schedule automatic payments with Autopay and can enroll in CreditBoost to help improve their credit scores by paying their rent on time each month.
6. Rental Property Accounting
Landlords can streamline the bookkeeping process with the Avail Rental Property Accounting tool. Payments collected through Avail will automatically populate your dashboard with the relevant details like the payer, the amount, the date, the property, and the type of transaction.
During tax season, this resource makes rental property tax preparation simple. By exporting your transactions into a spreadsheet, you can share your expense reports with tax professionals to ensure you’re filing accurately.
7. Maintenance Requests
Maintenance is a regular part of managing a rental property, but it doesn’t have to be a headache. The Avail maintenance tracking tool allows tenants to submit their maintenance and repair requests through their dashboard to organize and simplify the maintenance process.
Tenants can add all the necessary maintenance details and, if applicable, photos of the issue. Landlords can keep a record of all rental property maintenance in one place, where they can track and update tenants on the status of repairs and even reference notes and invoices once resolved.
Simplify Rental Property Management With Avail
Create an account to get started with Avail. You can set up your rental properties, invite tenants to pay their rent, and even bring over existing leases. Learn more about how to get started with or switch to Avail.
The post How Avail Helps Landlords Manage Their Properties appeared first on Avail.
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Whether you have one rental property or one hundred, being a landlord is stressful. From finding trustworthy and responsible tenants to collecting rent, there’s no doubt that the process can be demanding. But thanks to property management software platforms, rent collection is now easier to handle without the help of a property manager.
Here are five reasons to collect rent online with landlord software like Avail.
1. Paying Rent Online is Easy
These days, the majority of renters are already transacting most of their financial business online. Thanks to debit cards and online banking portals, there’s rarely a need to pull out the checkbook anymore, which is probably why a survey published by the National Multifamily Housing Council found that 79% of renters would prefer to pay electronically.
Of course, collecting rent online isn’t simply convenient for renters. It also means no more waiting by the mailbox for this month’s checks before running to the bank. Online rental payments are done via ACH (Automated Clearing House) or paid by credit card and allow renters to transfer money directly into your account in as little as two business days. No trip to the bank required.
2. Electronic Rent Payments Are Safe
According to the Federal Trade Commission, approximately 9 million people will be the victim of identity theft, which is approximately 19 people every minute. Once the fraud occurs, the FTC estimates that it takes the average victim $500 and 30 minutes to resolve each individual instance of identity theft.
Unless your tenant is literally handing you a check every month in person, a rent check is an easy way to become a target for these types of crimes. This is because tenants’ banking information is printed on the front of every check they drop in the mail. Furthermore, a tenant with a bank account that’s been fraudulently drained is a tenant that’s about to become a major headache. Collecting rent online with the appropriate safety measures ensures that no one is at risk.
What are the appropriate safety measures, you may wonder? The ACH system is regulated by the NACHA (The Electronics Payment Association), which represents more than 10,000 financial institutions. The NACHA enforces a strict set of rules put in place to ensure the safety and security of electronic payments, which allows your tenants to pay their rent safely without the risk of identity theft.
3. It Improves the Tenant-Landlord Relationship
Have you ever noticed that in sales, the person who gives you the pitch and wins you over is rarely the one who collects payment? The reasoning is simple: it prevents a positive relationship being upset by the decidedly negative process of collecting payment.
Collecting rent online provides the same benefits — tenants will associate you with the brand-new pedestal sink you’ve graciously decided to install, not the monthly withdrawal from their bank account. Keep in mind, it’s not only the tenants who will enjoy the positive emotional effects of an online rent payment: It also eliminates the stress of confronting tenants who haven’t paid rent on time, which is unpleasant for everyone.
4. Staying Organized is Simple
A high level of organization is a necessity when money is exchanging hands, and the more tenants and properties involved, the more opportunity there is for error. However, even if you’re only overseeing one or two properties, collecting monthly rent checks requires communication and organization to ensure that payment is being received within the appropriate timeframe.
Errors that seem small can become disastrous when they result in a ‘he said, she said’ argument in which both landlord and tenant are adamant that they are the wronged party.
One of the best things about collecting rent online is that it creates a seamless digital record that requires little effort for you and your tenants. Any potential disagreements can be settled quickly, without room for argument or opinion: minimal paperwork, maximum effectiveness.
5. Automatic Payments Keep Things Reliable
People tend to remember the things they’re excited about — and that list doesn’t usually include paying rent. When “pay the rent” is the last item on a long list of to-dos, even the best tenants can slip up.
The ability to pay rent online allows tenants to set up automatic payments so that even if paying rent isn’t at the top of their list, it will still get paid on time, every time. The other major benefit of automatically scheduled rent payments? It eliminates your tenants’ temptation to use rent money for additional unexpected expenses.
Collect Rent Online With Avail
There are rarely simple solutions to life’s many problems, but when they do come along it’s important to take advantage of them. Collecting rent online is a quick way to minimize the stress of being a landlord and to facilitate a more positive relationship with your tenants. Everybody wins.
Collecting rent online is a surefire way to ensure that, as a landlord, you’re doing everything within your power to make the process easy on yourself and your tenants. With the landlord tools Avail offers, it’s even easier for landlords to collect rent and for tenants to pay rent online.
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