As a landlord, you likely juggle a myriad of tasks in any given day. Whether you manage your properties as a full-time job or you work a day job alongside being a landlord, you need the fastest and most effective tech tools to help you manage smarter.
Here at TurboTenant, we are passionate about helping landlords manage their properties more efficiently. To help our landlords manage better, we have compiled our top list of the best tech tools for landlords.
1: Improve Your Property Photos
When the time comes for you to fill a vacant unit, one of the most important items on your task list will be taking high-quality photos.The good news is that with modern photography tech, a point and shoot or even your smartphone can take beautiful, high-resolution photos.”
Keep in mind that the better your property photos, the more interest you will gain in a property. Most renters will skip over ads that don’t have any photos and those with only one or two photos will still garner less interest than those with a full gallery.
Once you take photos, you may want to touch them up, improve lighting, crop out unnecessary components, and tweak the color saturation to put your property in its best light. Our chosen tech tool for photo editing is Fotor.com. This online tool allows you to quickly touch-up photos without the need for in-depth photo editing knowledge. Quickly put together a gallery of premium photos to help rent your property faster.
Tech Tool: Fotor
2: Market Your Property With One Click
Once you have put together a quality gallery of photos, it is time to create a property listing and post your rental unit on the market. Gone are the days where a newspaper listing and a sign in the yard is enough. Today, online rental listings are the number one way renters find their new homes. While traditionally, marketing online required memorizing a number of log-ins and utilizing multiple tools, you can now easily market your rental property across dozens and dozens of sites with one click.
Create an account with TurboTenant and build out your property listing. After that, simply turn online marketing on anytime you need to market the property. This will automatically post your listing to numerous sites at once, helping give greater visibility to your property for potential tenants.
Tech Tool: TurboTenant Marketing
Bonus: This tool also lets you accept online rental applications and screen tenants for free.
3: Sign Documents Online
With everyone on the go, signing paperwork in person isn’t always a practical solution. This is particularly true for remote landlords who need to get things done from a distant location. The good news is that mailing paperwork back and forth can be a thing of the past when you utilize the right technology.
DocuSign is a tool that allows you to upload documents, share them with tenants, and request signatures as needed. This will cut down on the time paperwork takes and will allow you to keep your paperwork better organized. This can be especially helpful during the leasing process.
Tech Tool: DocuSign
4: Modernize Your Condition Reports
After you find a new tenant, you will need to do an initial walkthrough. Traditionally, you would use a paper and pen to fill out a condition report. A condition report allows you to take note of exactly how the property looks when a new tenant moves-in.
At the time of move-out, you will compare the condition of the property to the condition it was in at the time the tenants moved in. Without a walkthrough, you will have a hard time proving what repairs need to be made.
The good news is that with Happy Inspector, you can leave the pen and paper at home. Use this handy tool for not only filling out a condition report with new tenants but also to pair the report with photos. This extra touch will help ensure your property can be repaired between tenants without an extra cost to you.
Tech Tool: Happy Co.
#5: Accept Online Payments
Whether you have your tenants pay you via checks in the mail or you are looking for a more tech-savvy solution, QuickBooks offers a premium quality option for invoicing. By providing an invoice for your tenants and accepting payments through your QuickBooks account, you can cut down on the effort it takes to keep track of rent payments.
The best news about this tech tool is that it does more than just allow you to accept rent payments online. This tool also provides you with the ability to track of rental property repair costs, tax deductions, and more. By reaching out to their customer support team, you can find the perfect product for your landlording business.
Tech Tools: Intuit QuickBooks
#6: Find A Contractor
One task every landlord will invariably face is hiring contractors for rental property maintenance and repairs. Depending on your level of handiness, you might need to only hire contractors for bigger jobs or you might need to hire them for even the little jobs. For remote landlords, this becomes particularly important.
Finding a contractor is far simpler than it once was. Put down the phone book and pick up your smartphone, laptop, or tablet next time you need to hire a contractor with Thumbtack. This tech tool allows you to find any sort of contractor from an HVAC tech to a roofer to a house cleaner for in between tenants. Thumbtack makes it simple to not only find contractors but to compare pricing, save the information of contractors you like, and read reviews for contractors you consider.
Tech Tool: Thumbtack
Efficiency = Greater Profits
Being a landlord isn’t easy and will always come with a unique set of challenges. However, with the right tools, you can face those challenges with less time lost and less money spent. By modernizing your processes, you can create a more efficient method to your madness and a more organized life. Reap greater profits from your rental property by implementing these tools.
