Ask Me Anything: Seamus Nally, TurboTenant CEO

[Seamus Nally]

@pbgerhardt6gmail-com

First off, I’m glad you’re using the Mobile App. Thank you for this feedback. We are actively working on parity between the web experience and the App. The speed at which our web team has been developing new features on the web has made this extra challenging. We’ve made some headway at ensuring our notifications are smart enough to bring you to the App if you have it instead of the web interface.

Do you remember which ones you’re getting still pointing you in the wrong direction? Is there a specific feature you always use the App for instead of the web?

Keep an eye out for updates in the app store as we continue to work towards parity. We have some functionality to leave notes and private evaluations on leads that I’m excited about.

[Ava Johns]

Thanks!

[Seamus Nally]

@joshb1976comcast-net you’re throwing me an alley-oop 🏀 with this question.

We’re currently working on two items that I believe will meet your needs. The first is the ability to categorize your properties into portfolios. The second is an Assistant role. This role can be assigned at the portfolio or property level so you can decide which properties they can access. The work for this is underway and will be released in June. If you reach out to us at [email protected] and reference this post, I’d be happy to ensure you’re on the list of the first users to get access.

Here is a sneak peek of the design so you know I’m not making it up.

[[email protected]]

I’d like to see an option where landlords can send rent reminders to tenants via text and not solely email.

[Seamus Nally]

@joe-bacotannavllc-com

Ahh, that is kind of you to say.

My journey into the software/startup world was not typical. I thought I was going to be an elementary or high school teacher.

I was really into long-distance running in high school and college, and I had an opportunity to move to Oregon and train for a team to qualify for the Olympic Trials. As part of that opportunity, I was sponsored by a tech company. I’d go into their office every day after training and do data entry work and any trivial tasks people needed. I was blown away by how smart and talented everyone was at the company. They would go from drawing something on a whiteboard to making it a living and breathing software product.

It felt like magic to me, and I fell in love.

Jeff, the product manager at the company, defined what got built and talked to customers about how to solve their problems. He was the guy calling the shots. I wanted to be Jeff. I moved my seat next to him and asked him to give me any work he had and teach me his ways. That was the start of my tech career.

Almost two decades later, I’m still blown away by the talented people I have the privilege of working with, and it still feels like magic every time the team releases new features to make life easier for our users. There have been many ups and downs along the way that led me to today at TurboTenant, but I’ll save that for another post.

[Seamus Nally]

Faith,

I appreciate this feature request. One way to do it within the product today is by recording the section 8 payments as an offline payment. If you’ve not discovered that here is an article that explains the process. However, that isn’t the most straightforward approach, and we could improve it. I put in a feature request with our team and posted this request to our public feature request board. If you could upvote that, it would be perfect, and it allows us to notify you once it is available.

[Seamus Nally]

Dave,

Thank you for your question. zInspector has come up a few times, and we’ve investigated their product. Our Product Manager, responsible for our Condition Report product, would love your feedback. If you’d email [email protected] and reference this post, I’ll ensure you get in touch with her. She’ll be especially curious as to what you like about zInspector.

In the meantime, we have this request on our Feature Request board, if you don’t mind upvoting it that would be much appreciated.

[Seamus Nally]

Kim,

Great question.

To ensure utilities are in the tenant’s name, I would require them to provide confirmation numbers from the utility companies proving the accounts have been transferred, effective by their move-in date.

It’s best practice not to allow move-in or release keys until confirmation. This helps avoid you being responsible for their utility bills. I also have this sentence in my lease agreement (a TurboTenant Lease) to cover me in case I get billed for any of the utilities that are my tenant’s responsibility.

If Tenant fails to notify the service provider or does not assume responsibility of billing as of the Lease Start Date of this Agreement or cancels the Utilities or Other Services prior to the termination of this Agreement, which results in the account being billed to Landlord, Tenant’s Utilities or Other Services will be paid and charged back to Tenant in addition to Rent.

Shameless Plug Alert: If you’ve not checked out the TurboTenant Lease builder I highly suggest it. Even if it is just see how certain situations like this are handled. Our legal team works hard to stay up-to-date with changing legislation and I use it for my own properties.

[Seamus Nally]

Amber,

I have both scenarios right now in properties I own. One property is set up as room rentals. In that situation, everyone has their own lease, pays their security deposit, and is responsible for any damage. They also have specific rules to follow in their lease for shared spaces within the house.

The other is a two-bedroom with roommates on the same lease. They have a shared responsibility for the unit. If one wants to move out, we’d create a new lease. In this situation, the two tenants found each other before renting the place and only qualified for the unit because it was their combined income.

Here are some pros and cons that I can think of with each approach.

Room Rentals (Separate Leases)

Pros

• Individual accountability for rent and damage.
• Simpler process if one tenant leaves.
• Specific rules for shared spaces can be enforced per lease.
• Can often charge more by the room than you can if you rent the entire unit out.

Cons

• Lots more drama. Guests, parking, shared areas, living habits. The headaches can really get out of control.
• More management (multiple leases, turnover).
• Usually less stable renters as people aren’t usually excited to be in a room rental for long.

For Joint Leases (Roommates on One Lease)

Pros

• Joint and several liability means all are responsible for the full rent and damages, making collection easier.
• Less drama because tenants often pre-screen each other and qualify with combined income.
• Less administrative work than individual leases.

Cons

• One roommate leaving can be complex (lease changes, re-qualifying).
• Security deposit disputes can be harder to resolve fairly.
• Less revenue as you usually can’t charge as much as you would with room rental

Summary
Sorry for the long post, but having done both, I’m trying to get out of room rentals and go to roommates on a joint lease. I also want them to apply and qualify together so they are, in part, committing to making a living together. The increased drama of individual room rentals is not worth it for me. I’d sacrifice the revenue for stability and sanity.

I’d love to know other people’s thoughts on the subject though. Any thing I missed in my pro/con list?

[[email protected]]

i agree. Text is more efficient communication way with tenant than Emails.

[[email protected]]

Can you integrate a Text communication way into the system instead of sending them emails? Not every tenant checks emails every minute but Text will pop out once it is sent out

[Seamus Nally]

Rajesh,

I appreciate the question.

I can confirm that TurboTenant does a soft credit pull on applicants’ credit history, which does not impact their credit score. The reason we selected to partner with TransUnion as the credit history provider is for precisely that reason, they allow a soft pull that doesn’t impact credit scores. I’d never want a renter penalized for applying to a property.

I can’t speak to this exact renter, but if you’d reach out to [email protected], we could investigate further.

[Seamus Nally]

Melissa,

I’m sorry to hear you’re not getting value out of the renter check-ins. Here is an article that speaks to why we created them and why landlords find them valuable. That being said if you wish to disable them please email [email protected] and we can turn them off for your renters.

Thanks for leaving your feedback and being a TurboTenant user!

[[email protected]]

I second this! I use an app/third party vendor (Grasshopper) and I can’t change the phone to my Grasshopper App because TurboTenant verification process won’t allow the call to go through (you have to select 0 for the call to go through)

[[email protected]]

I’d like to be able to just type in the rent amount as opposed to manually selecting every late payment box; I’d also like the option to mass select late payments to delete. (To give some background I have some older, less tech savy tenants who make cash payments at the bank and I have to manually record the payment. That’s not always done in a timely manner)