We’re off to a great start in 2018 here at Rentalutions. This Tuesday, February 20th, we’re excited to reveal a new super-charged leasing interface. We looked at how you were using our existing lease templates and lease signing, incorporated feedback, and diligently discussed what was missing. And we’re pleased with the results.
The whole lease signing process is easier than ever. And we’ve added new features to streamline the leasing process starting from when you approve your applicants, all the way to collecting your first month’s rent and security deposit at lease signing.
Let’s walk through the upgrades.
Save and Reuse Your Lease (aka Lease Cloning)
We’ve always allowed you to start with our lease templates and customize them for your personal needs. But a year later, when you’re ready to sign new tenants, you’d have to customize the lease all over again. The most frequently requested enhancement to our leases was the simple ability to remember customizations.
And I’m proud to announce Rentalutions Lease Cloning is now available. When you’ve tailored your perfect lease, it’ll be there for you next year, or for your other units, to simply clone and sign. This dramatically improves the turnaround time it’ll take you to sign new tenants.
New Local Assist™ Will Help You Build a Local-Specific Lease
Local Assist, a re-imagining 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 the 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 written extensive guides on state landlord-tenant laws, and is why Local Assist is entirely based on your property’s address and exists to make landlording more approachable.
In-App Messaging to Tenants Now Available
We’re happy to announce emoji-free messaging between you and your tenants. Use in-app messaging when you need to communicate with your tenants about the lease you’re sending to be signed, or 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, but now you can communicate with your tenants directly in your Rentalutions account.
When you’re not online, you’ll be alerted via email if your tenants message you.
Transition Tenants More Easily
Once you sign the lease, the process isn’t quite over. There are a host 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 tenants moving in. These steps can be actioned directly from within your account, too, and include:
- Collect 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 right from within your Rentalutions accounts.
- Receive proof of renters insurance
- Our lease templates, by default, require renters insurance. This is so that when accidents happen, tenants aren’t coming to you and hoping that your Landlord policy will cover their damages, which it never will. But we’ve found that although most leases require renters insurance, only 14% of tenants actually follow-through with it. We’ve found that the number one reason is that they simply forget. Not anymore.
- Help tenants transfer utilities under their names
- Let’s help you and your tenants transfer their utilities. It starts with reminding them which utilities are their responsibility. And then you can provide them the service provider that’s recommended for your building.
- Receive completed move-in inspection checklist
- On move-in day, we all expect our tenants to complete an inspection checklist to mark down any pre-existing damage. We hope to get their sign-off so at the end of the year, we can look back on that checklist and know what may have been their responsibility. When we forget 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 do 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 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 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.
More Lease Customization and Optional Clauses
We’ve added several new customizations. One, in particular, has been a request of hundreds of landlords over the last couple months — the ability to click-and-drag the order of lease clauses and rules. Well, now you can.
We also added a few pre-built lease clauses that you can elect to add to your lease that many of our landlords have been asking for, 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 Rentalutions
That last one is our personal (and biased) favorite of course. But surprisingly, this was a request by many of our landlords who have loved using our payments feature.
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 instantly create payments linked to your lease. We pull the data directly from your lease and use that to auto-magically set up your account and your tenants account for rent payments. The process is seamless.
Next Steps
These updates will be in your account starting on Tuesday, February 20th. We’re continuously dedicated to providing education, tools, and customer service to support you in your rental experience.
If you have any questions, please reach out to our support team.
Originally published at Rentalutions.
