Real-estate Lease management

What is missing in a housing market with demand for rental properties and many owners with a single extra property to rent?
Services. Keeping the property occupied, choosing the right tenants, ongoing maintenance, inspections and all the legal paperwork.

All of the services are required and the financial returns are tightly coupled to the quality of the services. For example, starting to look for the right tenant well in advance. Or inspecting the property regularly to ensure small issues don’t turn into disasters. So how can small owners provide the high quality of services and keep the cost down?

The answer is specialized lease management companies, that provide the required services. Why it works is because the service costs can thus be shared between multiple properties with multiple owners. Simply put, it is cheaper to do things at scale or buy in bulk.

Let’s look at the app we built for lease management service providers.

Who are the users.

The application has to provide features for multiple user roles:

1. Company agent - in charge of all services for owners, tenants and maintenance workers. In a larger company there are multiple roles specializing for certain category of services or geographies.
2. Property owner - the owner of the property the company is managing
3. Tenant - the person who leased the property
4. Future tenant - is looking for a property to lease
5. Maintenance worker - provides regular preventative maintenance and emergency repairs. These might be contractors or in-house company personnel.

Strictly speaking, apart from the company agent, the rest of the users don’t require access to the app directly. However, in our experience, the less things are done over phone and email, the more the quality of services improve.

Now let’s look at the user needs.

Property catalog management

Agents need an up-to-date database of all the information related to the managed properties. This includes contact information for owners, utilities and various institutions. Utilities meter locations and ids. Keys catalog and assignment. Parking and shared areas access and rules.

Our application contains pre-configured fields and forms for the commonly needed information. If needed adding of additional fields is a matter of seconds.

Next there is a need associate paperwork and documents with each property and of course an extensive photo/video gallery. Of course much of this information has to be regularly updated, while also keeping the full history accessible. For example property photos are regularly updated as are utility meter counters.

Customers can rely on the in-app document storage or can alternatively take advantage of storing documents on sharepoint.

Finally, onboarding of new owners requires signing of legal documents. The documents are generated automatically, by inserting the property information into a customer provided Microsoft Word template.

Lease management

The company agent and the tenant (and the owner) share the same goal of entering into a lease agreement. In this section we assume the tenant already found the right property and now wishes to lease it.

The first step is recording of the required information about tenant(s). Then legal documents are prepared. The onboarding of new tenants usually happens during a property visit. The tenants can inspect the property and familiarize themselves with it. Any issues are noted (eg. broken faucet) and resolution is agreed. The property photos are taken or updated and all utility meters values are recorded. This “initial” state can thus be checked, verified and signed by the tenants together with the lease agreement.

During the lease time, regular inspections are performed by the company agent. Again, an inspection form is completed and photos are taken.

For any issue or necessary repairs the tenants contact the company agent. Who will then schedule a visit from maintenance. Depending on the issue and on the agreement, the repairs can be billed to the owner, tenant or charged from the security deposit.

Finally, once the tenant informs the agent they wish to terminate the lease, the agent will list the property as available and schedules any work needed to prepare the property for the next tenant (paint, deep clean, etc.).

What can our app do here Our application simplifies the recording of all information, whether tenant info or property photos. All the information can be recorded on a phone or tablet, including photos and signatures. It will also create reminders for regular inspections and maintenance. Finally the company can customize the checklist for on-boarding, off-boarding a regular visits.

Our app also provides a portal experience for tenants, basically a separate app experience. Here the tenants can communicate with agents, report issues and record any self-inspections. They can also access all legal documents related to their lease (if needed).

A separate portal experience is also available for property owners. Again owners can communicate with agents, share documents. They can also keep track of the on-boarding and inspections forms and photos.

Property maintenance

In order to provide a fully managed experience for property owners, the company agents handle all necessary property maintenance. This includes the preparation for listing (fe: new paint, new carpets, deep cleaning), regular preventative maintenance (AC, heating, etc). And any incidental corrective maintenance, e.g. repairing anythings that breaks. At the minimum this means arranging for an ad hoc repairman visit, but can be also managing and dispatching of an in-house workforce. Finally, costs have to be calculated and invoices filled.

Depending on the company needs, our app can simply help with recording of incidents. Ensuring the agent is informed about a problem and the tenant knows how the problem will be fixed and when.

But there is much more. The application can manage a list of internal or external contractors. Reported issue are converted into jobs that can be scheduled and assigned to a worker. This can be in the form of an email and/or by providing a specific app for the worker. Finally, photos of the repair/work and an invoice can be uploaded to the app.

Property listing

One of the tasks of the lease management company is to list the property on the market. This includes internal channels like website and social media, and external like advertisement and third-party portals.

Our app provides extensive export functionality and pre-built connectors for Wordpress, Gatsbyjs and Shopify. Additionally we can (and have) built custom connectors for local e-commerce platforms.

One of the most important, but also most time consuming jobs of agents, is giving property tours to prospective tenants. To make the life of agents easier, our app provides a wealth of calendaring features. From flexible views, with color coding, drag&drop (re)scheduling and Outlook/Exchange integration. To email and SMS notifications for upcoming visits.

Of course, it is not only about the time spent at the property, there is often quite a lot of travel involved. Again, our app will keep track of kilometer/miles travelled and can automate the monthly travel expense report.

Finally, choosing the right tenant often includes a background check. Our app can access various registers automatically further simplifying the agent’s job and saving his/hers time.

Wrap

Lease management promises a better service for owners and tenants. Owners get a more predictable income and peace of mind thanks to regular inspections. Tenants get high quality maintenance and a dependable partner that is solely focused on them.

We believe our app goes a long way to deliver the promise.

Are you ready to see a demo?