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Are you a new Cleveland property owner that has to collect rent for the first time?
The rent collection process can feel awkward for more inexperienced property owners. Doing it properly requires some know-how and if you aren't professional about it, then some tenants could take advantage of the situation with delinquent or late payments.
If you want to make the most of your Cleveland rental properties, then you need to know how to handle rent collection. In this post, we're going to give you some tips for managing rent and ensuring that late rent is never an issue with your tenants. Read on and you'll have your rent on time, every time.
Online Rent Collection Is the Way to Go
The best way to collect rent in 2021 is to do it all online. This is how most tenants would prefer to do it and it really is the easiest way to ensure that you're being paid on time every month.
There are various tools that allow funds to be transferred from person to person, both rental-specific ones (RentMatic, RentMerchant) and more general ones (PayPal, Venmo, Zelle), each with its own pros and cons. If you want to take a more hands-off approach, you can also hire a property manager and have them set up online payments for you.
Collect In Person When You Have To
If you're using online payments as your main rent collecting method, then you should always offer a backup option for those that don't have regular access to or knowledge of internet transfers. If you're in the Cleveland area, then it might be easiest to pick up rent cheques in person, but you can also set up a dropbox for the tenants to leave the cheques at their leisure.
Another option is to have them mail the cheques to you, but this could end up creating delays for you.
Grace Periods/Knowing When to Crack Down
Every veteran landlord has had to deal with a bad tenant that constantly pays rent late, or not at all. Chasing down tenants for rent isn't why you got into property ownership, so it's important to know how to deal with these situations.
You should always have a grace period of a few days for tenants, especially for a first offense. Being a nasty landlord won't get you anywhere, but you also don't want to be taken advantage of. Try to communicate with your tenants that although you are letting it slide this time, you'd rather them pay their rent on time.
Knowing when to crack down on a tenant can be tough. When they're regularly giving you excuses for late payments or not paying you at all, then you need to take action. You can find out more about the eviction process here.
Property Management Can Help
Now that you know how to deal with rent collection, you can make sure you're always getting paid. Hiring a property manager to take care of rent collection for your Cleveland properties is never a bad idea either. There are countless other benefits to working with a property manager as well, such as tenant screening, repairs, maintenance, and determining rent to ensure you're making the most money on your properties.
If you'd like to learn more about our services, visit our website today. You'll find all you need to know about who we are and what we do, then when you're ready to talk about property management for your Cleveland rentals, don't hesitate to contact us ASAP.
