We would like information from all of you RE investors concerning your rent collection process for your rentals. What procedures do you do? We are thinking about changing our policy. At the present, we have all of our renters mail their rent to our office. We only collect money order/cashier checks. We recently had trouble with the US mail from 2 of our renters. They are always on time but their rent was not received at our office on time. We know the bank president and he collects his rent personally. This policy we do not agree with. Your feedback would be very helpful.

Hi Michael,

Good for you! Getting the USPS out of my income stream was one of the best decisions I ever made. No more, "I mailed the check last week" excuses.

Tenants pay at my bank. They hand the deposit to the teller and say "this is for ABC Rentals, account ending in 1234." Teller writes their name on the deposit ticket, gives tenant a receipt. Next day I log in to my online account and see the deposit and a computer scan of the deposit ticket so I know WHO paid HOW MUCH and WHEN. Easy cheesy!

Electronic payments are the easiest, no rent butler on the payroll. The system here called ach works great but some don't have a live checking account so they get money order and take to my bank cause they won't take cash and money orders there cost 6 bux.

It's amazing that in 2019 some landlords still use paper checks, etc. That is really old school.

I am with CGB - PayPal, Chase Quickpay, etc.

In the first four years, I allowed my tenants to mail their rent to the PO Box. As long as it was postmarked by a particular date, I was okay with when it reached my hands--- because I knew even if they mailed it locally, local mail no longer exists here. Instead, it had to travel 100 miles to the postal facility, and then 100 miles back to get to my slot 20 feet away from where they'd been standing two or three days before.

The first time I had a "lost in the mail" story, though, I went out to my local bank a block away from that particular house, and within 3 minutes of all of my rentals, and opened up an account. I would have liked a sweep account, but my bank didn't offer one. So I just set up a business checking account, and give my tenants deposit slips with their names and addresses on it, and my information pre-filled out.

That worked pretty well. People liked being able to hand their mail to the teller; I liked the security videos that monitored the premises, so it was an easy matter to see if anyone lied about having paid; and there was the night depository if anyone's schedule didn't let them get to the bank during business hours. I also liked how instantaneously I could access my funds, and see the deposits and deposit slips on the computer as soon as they were submitted, and how 100% of my rent went to me, not to middleman fees.

The biggest problem was running multiple accounts-- sometimes a house in the LLC A bucket would accidentally get deposited to the LLC B bucket, but I was able to sort that out on my side, no problem. Once, I had someone shove his rent through the locked front doors, rather than using the depository, and I had to nicely explain to him how banks worked. :) But other than that, that method worked pretty well for the next four years.

Then, I ran into a tenant whose kid goes to school with my kid. I gave them more leeway than I should have, and they took advantage of every bit of it. I was not their priority. I would start getting grumpy, and I would make noises... and they would make an effort... and I would think, "Okay, now things will be normal"... and they would slack off again.

Having that tenant got me to the point where I wanted to get away from people "choosing" to pay me. That decision needed to get taken from their hands. So my current experiment is with ACH debit. It's a bit clunky--- my tenants want to connect their rent date to the 3rd, which is when they get SS and they pay all their bills. But my options are the 1st and the 5th and the 15th and the 25th. So, you'd think that a 2-day delay wouldn't be a big deal... but you've got someone who's spent the last mumblemumble years paying their bills on the third and sweeping out the remaining cash on the fourth, and telling them they've got to wait until the 5th...! And then suppose the 5th isn't a M-F business day. Suppose it's a Saturday, and the account doesn't get drawn until Monday the 7th. Then I get my money 3 days later, on Thursday the 10th... and they deduct $x for the privilege.

It wasn't worth it to me before, but it's worth a try now. Other negatives are that, with ACH payments, they don't do partial draws if there are insufficient funds. But they do assess a fee for the failed debit. On the plus side, since it's fully automated, there's less pressure on me from tenants saying, "Hey, something came up. Can I pay you $x today and $y next week?"

I did have one tenant who used Chase QuickPay. That was a bit annoying to set up, but once it was set up, it worked really well. Unfortunately, you needed to have one party bank with Chase... and their minimum balances and other policies (ie, no third-party cash deposits) were onerous enough to not want to hitch myself to their wagon.

Most of my tenants do not have a bank account! So no account to draw money from...

ACH/Venmo/Paypal would not work then?

What would be the next best idea? (Other than "tell them to get a bank account" LOL)

For my apartments, tenants pay via Zelle or via direct deposit at my bank. It works well but I'm considering moving new tenants to only ACH.

Only by electronic bank draft via an ACH transaction initiated by me from their account.

I still have a few long-term tenants that are on other programs but for the last few years this has been a requirement for all new tenants and many existing tenants have converted as well.

Many, many threads on this topics as well.

In this day and age of technology there is no excuse for anyone not to collect rent electronically.

So many reasonable options to choose from. All one has do do is google "collecting rent online."

I collect rent through online portal through my website. The settings are set up so that tenants pay on time, after that, they can not pay until the late fee is submitted as well.

In this day and age of technology there is no excuse for anyone not to collect rent electronically.

So many reasonable options to choose from. All one has do do is google "collecting rent online."

I collect rent through online portal through my website. The settings are set up so that tenants pay on time, after that, they can not pay until the late fee is submitted as well.

Don, I’ll let you come collect rents in person, cash in hand, in my neighborhoods. Be sure to come regularly, same time every month. I give ya four months before you or the tenant gets jacked.

We setups a Buildium account and told tenants that our accounting department handles all money. Instructed “do not give cash to anyone, even to me”.