You have been a home owner for a while now, and you have quite the portfolio. You have worked hard and your properties are filled with satisfied tenants. You find yourself at the beginning of the month and it’s time to collect rent. How are you collecting? Traveling from city to city? Hiring a management company to collect? Perhaps you use an automated system. There are plenty of ways to collect rent but choosing which is efficient for you, can save you hours of time, you could be spending growing your investments.

Lets focus on a few…

There is face-to-face collection, that works well with a smaller quantity of properties or a group of properties that have the convenience of being localized. If you are living in the area you should have easy access to your units throughout the month. This method allows you to have a personable relationship with your tenants which can be a huge asset if ever legal disputes were to arise. On the other hand, you could use a Dropbox system. Tenants can drop their rent in a lock box on the premise and you can pick it up on a regular basis without having to coordinate with occupants. If this is still a chore and your units are not localized maybe these next two would suit you.

The last two rent collection methods are Hiring a property manager, or utilizing electronic rent collection. When you hire a property manager you can take a back seat to more than rent collection. A property manager comes with the added convenience of being able to screen tenants, manage your investments and allowing you added time to grow your investments.

If home owning is your full time job and you want to maintain your properties independently but collecting rent is just another pesky task maybe electronic collections are for you. At M.R Property, we like to use electronic collection as it allows us to hold tenants accountable with direct deposit, through Cozy, and it makes keeping up with large portfolios a piece of cake.

With cozy it does more than just collect rent. It has other features such as rent analysis and comparisons, screens tenants, has organizational tools to help track payments and communication systems that allow easy access between tenants, managers or home owners. There are different tools out there such as Zora or Buildium which both come with a wide array of features. Having options can always allows you to find the perfect product or service for your personal needs.

Useful: Direct deposit authorization form for using the electronic collections method.

If you haven’t already, give some of these a shot and see if it makes a difference.

A larger list of collection methods