How To Successfully Self-Manage Your Property
Thanks for joining us at session number three in ‘The path to Managing Your Own Rental Property'.
Thanks for joining for our mini-series 'The Path to Managing Your Own Rental Property'.
In this post we're going to talk all about the tools you can use to successfully self-manage your own property.
Session 3
A Quick Recap.
In the past two sessions, we've covered why there is an opportunity and why we think it's important for you to manage your own property. Then we covered the steps involved in managing your own property and now we're going to go into another level of detail and talk about how you can do it and what tools are available to you.
In addition to that there's also some tools that we’ll link below which includes a switching from your agent kit, if you're considering moving from your real estate agent and there's also an eBook which has quite a fair amount of detail about this whole process end-to-end.
You'll also see that there's a pricing report which links back to core logic and RP data and you can actually get some really great data on pricing and the value of a property.
Download a Rental Estimate Report
We talked about the ‘why’ and the fact that there's a change in the market in consumer behaviour largely driven by technology but there’s also an erosion of trust which has led to the opportunity that to save money and take control of your property.
We looked at who owns property in Australia and the demographic makeup of those people. We talked about the property management life cycle and what the actual steps are that you need to do.
Now we’re going to take you through some of the tools that we think that you can use in this process which leads the way to the RentBetter platform. We’re going to take you on a tour of our experience so that you can better understand how to successfully self-manage your investment property with our product.
We previously went over the tenancy cycles and those cycles are where you're going to spend a majority of your time and effort so we want to make sure it's as stress-free as possible and you get the biggest return on your investment.
We broke down those tenancy cycles into stages which include advertising your property, selecting a tenant, setting up the tenancy, overseeing that tenancy and then completing it or renewing it.
Sometimes you go through the whole cycle if you just purchased a property and you haven't rented it out before. If that’s the case you’ll probably need to advertise it, receive inquiries and applications, set up the lease agreement and condition report and collect bond after you've selected your tenant.
You’ll then oversee that tendency where you collect rent and maybe help out with some minor maintenance issues and then you either complete the tenancy if they're moving out or you renew it (if you both had a good experience) but sometimes you don't need to go through the whole cycle.
Now that you know what you need to do you're probably feeling good about it and pretty excited but sometimes knowing what you need to do is not enough. Sometimes you need a little bit of support and help along the way while still being the owner who's empowered and knows what's going on with their property.
Thinking on the topic of running, let's say you want to run a half marathon but sometimes if you’re nervous or put it off and don't know exactly where to start. What if you had an accountability partner or a coach they could help break it down into smaller steps while still empowering you to understand that you can do it?
Let’s get into it - The RentBetter Platform.
When it comes to RentBetter we don't want to take away all of your control. We want to empower you to self-manage your investment property the way that you want to. So that you know what's going on with it and we also want you to get the highest return on your investment that you can.
Perhaps you don't even have a property yet but you're looking into buying and you're trying to decide if you want to go with an agent or self-manage. Perhaps you do have an agent but it's not the best experience and you want to find a way to save more money. Perhaps you’re already self-managing and maybe it's going well but you're looking for some areas to improve in.
Do you have a lot of spreadsheets open? Do you not always keep track of your finances the way you want to before tax time and it gets a little stressful? Whatever it is we've talked to our users to identify and understand those main pain points and we've done this in order to empower you to take control over your property, to save money and make you feel comfortable along the way.
It's scary when you don't know what you don't know and with RentBetter we help you understand what you need to do and when you need to do it.
RentBetter Home - My Properties
On the My Properties page you can see all of the properties you have and what you have to do for them. Wait how did I get here? That’s easy. You'll be asked to sign up on our landing page where you just enter in a few details and you'll click through the steps to create a free account.
You would have just put in the basic information about your property so that you can create that property card.
Your property card represents all the features that you have for that property and what you have to do with them so you'll have little notifications if you have something to look at or something to check in on.
On the left hand side is your navigation which show the high level features. You're always able to see this navigation on every page so you can click my properties to get back to this page if you need to, you're able to get to your billing profile and your account and your documents anything that you save that's related to your property.
We recommend that you add any documents that you had previously to using this platform so that you can organise everything in one place.
If you have multiple properties you're able to add a new property and you'll be asked to enter the details of your other properties. You can add as many properties as you like.
When looking at your property card you're able to see the image of your property which you can add when creating the ad, your address the details of your property and then the plan that you're on if you’ve paid and selected one.
We've broken up the property card into two main sections find a tenant and manage my property.
Find a Tenant has all the features that relate to advertising your property and selecting your tenant.
Manage my Property is everything that you do during that tenancy.
When you're ready to advertise your property you can click ‘create ad’ and it'll open up the ad feature. On all of our features we have previews that help you understand what to do if you're confused about how to use it.
Creating an Ad
In the ad you add your property address, details about all the features in your property. You’ll need to put in a title and description add a high quality property photos.If you have inspection times in mind you can choose the inspection details of when you would like people to come and visit your property and add your information.
After you’ve saved your ad and chosen for it to go live you're always welcome to edit it. If you click ‘edit ad’ you can go into your ad and see all the information that’s been added.
Perhaps you want to change the inspection details or add an additional date. The ad feature is made to work with realestate.com.au, domain.com.au and rent.com.au. So, when you click to go live or update your ad once it's already liv, it'll automatically be added to these sites.
Once your ad is live you'll start to receive enquiries and applications. We've separated these features out because enquiries usually is the first step where people start reaching out from those property sites to let you know that they're interested in your property.
Receiving Enquiries
If you click on ‘Enquiries’ you'll be taken to a table where you're able to see all of your enquiries as well as the details if they came through by email or by phone.
You’ll be able to look at the message see where they came from and even listen to a recording if they left a message. Then, you can choose who to contact in order to have them look at your property.
Managing Applications
Once you have completed some inspections you’ll probably have an understanding of which tenants are going to apply to your property. You'll start to receive applications from those tenants done via the online system 2Apply.
The application link will appear in your property ad and tenants can fill out their application from one of the property sites. We also enable you to copy the application link from the applications feature to send out as you wish.
You'll be notified when you receive those applications and depending on the type of property you have you may also notice that some people apply in groups. You're able to look at their information click to view their whole application and you can then choose if you'd like to run a tenancy check on them.
Running Tenant Checks
If you choose to run a tendency check then you can do that from the applications dashboard. RentBetter uses the National Tenancy Database to check the background of prospective tenants. The National Tenancy Database (or NTD) is the most comprehensive database for conducting background checks on prospective tenants.
Creating a Lease
Once you've selected which tenant you would like to offer your property to and informed them, you can choose to create a lease. The Lease agreement will be pre-filled with the details of your property and the state of Australia you are in. All you’ll need to do is enter the tenants details and then press to send it to them to digitally sign.
We'll go on to look at the tenant side of things soon and what their experience looks like when they're signing the lease and setting up their tenancy. When it comes to setting up your tenancy we recommend that you use the digital Lease Agreement because you're able to put in your payment details, the bond details and when you'd like your tenant to get started.
You're also able to do a quick setup where you just send an invitation to your tenant and get them set up on the site if you already have a Lease Agreement in place. We recommend that you do the Bond and the Condition Report when setting up your tenancy and all of these exist in the lease agreement.
In our Lease Agreement feature you'll notice that we have three steps to creating a Lease Agreement - ‘create’, ‘view’ and ‘send’.
The ‘create’ page is the form that you fill out with all of your lease agreement details which includes your details as the landlord, the tenants details, the details for term of the lease and rental payment, method details and bond details if you're collecting it. It also includes any additional details for your property.
When you choose and to add your rental payment details and send the lease agreement your tenant will be asked to add their rental payment method on their side of the experience so that you can start collecting rent. What's great is that we automatically collect rent for you through direct debit as per the rental schedule you set. You can also collect your first payment early if you wish to do so before the lease start date.
If you choose an early first payment date, then your tenant will be notified that they should pay this early on their side.
Within the Lease Agreement you can enter your bond amount as well as the due date and what we have done is, depending on the state that you live in we have put in the recommendations on how to lodge it.
Some states recommend that you collect the bond as the landlord and lodge it yourself while other states recommend that the tenant lodges a bond to the bond authority without paying you first so we have those recommendations in the lease agreement for you and you can choose if you'd like to collect the bond through RentBetter or not.
If you don't collect through rent better you're still able to send those bond details through to your tenant through the platform so they know that the bond amount and what they need to do with it. If you'd like to collect it through RentBetter then you can send the details to the tenant and also collect the payment through RentBetter and then lodge it yourself.
Once you’ve filled out and sent the agreement to your tenant you’re able to view the government pdf version of the Lease Agreement and see the status which would be waiting for the tenant to review and sign.
You can also see the tenant onboarding status so here you’ll see that your invitation has been sent to the tenant and now these are all the steps that they have to complete in order to set up their tenancy.
So within Lease Agreement you’ve:
- Input the tenant details
- Entered the rental payment details and method
- Entered the early first payment (if required)
- Entered the bond details (if required)
- Sent the agreement to your tenant
Once the tenant goes through the steps of setting these up on their end you'll see check marks of what they have and haven't received or done.
Collecting Bond
The Bond feature is focussed purely on collecting the rental bond. There are two methods of collecting bond as we mentioned before so you can do this through the ‘Lease Agreement’ or, if you already had filled out the agreement but didn’t select any bond collection details but would like to collect the bond through RentBetter, then you're able to use the bond feature.
What's great is that it shows you how you can use this feature in a few steps, the recommendation for your state and if you had already chosen to collect it through the lease agreement the details will already be here.
You can also add any attachments to the bond request for both of you to see or you can also add your own bond documents related to lodging or creating an account that you would like to have here for your records.
Conduct a Condition Report
The last step of setting up your tenancy is creating the Condition Report.
Both you and your tenant should should fill out the condition report to correctly state how the property looks when the tenant moves in.
There are two ways you can creating a digital Condition Report. You can either do this yourself, or you can book a professional through RentBetter to handle it for you, which is a great option if you’re not in the location of your property or if you’re stuck for time.
Completing the Condition Report yourself:
We will have already have the bedrooms and bathrooms as per the details of your property so you can choose add other rooms that you have within your property. All you need to do is click ‘confirm’ and then your custom condition report is created.
There are three steps to creating a Condition Report which are ‘create’, ‘view’ and ‘send’. We've created this feature so that it works on your smartphone or tablet in case you're going around the property without any sort of wi-fi on your laptop.
As you go through the rooms you're able to state if they're damaged, clean, working or if they don't apply. You're also able to add comments and upload photos that you took of each room. What's also great is that we're allow you to fill this out as customary as you need to so that as a landlord you don't feel stuck into a form that doesn't work for you.
So you're able to fill out and click on as many things as you need to but you don't have to fill out each section so that you can accurately inspect your property and send the condition report you stand by to your tenant.
Once you go through all the sections you can then sign to say that you inspected your property. Once you sign it will create a PDF for you to review to make sure you stand by everything that you filled out in the report.
You can then choose to send it to your tenant. You’re able to access the report again by clicking on it and you can also see the details related to the report when you filled it out. Once your tenant fills it out and signs it then it will say ‘completed’.
Booking a Professional to Complete the Report:
We mentioned that you can also book someone to complete the Condition Report for you which is great if you don’t have time or are not in the location of your property. There are two ways to access this within the platform, through the Condition Report feature or if you click on ‘Marketplace’ on the left nav side bar.
Booking a professional to complete your Condition Report is simple. Your details and the tenants details will be pre-populated in the form. You’ll be asked who to contact on the day of the inspection, this can be yourself, your tenant or someone else.
You can add any notes or specific instructions for the professional in the notes section. You’ll then be asked to confirm the details are correct for your property and tick all the rooms that apply as well as add any customised rooms.
The next step is on the payment page to confirm and pay for the booking. Condition Reports are currently priced at $159 per report which covers everything for you so there’s nothing you need to do other than sign the report at the end.
Your booking will be sent off to the team and the professional will be in touch with you to confirm the report. Reports are confirmed within 24 hours and the report will be completed at the time you have requested.
The Tenant Experience
We’re now going to take you through the tenant experience and what things look like for them when onboarding a tenant on RentBetter.
When you’re setting up your tenancy through RentBetter you’ll fill out the Lease Agreement, fill out the Bond details, your payment details, when you would like the lease to start and also complete your Condition Report.
Creating a Tenant Account
Your tenant will receive an invitation inviting them to the site to set up their tenancy and fill out anything that you have requested them to.
When they receive that email they can click their unique link to create their account and then they'll be welcomed saying that they've successfully set up their account.
(Insert Tenant Dashboard image)
Once they’ve done this they will see their checklist that they need to complete to set up their tenancy.
On the tenants side they have a ‘My Dashboard’ page which looks very similar to the ‘My Properties’ page on the landlords side but because they just have the one property that they're living in they just have one property card.
The Tenant Checklist
The tenant will have have a side navigation where they can get back to their account and they also have a notifications area on the right side of their dashboard letting them know everything that they need to do.
What we have done in order for your tenant to not get confused on what they need to do next is we've created the property card into a checklist.
This includes everything that they need to do, so if you did not send them bond information then the bond payment details wouldn't be there, or if you didn't ask them to pay their first payment early then this wouldn't be here either. So the checklist accurately reflects what you need them to do to set up their tenancy.
When a tenant creates their account they get their first check mark completed and then they can move on to signing their lease agreement. As they're going through the steps of their checklist they actually have a progress tracker on the right side of the page that lets them know where they are in their checklist to make sure that they don't get lost along the way.
Whats great about this process is that we usually see most tenants actually set up their rental payments, sign their Lease Agreement and pay their bond usually within in one day which makes things really fast compared to the traditional way of doing things.
Signing the Lease Agreement
When it comes to the Lease Agreement your tenant can choose to agree or disagree with the document. If they disagree they can write comments and send them back to you for you to fix or update the lease agreement. If they can agree and they then just need to sign the agreement digitally.
Once they sign the Lease Agreement you'll receive a notification letting them letting you know that it's your time to sign. We have made it that the landlord signs the agreement at the end in case you'd like to update anything so the agreement isn’t finalised until your signature is on it.
After each step we’ll let them know that they’ve completed that step and it's time to move on to the next one. They're welcome to proceed to the next step in that moment or review what they just did or go to their ‘My Dashboard’ and come back later to complete all the rest of the steps.
Adding their Rental Payment Method
Now it's time to add the rental payment method. When your tenant is asked to add their rental payment method they can choose to either use a credit or debit card or a bank account.
On this page we show all the lease details at the top to make sure they agree with what they’re adding their payment method for and then they can choose to fill this out.
Once your tenant adds the rental payment method they can click back and view the page and they can always update it if they need to later on.
What this also signifies is that they're ready to start paying rent so once they add their rental payment method you'll also receive a notification letting you know that the rental payment schedule has been set up.
Early First Payment
If you've chosen to collect your first payment early then your tenant will be taken to the early first payment page. What it does is it takes that first period payment so if it's weekly then it's one week, if you are collecting fortnightly it's two weeks, or monthly one month.
They can click to proceed to the payment, view the details, acknowledge that they're ready to pay and click to pay the first payment.
This information will show up in the rental payments page on both your side and the tenant side so that you know it’s been paid.
Paying the Bond
Once this is completed the tenant should then pay the bond. If you've chosen to collect the bond through the RentBetter platform they can choose to proceed to payment just like they did with the early first payment and they're also welcome to add any attachments or receipts.
They can also add their own bond documents like you do on your side.
Completing the Condition Report
The progress tracker should now show all the steps are completed and theres one left, which means that it’s time for the tenant to complete their side of the Condition Report.
When your tenant clicks on the Conditional Report step they’ll be taken to the Condition Report form that looks very similar to what you see on your side except they can actually see what you filled out. They then just need to go through the property and agree or disagree with each section and add their own comments and upload their own photos and those will be saved for both of you to see.
They can sign once they've completed their side of the Condition Report. Once they've signed you will be notified and the checklist will show was complete in their dashboard. Your tenant will then be shown a congratulations modal and then they'll be able to take a tour of the site showing them how they can interact with these features once their tenancy has been set up.
They'll receive notifications throughout their tenancy whenever it's time for them to pay something or to do anything you ask them to do. They're able to view everything that they've completed in the past and they can see their rental payment schedule and upcoming payments.
The Rental Payment Schedule, Maintenance Requests, Bills and more.
The first rental payment will have been marked as paid if they’d done that and they can see when all of their rental payments are due next. They'll be automatically pulled out through the direct debit system and everybody will be notified when a payment has been paid.
They're able to put in any maintenance requests, update their payment method and then also view any bill requests that you've put through.
So, that's a quick overview of the tenant side of the experience on RentBetter! We'll jump into how to oversee or manage your tenancy next
Overseeing and Managing Your Tenancy
Once your tenancy has been set up it's time to oversee it. The RentBetter platform has a number of tools to help you do this from Rental Payments, Expenses, Tenant Bills, Maintenance and Repairs, Reporting. You can even hire a professional to conduct inspections - read more below.
Collect and View Rental Payments
You can check out the rental payments feature where you're able to see your rental payment schedule and when your tenant has paid.
You're able to download a PDF or CSV version in case you need to bring this to your accountant.
Track Expenses
Throughout your tenancy you'll have different expenses that you want to log. You might want to bill your tenant and then you'll also have reports that you want to use at the end of the year to look at your financial information for your property.
Whenever you have an expense you're able to click to add your expense choose the category fill out the information and save the expense.
That expense will also appear in your report which we’ll go through in a moment.
Create Tenant Bills
If you would like to create a bill from an expense you're able to click ‘bill tenant’ sometimes people like to do this if the tenant has agreed to pay for part of that expense.
If you click to bill your tenant from that expense then you're able to create a tenant bill and choose the amount that you would like to bill the tenant for. So let's say they agreed to pay half then you can bill them for the exact amount and choose when you would like to send it to the tenant.
They’ll then be notified that it's time for them to pay. Once you send them the bill you're able to look back on it through the tenant bills feature and see when it has been paid or edit it.
You can also re-send the request if you'd like to and you'll notice that the in the expense feature it looks very similar to the bills feature so that you can have a consistent experience.
Organise Maintenance and Repairs
You're also able to log any maintenance issues if they come up and choose what to do with them.
Both you and your tenant can upload maintenance requests to RentBetter and track the progress. You’ll then be able to hire a local tradesperson to complete the job if you wish to do so.
Here you can enter the details of the task, then attach receipts or other relevant documents for your records to refer back to.
Generate Reports
Whenever you add income or expenses or collect rent or a bill is paid you're able to view that information in the report. All the rental payments will automatically appear in the income category and all of your expenses will appear in the expense category.
You're then able to save this or download a PDF or CSV to bring to your accountant at the end of the financial year.
The RentBetter Marketplace
The RentBetter Marketplace is where you can access a range of services through our trusted partners. This is where you can book an inspection, find a tradie, book property photography or even landlord insurance.
Right now the services we have are:
- Property Photography
- Condition Reports and Routine Inspections
- Property Inspections and Viewings
- Tenant Checks through the NTD
- Hire a Tradie
- Emergency Assistance
It’s all in the one place and easily accessible to you via the left nav side bar. We’re slowly adding more and more services to this page to ensure every part of your journey as a landlord is covered.
If you'd like a tour inside the RentBetter platform to see how things work, check out the below video:
Thanks for Joining Us!
We hope this gave you some insight into our product and helped you understand not only the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ but also the ‘how’ which is using RentBetter to help you successfully self-manage your investment property.
To view the previous sessions again click below.
Session 1 - Why Self-Management is Beneficial
Session 2 - The 5 Steps for Self-Managing Your Property
You can sign up for a free RentBetter account to check out all the features available and our team is here to help guide you along the way. Reach out to us right here through the chat feature on the website or email us at info@rentbetter.com.au to ask any questions or find out more.
