Between marketing vacant rentals, screening applicants, creating lease agreements, managing maintenance requests, collecting rent, and keeping track of accounting, landlords always have a lot of balls in the air.

Ensuring these balls don’t come crashing down is essential for all property managers, which is why we’re here to help you keep the act moving along smoothly.

To do so, we’ve laid out 11 actionable tips to help make managing rental properties simple.

Typical Landlord Responsibilities

Landlords and property managers wear many hats, and their tasks can vary wildly from day to day. Here are a few of the most essential landlord responsibilities:

Advertising Rentals

As a landlord, it’s vital to market available properties to the public and drum up interest among potential renters. To do so, you’ll need to produce high-quality photos and detailed descriptions of your properties and understand where to advertise them.

Screening Potential Tenants

Filling your properties with trustworthy tenants who honor their leases is paramount to your landlording success. To improve your chances of landing a dream tenant, you must thoroughly screen applicants by accessing their credit reports, criminal history, rental references, and more.

Creating Lease Agreements

Once you’ve selected an applicant to live at your property, you’ll need to make the agreement official by entering into a rental contract with them. Ensuring you create a detailed state-specific lease agreement is critical, as it will be legally binding for both parties.

Collecting Rent

Collecting rent payments is one of a landlord’s most important responsibilities. Doing so can often be a chore, though, which is why you must know how to accept digital payments, assess late fees, and encourage tenants to make automatic payments.

Maintaining & Repairing Properties

Landlords must always maintain habitable standards within rental properties for their tenants. It’s a key component of successfully managing rental properties. Failure to do so could result in legal action from the tenant, which is why property managers must coordinate repairs and conduct maintenance in a timely fashion.

Enforcing the Lease

Lease agreements are legally binding, and landlords must understand how to enforce them. As a property manager, it’s your job to understand your state’s landlord-tenant laws, document relevant tenant interactions, and swiftly address lease violations.

Accounting & Bookkeeping

Staying on top of accounting and keeping books in order can be a balancing act for property managers. Doing so means keeping business and personal finances separate, using intuitive real estate accounting software, and reconciling bank statements regularly.

11 Tips for Managing Rental Properties

Being an effective landlord, handling multiple rental properties, and streamlining your property management operation doesn’t always come naturally.

Here are a few of our top tips to help elevate your real estate management game:

1. Set Competitive Rent Prices

When someone searches for a new place to live, they’ll weigh the price of your rental against that of your competitor’s nearby properties. And much of the time, a property’s monthly rent cost is a crucial tiebreaker they’ll consider when choosing.

If your rent prices are too high, you risk losing tenants to competitors and having your rentals linger on the open market.

If your rent prices are too low, you risk attracting undesirable tenants and collecting less rent than your property can demand.

To set a competitive rent price, research similar properties in your neighborhood, monitor market trends closely, consider offering rent concessions, and use a customized rent estimate tool designed to dial in your pricing.

2. Market Your Properties Across Multiple Online Platforms

You could have the world’s most attractive portfolio of rentals, but they’ll sit vacant if you don’t get the word out about them. And vacancies, as we all know, halt revenue and kill profits.

Thankfully, there are abundant online platforms where you can advertise your rental properties to a wide audience for free. Needless to say, you’re selling yourself short if you don’t market your properties on as many of these mediums as possible.

So, once you’ve taken high-quality photos of your rental, written an engaging property description, and assembled a rock-solid property listing, it’s time to cast a wide net.

Post your listing across dozens of renter sites — think Zillow, Apartments.com, Redfin, Homes.com, etc. — and watch the leads pour in.

3. Create Non-Discriminatory Rental Applications

The federal Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, and familial status. So, even landlords with the best intentions should take extra care to create an even playing field when selecting tenants for their properties.

One area where landlords commonly breach the Fair Housing Act, whether intentionally or not, is within the rental applications they issue to prospective tenants. Leading questions in these applications that attempt to reveal protected details about a tenant are illegal.

To avoid perceived discriminatory practices, landlords should:

• Refrain from asking questions that inquire about a tenant’s protected characteristics
• Ask for objective information like employment history, income, and rental references
• Issue all prospective renters the same rental application

4. Thoroughly Screen Potential Tenants

While there’s no way to predict exactly what type of tenant awaits behind their application, enough due diligence should help paint a reasonable picture of who you’re dealing with.

When sorting through a stack of applications to decipher who is the best fit for your property, painstakingly vet everyone before selecting a tenant. To do so:

• Meet applicants face-to-face to get to know who you might be renting to.

• Confirm the applicant’s identity to ensure they are who they say they are.

• Verify employment and income to ensure that they’ll be able to afford rent.

• Run a credit and background check to dive into an applicant’s past.

• Contact landlord references for insight into a tenant’s rental history.

• Check public records for eviction history that indicates broken leases or missed rent.

Landlords who take their time to carefully screen tenants stand a much better chance of landing reputable renters than property managers who roll the dice on the unknown.

5. Include Mandatory Disclosures in Your Lease Agreements

Once you’ve agreed to rent to an applicant, you’ll need to enter into a lease agreement with them that includes all of your state’s mandatory disclosures. Failing to inform tenants of these disclosures is illegal and could get you into hot water down the line.

For example, did you know that New York landlords must inform tenants if their unit has a sprinkler system and must also provide the exact date of its last maintenance and inspection? Leaving out seemingly minor details like these could have serious repercussions for landlords.

The good news is that creating airtight state-specific rental contracts is easy. Simply use an automated lease agreement generator to ensure your rental contract includes all up-to-date landlord disclosures.

6. Retain Desirable Tenants to Minimize Turnover

As we mentioned earlier, extended vacancies eat into a landlord’s bottom line and must be avoided at all costs. One surefire way to minimize empty rental units is to encourage desirable tenants to renew their lease agreements and continue renting from you, their trusted landlord.

Retaining great tenants is a crucial piece of the landlord puzzle, so get creative and employ a variety of different strategies to convince reputable renters to re-up on their contracts. Here are a few of our best techniques to retain desirable tenants:

• Communicate openly and honestly with your tenants to build trust.
• Conduct maintenance and repairs in a timely fashion, with proper advance notice.
• Make life easy for tenants by allowing them to pay rent online, request maintenance digitally, and build their credit via rent reporting.
• Encourage tenants to renew their leases with rent concessions, appliance upgrades, and other enticing incentives.

7. Understand Your State’s Landlord-Tenant Laws

Property managers should always possess a deep understanding of their state’s landlord-tenant laws. By studying relevant legislation, landlords stand a better chance of avoiding legal issues, protecting their property, and handling potential squatter situations.

Here are a few relevant questions to ask yourself:

• Am I following the correct procedures for handling security deposits?
• Do I understand eviction procedures in my state?
• Am I respecting my tenants’ right to privacy when performing repairs?
• Do I understand my obligation to provide a safe and habitable property?
• Am I aware of any recent changes in my state’s landlord-tenant laws?

To educate yourself on the numerous landlord-tenant laws where you live, visit this page, click on your state’s icon, and begin reading. Fifteen minutes of your time now could save you a headache or two down the road.

8. Accept Digital Rent payments

If you’re the type of landlord who requires tenants to pay rent by dropping a check in the mail, I’ve got some news: You could improve the process and help ensure on-time payments.

These days, landlords who allow tenants to pay rent online are far likelier to receive on-time payments.

Why?

Because paying rent on a phone or computer is much easier than:

• Writing a check,
• Addressing an envelope,
• Digging through drawers to find a stamp,
• Dropping the envelope into the mail, and
• Waiting a few days for the landlord to receive it.

To get up to speed, read our article on the best ways to collect rent, consider your options, and choose a method that makes sense for your property management needs.

9. Coordinate Timely Repairs and Maintenance

It’s your duty as a landlord to ensure that all of your rental units are inhabitable for all of your tenants at all times. Property managers who can’t live up to these standards risk breaching their lease agreement and facing legal action from tenants.

Needless to say, landlords who are too busy, unorganized, or overwhelmed to conduct essential repairs and maintenance are taking a huge gamble. Furthermore, properties that don’t meet habitable standards force tenants to endure substandard living conditions.

To stay on top of your repair requests and maintenance needs, consider utilizing property management software to gather quotes, coordinate repairs, and organize work orders on your behalf. Doing so could free up time, alleviate stress, and keep tenants satisfied.

10. Stay on Top of Accounting and Keep Your Books Dialed In

Real estate investment is a numbers game through and through. Landlords who lose sight of their numbers will have a tough time determining their cash flow, ROI, depreciation, vacancy rates, and other crucial property management calculations.

Landlords who pay close attention to their numbers, however, will enjoy accurate reporting, increased profitability, reduced audit risk, and numerous other financial benefits. All property managers should take accounting and bookkeeping seriously from day one.

To streamline your books and ensure your financials are airtight, use real estate accounting software to do the heavy lifting for you. Doing so will help you make better-informed investment decisions, set customizable rules, and put your rental numbers on autopilot.

11. Automate as Many Responsibilities as Possible

Property managers have a slew of responsibilities.

They must advertise rentals, track and follow leads, show properties, create rental applications, screen tenants, generate lease agreements, coordinate maintenance and repairs, understand landlord-tenant laws, collect rent, manage accounting and bookkeeping…

… the list goes on.

Overwhelmed landlords with too much on their plate are bound to make mistakes that damage their business, so we recommend streamlining as many responsibilities as possible.

All-in-one property management software can do just that.

Check out TurboTenant’s list of helpful features to see how to put your entire property management operation on autopilot today.

Options for Managing Rental Properties

When it comes to managing rental properties, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Different portfolios call for different approaches, so owners must get creative to keep their operations running smoothly. Here are a few different options to consider:

Hire a Property Management Company

Property owners often hire property management companies to take over all essential responsibilities. These companies handle everything from advertising, tenant screening, lead tracking, property showings, lease signings, and more.

Pros of Property Management Companies

• Drastically reduced workload for property owners
• Professional, hands-on approach to property management
• Creates a buffer between owner and tenant

Cons of Property Management Companies

• Most expensive option on this list
• Slower portfolio growth due to reduced profits
• Loss of control for hands-on property owners

DIY Approach

The do-it-yourself approach lands on the far opposite end of the spectrum of hiring a property management company. DIY landlords take on every single responsibility themselves, no matter how large their workload becomes.

Though stressful at times, this approach is popular among those with tight budgets and small portfolios.

Pros of a DIY approach

• On paper, the most affordable option on this list
• Complete control of property management operation
• Fosters direct relationships with tenants

Cons of a DIY approach

• Most time-consuming option on this list
• Can be stressful and demanding when responsibilities pile up
• Lack of expertise in all facets could lead to reduced profits

Utilize Property Management Software

Many rental owners outsource nearly all essential duties to property management software. While managing rental properties is never truly 100% passive, enlisting property management software can be the most automated, hands-off approach on this list.

Pros of Property Management Software

• Most streamlined option of the bunch
• Ability to customize features to fit your portfolio
• Centralizes all essential tasks in one place
• Minimizes risk of human error

Cons of Property Management Software

• Software may present a learning curve for traditional landlords
• Potential for bugs and glitches

Take on a Hybrid Approach

Many landlords prefer a hybrid approach, which allows them to choose which tasks to handle in person and which to delegate to software. This method allows property managers to strike a balance between hands-on control and streamlined task automation.

Pros of a Hybrid Approach

• Allows property owners to fine-tune their level of control
• Helps property owners scale portfolios by automating complicated tasks
• Landlords can add and subtract features as they see fit
• Centralizes many essential tasks in one place

Cons of a Hybrid Approach

• Transitioning from a professional property management company can be complicated
• Striking a balance can take some trial and error

The Bottom Line

The fine art of juggling and managing rental properties doesn’t happen accidentally.

Whether creating rental agreements, screening tenants, generating lease agreements, collecting rent, or balancing the books, we landlords must use all the tools at our disposal to keep the act moving along seamlessly.

One such tool is property management software.

Sign up for a free TurboTenant account to see how we can help synchronize all of your rental responsibilities today.