How do you get a tenant to renew their lease? This question is pertinent to any landlord who wants loyal, long-term tenants. Renewed leases mean guaranteed revenue and a consistency in your business.
Improving the tenant experience is critical to achieving those renewed leases. This means providing a professional experience from beginning to end, from rental applications through lease signing, rent payments, and more.
Thankfully, you don’t have to do this alone. Property management software is a smart and effective way to improve the tenant experience while simultaneously simplifying your own responsibilities.
Here are some ways to improve the renting experience for your tenants using property management software.
Online Rent Collection
Online rent collection is the single most effective feature for improving the tenant experience. Tenants are as busy as you are. Being able to pay rent online—any time they want and wherever they currently are—is a huge deal.
With online rent collection, tenants can pay with credit, debit, or direct ACH transfer. They won’t need to mail checks, go to the bank, or meet with you at all to submit payments. Plus, online rent collection allows tenants to set up automatic payments every month. This means no more late fees!
Online rent collection is an invaluable feature of property management software that improves tenants’ quality of renting immensely.
Rental Applications
Your rental application is one of the first experiences a renter has with your business. A smooth, hassle-free application process encourages tenants to renew their leases later, while an unnecessarily laborious one will deter tenants.
Property management software can help you streamline your application. Templates, autofill, and other timesaving features can reinforce your business’s reputation as efficient and professional. Software is an invaluable tool for building strong relationships with tenants from the moment they express interest in your properties.
Maintenance Management
Maintenance is another area of tenant-landlord contact that can greatly influence a renter’s perception of your business. As a landlord, you want to provide outstanding service not only to get appliances fixed and properties updated, but also to fulfill tenant needs as quickly as possible.
Fortunately, maintenance management is a key feature of most property management software solutions. On many platforms, tenants can select a category (for example, electric, water, or heat), upload pictures or videos of the problem, and submit tickets from a single page.
A dedicated page for maintenance can go a long way toward reassuring tenants that their request has been heard. Compared to an email or note in your mailbox, an established system for submitting tickets makes tenants feel comfortable and confident that the issue will be soon resolved.
Online Lease Signing
Online lease signing is another increasingly popular feature for tenants. Like online rent collection, signing a lease online saves your tenants the trip to your place. It also gives them easy access to the lease whenever they need to reference it in the future. In addition, each tenant gets their own digital copy to peruse at will.
Additionally, your tenants may appreciate the increased security of an online lease. eSignatures are fully legal and more secure than a traditional “wet” signature. While wet signatures retain no verifiable information about the signer and are easily forged, eSignatures collect data on the signer’s email and IP address.
Using property management software to upload and share leases will make your tenants feel safer and more confident in your ability to protect them and their information.
Mobile App
A final way to improve tenant experience is by offering them the option to use a property management mobile app. Many software companies offer mobile apps which include the same core functionality as their desktop version.
Tenants will appreciate being able to check their payment status, sign a lease, and submit a maintenance request all from their smartphones. A mobile app makes your software portable and convenient, making life easier for your tenants.
Achieve Tenant Satisfaction with Property Management Software
If you’re looking for ways to increase tenant satisfaction, property management software is your first step toward success. Tenant-friendly features like online rent collection, online lease signing, and maintenance management are guaranteed ways to improve your renters’ experiences. By taking advantage of software, you can meet everyone’s needs, including your own.