How To Collect Rent on Time, Every Time

Figuring out how to collect rent on time from your tenants every month has always been a frustrating challenge for any landlord. Whether you’re a new landlord or a seasoned veteran, all landlords struggle to figure this out at least once. The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t made this any easier either!

Luckily, there are many different ways you can get your tenant to pay their rent on time. Some methods are easier than others. Some work with some tenants and some don’t work at all with others. It is important, however, as a landlord that you find your niche and figure out what works best for you. Afterall, without steady cash flow, you can’t pay your mortgage, bills and properly maintain your rental properties.

The traditional way to collect tenant rent

Collecting rent the traditional way now more than ever has gotten complicated. Tenants either usually hand in a check to a property manager, mail it, or the landlord physically picks it up. Then, the landlord or whoever is in charge of this process needs to deposit the checks or money orders into a bank account.

As you can see, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, that this just won’t cut it. It’s way too time consuming and dangerous. Not only do you put yourself at risk, but others are at risk too.

We live in an age where connecting people – and their money – is becoming easier by the day. With tons of apps, platforms and services readily available in the palm of our hands, it’s time to look for an easier – digital – way to do things vs. the traditional.

Accept rent digitally

The easiest way you can start getting your tenants to pay their rent on time is to make it easier for them to pay it. Making yourself flexible in as many different platforms as (conveniently) possible, there will be little to no excuse for your tenants to not pay on time.

Some popular platforms include

• Cozy
• Yapstone
• ClickPay
• PayLease
• RadPad

Some non formal digital platforms you can also consider are PayPal, Venmo, etc. These are all great solutions since your tenant can either use a credit card or debit card to pay.

The benefits of rent-specific platforms is that you have options to set reminders, automatic payments and automatically charge late rent fees. Using at least one of these platforms and a non traditional method is the best combo.

Mix it up a little

Have a tenant who is having trouble covering their rent? You can offer payment plans! You can have them pay the total month’s rent either a week at a time or every two weeks. This guarantees you get your rent paid on time and it may help your tenant organize their finances a little better.

Have you considered incentives?

Providing incentives for tenants who pay rent on time can work wonders. Rewarding them for being responsible is something everyone loves. Here are some ideas that could work:

1. Offer special appliance upgrades to tenants who have paid a full year’s rent on time.
2. You can give them a turkey for thanksgiving just as a way of saying “thanks for paying rent on time”!
3. Offer a $50 dollar gift card to the first 3 tenants who pay their rent every month.
4. You can provide 25 – 50% off a tenant’s 13th month of rent if they’ve paid the entire year without being late.
5. Provide 20$ off total rent by paying their rent through an app..and on time of course!
6. If they can prove they’ve set up automatic recurring payments on an app, provide a 50$ gift card to either amazon or a nice restaurant.

The possibilities are endless! It’s as simple as this: If your tenants are doing what you want them to do, encourage them to keep on doing it!

Getting your tenant to pay rent on time every month is not rocket science. We just have to do a little outside of the box thinking to get it to work. Have you tried something that worked for you? Let us know about it on twitter!