It’s 2025. Why aren’t you using software to manage your rentals?
If you own rental properties, you’re either self-managing or using a property manager to manage your tenants. While both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, self-managing is the most lucrative way to manage your portfolio.
The average property manager charges between 8% and 10% of your monthly rent – which sometimes can be 100% of your rental profits. On top of that, property managers are juggling hundreds if not thousands of units. A property manager’s ability to carefully find quality tenants, affordable maintenance, and upkeep your investment is no match for your own.
You might be wondering: Without a property manager how can I juggle the day-to-day of managing tenants.
That’s where software comes in. Our top choice is TurboTenant.
Why Software?
Property management software is built to provide self-managing landlords with the necessary tools, automation, and tips to efficiently and professionally manage rentals. Most software solutions, like TurboTenant, offer a completely free plan. Paid subscriptions usually fall below just $200/year.
Affordability is a huge benefit to choosing software to manage your rentals, but the true capability of landlord software solutions is unmatched. Take TurboTenant for example:
- Rental advertising to sites like Apartments.com, Redfin, Craiglists, and dozens others
- Free screening reports including background, credit, eviction, and criminal history
- Customizable, state-specific lease agreements with e-signature included
- Secure rent collection with customizable late fees, rent reminders, and autopay
- Maintenance tracking and instant tenant messaging
- Rental specific bookkeeping and tax preparation
All of the above tools and more can be used to easily automate your rental management process and keep thousands in your pocket. When you can manage your rental better with software, there’s no need to waste hard earned money on a middleman.
Plus, with everything online and at your fingertips, you save so much time should you need to reference any key documents, pull a rent receipt, or run a portfolio analysis. Software like TurboTenant stores your information for your entire portfolio so you can rest assured knowing you’re organized and prepared for anything, including tax season or unexpected evictions.
Over 750,000 landlords have chosen TurboTenant for rental management because it’s professional, easy, and built by landlords, for landlords.
Why Not Old School Methods?
If you’re not using a property manager or software, it’s likely you have some processes in place to manage tenants. We all hate change, but let’s dive into why these processes might be hurting your business efficiency rather than helping it.
Cash, Check, or Peer-to-Peer Payment Apps
Peer to peer payment apps are an emerging method of rent collection due to their increasing popularity among renter populations. Apps like Cashapp, Venmo, and Zelle might seem like an easy way to collect rent, but they come with risks. Daily and monthly payment limits, fees, and inability to recover funds are among the top concerns with peer to peer payment apps. Plus, there’s no way to turn on autopay, customize late fees, automate rent reminders, or send rent receipts.
Cash and checks feel like a simple way to collect rent because they don’t involve fees or technical setup. However, cash and check rent payments carry a whole slew of potential problems for landlords. Misplacing payments, no documentation to verify payment, time consuming processes to collect the payment, and the risk of tenants insisting they “sent the funds by mail” are just a few of the downsides.
Software saves you time and automates your rent collection process so you can be paid on-time, every month.
Manual Rental Advertising
According to data collected by TurboTenant, over 50% of tenants find their next rental online. No need for newspaper advertisements or phone calls when everything is at your fingertips thanks to the internet. However, it’s just not efficient to spend hours creating and publishing rental listings on every single rental advertising platform. Spoiler alert – there’s hundreds that renters turn to to find their next home.
In addition, some sites like Zillow charge you for each rental listing you publish. Not only is advertising on each individual site time consuming, but it can be expensive.
Landlord software like TurboTenant streamlines this process for you by allowing you to create one listing that is syndicated to dozens of sites instantly. And it’s free. All you have to do is enter information about your property, upload some photos, and watch as your leads pour in.
Attorney Drafted or Repurposed Leases
Every landlord needs a solid state-specific lease agreement to protect you, your property, and your tenants. Because this is a legal document that needs to abide by local regulations, you’ll need to make sure the agreement is attorney approved.
The problem is attorney drafted leases are expensive – sometimes costing up to $400 an hour.
So if an attorney is out of the question, what about repurposing a friend’s lease or an old lease you found on the internet? Definitely avoid this at all costs. Chances are these leases are out of date and will put you and your investment at risk.
Instead, use a reputable landlord software to build a state-specific lease that you can send off to tenants for e-signature. Landlord software solutions have in-house teams that are able to keep state-specific lease agreements up to date and compliant.
DIY Tenant Screening
Vetting tenants is the only way to ensure you have a reliable renter who will pay rent on-time each month. What does your current process look like?
While some landlords result in DIY questionnaires, in-person interviews, or social media research, it’s important to note the only way you can truly find out if a tenant is a good fit for your property is with a comprehensive screening report.
Screening reports should always include background, criminal, credit, and eviction reports. There’s a slew of tenant screening reports you can find online and some of them are available free of charge to landlords.
What Landlords are Saying
We’ve dove into several reasons why software is the best fit for independent rental owners. But with so many landlords turning to software to save time and money managing rentals, let’s see what they’re saying.
Here’s why landlords love property management software.
Ready to make the switch to easier rental management? Check out this article to choose the best software for your portfolio.
