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To convey particularly important information, you can add a pop-up note to a Lease. This will appear any time any user accesses that particular Lease’s details page.
To add a note, just navigate to the Lease’s details page and click Add Note.
In the window that comes up, type in whatever it is you need other users to see. To remove a note, click Delete Note.
Users (including you!) who view this Lease will have to click Dismiss to make the message go away.
During most of April, the NowRenting team focused on bug fixes and under-the-hood upgrades. It’s important to us that our platform be as reliable as possible, even as we add users and features. We know our users depend on us—that’s why we take your bug reports very seriously, and try to respond right away. And that’s why we put in the time and the elbow grease to keep our platform running at peak stability.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t have some cool new features to share!
Preview Your Invoice
Since our shift to a per-user pricing model back in January, billing isn’t quite as simple as it once was. Particularly taking into account our fantastic New Signup Promotion (70% off!).
So we now provide an easy Preview Invoice link, which you can find under Settings > Billing > Payment Details. Just click the link to see your next invoice. Invoices are calculated according to your current number of users, so if you add or remove users from your account, expect it to change.
Put a Pop-Up Note on a Lease
Have you ever needed to guarantee that a note would be read by any coworker who looked into a tenant’s file? In a paper-and-filing-cabinet office, you could use a sticky note for that. And you can do it in NowRenting, too!
Just navigate to the Lease Details page and click the Add Note link. Whatever you enter in the window that appears will be shown to every user who looks at that Lease.
This is particularly useful in a busy office, where many different people might help the same tenant.
Just another way NowRenting is constantly working to facilitate and improve your office’s communication!
For more about this feature, see here.
| 5/10/2019 | Security and Encryption |
| 5/3/2019 | Invoice Preview and Pop-Up Notes |
| 4/5/2019 | No Fee Listings and New Mobile App Styles |
| 3/22/2019 | New Syndication Partners |
| 3/15/2019 | New Signup Promotion: 70% Off |
Simplify tenant management with our cloud-based software.
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Before you can sync your expenses to NowRenting, you’ll need to connect to your bank account via Plaid, and create a new Property. Read about connecting to Plaid here and about creating a Property here.
Navigate to the Expenses page by clicking Leases on the top navigation bar and then the See Details link under the Property Expenses section.
The Needs Attention pill shows a table of expenses that NowRenting has imported from your bank account, but have not yet been added to NowRenting’s financial data.
The expenses NowRenting imports from your bank account when you first connect cover a certain time period. However, you can import older expenses. Just click the Imported from [date] link. Pick a start date and click Import Expenses, and NowRenting will import all expenses going back to that date.
An expense cannot by synced until you choose which Lease or Property it’s associated with, as well as a category. Select a Lease or Property from the Lease / Property drop-down menu.
Then select a category from the Category drop-down. You can also create a new category by typing into the input field and clicking the Create Category option. (NowRenting will also suggest new categories you could add, based on the expense’s description. These are labeled Suggestion and are optional.)
See the Manage Categories section below for more information about how to manage your categories.
Click the checkboxes to the left to select which expenses you want to sync with NowRenting, then click Import Selected. If the button is grayed out, you may need to select a Lease / Property or a category for some expense.
You can also choose not to sync an expense with NowRenting. To do that, select it and click the Skip Selected button.
If an expense needs to be split between multiple leases, properties or categories, you can click the Split… button to the right.
Each row in the Split Import window will be entered in NowRenting’s system as a separate expense. Use the Add Another Row link to divide the expense into as many parts as you need. Click the Import button to finalize the expense.
The Imported pill shows expenses that have been synced into NowRenting’s system. The Skipped pill shows those that have not.
You can manually add an expense. Just click the Add Expense button. A new row will appear. Fill in the date, Lease or Property, category, amount and description, then click Save. The expense will be synced into NowRenting’s system just as if it had come from your bank.
To see only the expenses belonging to a particular Lease or Property, use the filter. Click Filter Expenses and then select the Lease or Property you want to see.
To manage your expense categories in NowRenting, select Property Expense from the main settings drop-down menu, then click the Categories tab.
You can Add, Edit or Delete categories by clicking the appropriate button.
It is also possible to import expense categories from QuickBooks. QuickBooks calls these Expense Accounts. Read about how to connect NowRenting to your QuickBooks Desktop account here, and QuickBooks Online here. To import categories from a QuickBooks account, click the arrow to the right of the Add Category button and select Import from QuickBooks.
If you have not connected your QuickBooks account, you’ll be prompted to do so in the window that comes up.
If your QuickBooks account uses nested categories, the hierarchy will be shown with a colon, like: “parent:child”.
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A Property is a way for you to keep track of expenses and earnings for a real estate property that may involve multiple Leases, such as a duplex or apartment building. A Property is different from a Lease or a Listing: A Lease is about the relationship between you and a tenant. A Listing is about advertising a vacancy to potential tenants. A Property, however, is about expenses and earnings for a group of Leases.
First, hover your mouse over the Leases link in the top navigation bar, then click on Add Property.
In the window that comes up, enter the address of the Property. Then use the drop-down menu to select the Leases that belong to this Property. When you’re done, click Add Property. (If you don’t have any Leases, learn how to create them here.)
You can view and manage your Properties by clicking the Leases link in the top navigation bar, then clicking the See Property Performance link.
The Property Performance Summary section shows a graphical summary of the financial performance of all the Properties you have set up. A table of individual Properties can be found under the Properties heading. If you need to add or remove a Lease from a Property, click the Edit link. The window that comes up will also allow you to delete the Property.
Once you have created a Property, you can configure NowRenting to sync expense data from your bank account with it. Read about how to connect with Plaid here, then how to sync your expenses here.
This week’s video update:
Happy Thanksgiving!
We just wanted to stop and take a moment, going into this holiday season, to say how thankful we really are.
We’re thankful first to all of our users, for being part of this vibrant community and giving us the chance to help you with your business.
We truly are honored.
And finally, to the whole community of rental professionals worldwide: we’re always inspired by your passion.
All of us here at NowRenting wish you a very happy Thanksgiving, and we look forward to speaking with you after the holidays.
| 5/10/2019 | Security and Encryption |
| 5/3/2019 | Invoice Preview and Pop-Up Notes |
| 4/5/2019 | No Fee Listings and New Mobile App Styles |
| 3/22/2019 | New Syndication Partners |
| 3/15/2019 | New Signup Promotion: 70% Off |
Simplify tenant management with our cloud-based software.
No Hassle · No Obligation · No SurprisesWhat can we help you with today?
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From the Leases page, find the Lease you want to end and click its Details link. Then click the End this Lease link at the top of the page.
If there are outstanding charges (such as the unpaid August and September rent shown below) the security deposit will go towards paying them. The ending balance is calculated, and it will show how much of the security deposit should be returned to the tenant, or whether the tenant still has outstanding charges.
To schedule the Lease to end on a particular date, select the End on a specific date option, then select a date from the calendar.
If necessary, you can add any last charges here, such as fees for damages or cleaning, and they will be subtracted from the security deposit.
The amount of the security deposit returned, as well as any charges, will be listed on the Lease’s Balance History page,
This week’s feature additions cover a range of new functionality; from increasing Business users’ organizational capacity to widening the reach of our Listings, there’s sure to be something new for everyone!
Facebook Integration
Our Facebook integration feature is finally approved! This new syndication option adds the considerable social reach of Facebook to NowRenting’s already broad array of platforms.
As well as being able to automatically post your listings to NowRenting’s Facebook page, you can also post to them your personal Facebook page, so that your own network of friends and acquaintances will be able to view, like and share your listings. Comments on these posts will be smoothly funneled into the NowRenting messaging system.
For details on how to use this feature, see here.
Group Showings
Our showing scheduler just got more powerful! In addition to flexibly managing appointments with individual Leads, you can now include multiple Leads in a single showing invitation. Select them on the Leads page, click the Showings button and enter the details of your showing’s time and place. It’s as easy as that!
For more details on group showings, see here; instructions for scheduling individual showings can be found here.
Lead Assignment Roster
NowRenting’s new Lead Assignment Roster, available now to Business users, builds increased power and functionality onto our user management and Lead assignment features. No more clicking each new Lead to assign them to a team member; NowRenting can take care of it automatically.
Once you have your team set up with user accounts in NowRenting, incoming Leads can be automatically assigned to them in the order you specify. Just add them to the roster, click and drag to set the order, and choose how many Leads per round each should get. After that, Lead assignment will take care of itself–just another way NowRenting works to cut the busywork out of your day.
Read more about this feature here.
Other Improvements
In addition to the major feature additions mentioned above, this week we’ve added some smaller—but no less useful—capabilities as well:
On the Leads page, you can now delete multiple Leads at once. Great for managing the response to your most popular Listings!
The Listing details page now includes convenient social share buttons, so you can post your Listings to social networks with ease.
It is now possible to add a one-time charge to a Lease. If a charge doesn’t come under the heading of late fee, security deposit, or any other category we already account for, you can resolve it here without going outside of NowRenting’s system.
| 5/10/2019 | Security and Encryption |
| 5/3/2019 | Invoice Preview and Pop-Up Notes |
| 4/5/2019 | No Fee Listings and New Mobile App Styles |
| 3/22/2019 | New Syndication Partners |
| 3/15/2019 | New Signup Promotion: 70% Off |
Simplify tenant management with our cloud-based software.
No Hassle · No Obligation · No SurprisesWhat can we help you with today?
Search the Knowledge Base:
There are a lot of misunderstandings out there regarding rentals and in general about real estate. These need to be cleared out to make sure that the everyday people who are living or looking for rentals can fulfill required documents without any hassle. The question we’ll answer today is that who exactly needs to fill out the rentals application.
The common misconception is that the person who pays the rent of the real estate property is the one who should fill out the rental application. However, that is not the case. Anyone who lives at the property needs to fill out the form as well. All above 18 people living at the property as well as someone who co-signs the lease of the real estate property but doesn’t live there needs to fill out the form. Similarly, anyone who moves in the property at a later point must also fill out this document. Minors are out of the scenario. This is because you cannot hold minors responsible for any sort of agreement in any case.
This ideal situation may lead to questions for different circumstances. Let’s tackle them one by one.
Firstly, there is the scenario of multiple people living in the real estate property but they share the same income. Here, both the adults must fill the rental application but the background details, like the credit history, need only be given of the person who earns and pays the rent. This applies to couples, parents with an adult child, and all other situations involving one person who earns and another adult.
In another scenario, you might be giving out your property to a family where the parents permanently live in the property, but the kids are mostly away at college. Although the children aren’t permanently residing here, they still need to fill out the application if they are above 18 and come to stay for two weeks or more. In another case, the parents could be co-signing a property for their college kids to stay in. If this is your situation, you will get the rental application for your real estate property filled out by the parents who are co-signing the lease, by the student, and any other adult who would be living in the same property. This way if the parents don’t pay you your rent in time, you can demand the children who live there for the payment.
The most confusing situation is when there are room-mates involved. The same rules apply here; you get the rental application filled out by every adult room-mate. The issue arises when either one room-mate changes place before the end of the agreement, or one of the room-mates is replaced with a new person without informing the landlord. To eradicate this issue, you should get the application signed by all current room-mates and inform the tenants that in case a new person comes in, they must also fill the form.
Keep all these scenarios in mind to make sure you never get in real estate trouble regarding rentals again!
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There are many advantages to houses for rent by owner, but there can be a lot of issues and serious misunderstandings when an agreement is not in writing. It is not all about paying somebody else’s mortgage or throwing money away. You do have a responsibility to ensure that the lease agreement is in place and that you make regular payments.
There are lease clauses that are legal, but turn out to be very unfair. Courts have the power to change any lease provisions if the tenant can show it is unjust to one party. If you are planning on renting, it is advisable to seek legal advice to help you understand all the terms and clauses of the agreement. There are important factors in a rental agreement:
There can be a lot of issues and serious misunderstandings when an agreement with houses for rent by owner is not in writing. A rental can be given to a tenant on a month to the month basis. The tenant can insist on a six-month term, and the landlord agrees. If these agreements are not in writing it can be very difficult to prove in court that the term was six months. Oral agreements are often enforceable, but agreements such as where the landlord accepts to make repairs to the property, should be in writing.
You have signed a written agreement to rent, and you have paid the deposit. What if you lost your job and cannot afford to rent the home? The landlords have the right to retain the deposit. The landlord may also be entitled to some rent or other damages for having to advertise the apartment.
What if you have signed the agreement, and you are not able to move in on the consented upon date as the home is not ready? In this case, you can give written notice to the landlord to terminate the rental agreement. You are entitled to the return of all prepaid rent and deposits.
If you do not wish to terminate the agreement, you may demand that the landlord make the rental unit available immediately. You can bring this action to court, and you can ask for damages as well as for possession in the lawsuit. Damages can include alternative housing, storage for your possessions and costs for searching for another rental.
When you consider houses for rent by owner, keep in mind that there can be strange people out there. Some landlords can insist on cash. Make sure you keep all the receipts. A landlord can promise to make repairs, but never turns up for making those repairs or the landlord can be unavailable when needed for an emergency such as a leaking water pipe.
You can run into difficult landlords. It is advisable that you put the dispute you have with the landlord in writing and take pictures of what is broken. Where the landlord promised to fix it by a certain date and time, document this conversation in writing. Send a copy of this letter by certified mail with a follow-up letter describing your conversation you had with the landlord. You can file a complaint at the Fair Housing Act if your landlord is not keeping up the promises.
An adjunct professor in personal finance at the University of California at Berkeley, found that “100 percent of the time it was better to rent, rather to own.” He added that he knew he is taking a constraint point of view to conventional wisdom.
Greg McBride, a senior analyst, said that “Home ownership is a store of wealth. The promise of home ownership is that over the long haul, it can result into a rebate of many or perhaps all of your costs, unlike rent, which does not give you any rebate.” Mr. McBride said there is no sense in buying a home if it is going to deplete your emergency or retirement savings.
A new academic article in Real Estate Economics used data from 1979 to 2009 and demonstrated that renting was the superior investment for most of the past 30 years. The article found that unless someone possesses the cash necessary to buy a residence, he or she will be renting one way or another.
The article states: “The choice is between renting the property directly or rent the capital necessary to buy the property. The amount of capital to be rented is a function of house prices, while the bulk of a mortgage payment is in interest, which is the rental payment on this capital.
After 2 years, the typical 30-year amortizing mortgage balance has been reduced by less than 3%. This means that a household that took out a $300,000 mortgage with a 5% interest rate to buy a home has only reduced its mortgage balance by $8,600 after two years despite spending nearly $39,000 in total over this period.”
There are many advantages to houses for rent by owner. It remains your responsibility to ensure that the lease agreement is in place in order to avoid issues and serious misunderstandings and that you make regular payments in a timely manner.
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The most frustrating aspects of real estate market can be broken down into three parts: Listings, Leases, and Leads. Or, as we at NowRenting like to call them, the three L’s of real estate! Here’s how we can help you out:
Our leases component is a major assistance tool for landlords and realtors. We can help you generate leases from a variety of templates. Our lease component turns applicants into tenants in no time due to our electronic signature feature. According to Rentalutions.com, electronic leases are signed almost 2x quicker than the traditional process. Our ACH feature feature also allows you to collect rent electronically for FREE (due to NowRenting’s partnership with Stripe!) making it convenient for tenants to pay their rent. Landlords can smoothly export all rent transactions to Quickbooks without missing a beat.
NowRenting eliminates the frustration of gaining leads. Tell us about your dream tenant and we will provide you with unlimited leads that match your criteria! Gone are the days of sifting through junk leads. Our listings feature syndicates with multiple other realtor sites, making your property visible to everyone searching for rentals. Simply filter through your leads in the leads dashboard and easily communicate directly in the application! Once you’ve gotten your pre-qualified leads you can easily turn them into applicants via our application portal!! Zillow states that finding leads is the hardest part of rental real estate. With our leads feature, finding leads is a breeze!
Anyone who has had to list properties knows that listing properties is time consuming and monotonous. Our listings feature allows you to list an unlimited number of properties with ease and convenience into our database. This component lets you connect listings to your profile and market your business. According to Forbes, realtors can increase sales by 31% by spending less time listing properties, and more time gaining business.
What more could rental professional need? NowRenting has all of the answers to your rental frustrations.