The easy and cost-effective way to manage your property portfolio
PropTech is one of the hottest terms in property investment circles today. If you’re not sure what it is, think Rightmove, Zoopla, and the likes. It is not only in marketing properties for sale and rent that propTech is transforming the UK property investment environment.
PropTech is helping UK property landlords streamline their working day, become better landlords, keep tenants for longer, and increase profits from their buy-to-let portfolio. If you’re still doing landlording the old-fashioned way, you’re already falling behind your competition.
Why you need to invest in PropTech for landlords
As a landlord, you need to wear a lot of hats. You must check and vet tenants, carry out property inspections, assess and arrange property maintenance, collect rent, present legally binding tenancy agreements, and remain on top of landlord law changes at all times. And you must keep records of everything.
That’s a lot of responsibility, a lot of space-wasting record-keeping, and a lot of time-consuming landlord obligations. This is where PropTech for landlords comes in. Use the right software, and your life as a landlord could be transformed. Your tasks become streamlined. Records are easily recovered. You get your life back!
Here are four pieces of PropTech savvy landlords are investing in today:
1. Getting the legal paperwork right
We can’t stress enough the risks of getting paperwork wrong. It’s a legal minefield out there, and the law appears to be stacked against landlords. This isn’t the case, of course, but unless you keep abreast of changing laws, rules and regulations, you could find yourself on the wrong end of legal proceedings.
One area in which DIY landlords screw up often is legal paperwork, especially tenancy agreements. Get this wrong and an unscrupulous tenant could have you over a barrel. They’ll find a loophole, stop paying rent, and it could take you months to evict them.
There are online resources to help you write watertight tenancy agreements, but unfortunately, many of the documents are out of date almost as soon as they become available. The landlord law really can change that quickly.
Here at Ezytrac, our legal team ensures that our tenancy agreements are in line with current laws at all times. To do the same, you’d have to hire a solicitor to look over your downloaded tenancy agreement and update it. Not a cheap operation.
2. Online rental applications simplify the tenant vetting process
You want to be sure that your prospective tenants are who they say they are before you sign a tenancy agreement. Online rental applications make this process far easier. All your records can be kept in one place online, but you must also adhere to strict data protection rules.
Online rental application and tenant vetting software are available but can be expensive. Those that aren’t are typically any more than glorified electronic document filing systems. The system we use allows us to manage the entire rental application and letting process seamlessly. It enables a straight-through process which captures:
- Tenant application and consent
- Credit score
- Financial issues and bankruptcies
- Employment check
- Salary verification
- Previous rental checks
- Eviction history
Collating all this information in a single location helps us to easily identify the best tenant for your buy-to-let, and those tenants who should be avoided.
Once let, we’ll also keep records of inventories, property checks, tenancy records, rental collections, etc. All of which are easily retrievable.
3. Rental collection made easy
You’ll want to make it as easy as possible for your tenants to pay their rent, and this means offering them an online facility to do so. The easier it is to pay, the more likely that rent will be paid promptly. Our payment management system integrates with our other PropTech tools. It tells us the day that your tenant is late paying. Our investment property managers can then swing into action, chasing the late payment. The system allows us to send out automatic reminders and overdue notifications, too.
The system also keeps track of multiple properties in your property portfolio, making it easy for you to analyse performance and profitability.
4. Property maintenance requests
The traditional process of dealing with property maintenance and repair requests is for a client to phone the landlord and make a complaint/request. The problem is that usually neither the tenant nor the landlord is experts in maintenance issues. The landlord either must visit the property to make an assessment, or send a tradesman to do so. Often this leads to the necessity for a second or even third visit. This is time-consuming and expensive. It’s also been shown that the more difficult it is for a tenant to report a maintenance issue, the less likely they are to do so.
Some of the more expensive landlord software packages enable tenants to report repair issues online. The Ezytrac repair reporting system is an online solution that enables tenants to report property issues within seconds, and provide photographic evidence of the repair needed. This allows your investment property manager to quickly assess need, prioritise, and provide full details to the tradesman. They can then take the right tools and other equipment to do the repair in a single visit, saving you both time and money.
The effortless way to add PropTech to your buy-to-let business
If you do a Google search, you’ll find lots of landlord software applications designed to help you manage your buy-to-let property portfolio. Or you could simply give Ezytrac a call. We’re something of a pioneer in using PropTech to make the lives of our landlords and tenants easier. You get to leverage our expertise and state-of-the-art landlord systems, from application to the rental collection, payment to you within 24 hours, and watertight tenancy agreements that protect you and your property.
Your property portfolio records are easily accessible and in real time. Profitability analysis becomes a breeze. And when your tenants can report repair issues easily, your long-term maintenance costs are likely to fall.
If you’re struggling and juggling all your landlord responsibilities, it’s time to make that call. Contact one of the Ezytrac team today on +44 01522 503 717, and discover how our investment property managers work with our landlord clients to relieve the stress and pressure of everyday property management. Instead of being a landlord short on time, be a property investor living the life.
Yours in effortless property management,
Brett Alegre-Wood