What’s the issue of letting people know about your account number?
Any nobody collects rent in bitcoin?
I think the main issue is they can deposit any amount they want at any time. So one example you mentioned above with ppl can deposit partial payment. As well as when you want them out, if they are still paying, it is harder to get them out (I don’t know first hand, but I have been told).
From what I know, it is pretty protected that they can’t take your money, but I still am paranoid enough to keep low balance in the account I share to tenants.
One more issue is that when the deposit is in, most banks don’t show you WHO made it.
That is why one tenant pays 1800 and the other 1810 etc. BofA shows the deposit slip which indicates the branch location… gives me another hint who deposited this.
Problem when both start making partial deposits.
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With QuickPay at Chase, I can send tenants money requests to their email or phone numbers. And when they pay via the sent link I get notified who sent the payment.
Still doesn’t solve the partial payment issue though. I will deal with it if it ever comes up… So far it’s more urban legend than real.
it’s not really that difficult to solve. Don’t give tenants numbers for “important” accounts. I have checking and savings accounts at most major banks, maybe 10 total. Initially I tried to set it up in a way that no 2 tenants use the same account. That works as long as there are not too many tenants. Even now, nobody deposits into accounts that are used for anything other than rent collection.
So, if I ever get into that eviction situation, I simply close the checking or savings account that this person was using. And I may have to notify 2-3 other tenants of a new account number but no worry about failing ACHs etc.
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That sounds like a pretty good scheme. Maybe when I start buying apartments it will come in handy… 
Why not the old bank check? received within first 5 days of the month. You can easily deposit it using a phone app…solves partial payment issue as you don’t deposit it and can return it.
IMO the first and foremost thing for a tenant check is the reference(s) of the past landlord(s). Make a call to the last landlord and obtain assurance. If the renter has never rented before then obtain details of the last house, reasons to sell etc.
You can’t give your house to a tenant without meeting them face to face.
With the old bank check tenants need to mail them in. It’s just not popular with the younger and more tech savvy crowd.
interesting enough, the postal services seems to discriminate. They deliver the good paying tenants’ checks within a day. For the not so good paying tenants, USPS takes a week. Or the letter gets lost.
“I mailed it last week!”
[Check arrives a few days later, and shows a date stamp after the phone call]
Fact is, if as a landlord you only offer to pay by mail, and the check does indeed get lost, a judge will side with the tenant, because you did not offer the tenant to bring the check to your personal residence/ office/ PM. The landlord assumes the risk there.
Manch and Ptiemann,
Makes sense.
I heard about Cozy yesterday from another source. Any first hand experience using it, esp wrt screening compared to mysmartmove
Unfortunately, I haven’t used Cozy personally yet so there wasn’t any side by side comparison. But from what I heard from my bro-in-law, it seems to have similar data as mysmartmove.
Any consensus on the best tenant screening service? We need a list of top 5 services, similar to hanera’s fortune list:rofl:
I know of only 2
cozy
mysmartmove
Do you prefer cozy?
I haven’t used either yet
I use mysmartmove since I only care about the tenant screening part. It’s also a little cheaper (although I just pass it to my tenant to pay), maybe because it’s part of Transunion whereas Cozy is an indy so I imagine there’s additional overhead they pay probably. If you care about the other stuff, Cozy does appear to be a more fully capable platform. Kind of comparing apples and oranges here though.
Hi everyone, this thread is 5 years old. Just checking if there are updated recommendations for online sites for tenant application, screening, credit check, etc.
I see that mysmartmove is now part of TransUnion. The fees are a bit steep: $42 for premium, $40 for Plus. What are typical application fee for rentals in San Jose (or South Bay) nowadays? Not sure if this inline with typical fees.
[Edit] I see Apartments.com and Zillow both can do screening. Any experience with them?
I use Apartments (previously cozy). It’s worked out well for managing applications, screening/credit check, rent collection.
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I recently used innago.