I am interested in having my rent collected electronically, so I don’t have to rely on the mail. I have found a company that will manage the rent collection.
Does anyone have any advice on this? How much should I pay for the service?
At Washington Mutual I open a free business checking account for each house. I get a deposit card for each house. That deposit card looks just like a debit card but does not have the Visa logo. They use any Washington Mutual ATM (they are everywhere) even on vacation and deposit their rent payments. This deposit card allows them to make deposits but they can’t withdraw funds, they can’t view balances, they can’t transfer funds. All they can do is deposit funds. I have then deposit funds directly into their respective account. After the funds clear, I transfer them to the main business account.
Thanks. I’ll look into it.
Bluemoon06, that’s an excellent idea!!!
We have accounts with most major banks (incl. WAMU) to make it easier for our tenants to deposit or transfer rents online. Didn’t know about the deposit card. No more excuse, “The bank was already closed when I got there”!
Ryan, some of our tenants pay via PayPal–free to receive payments with a personal account.
I’d given my tenants deposit slips and it worked well. Clearnow or another service seems easier and more automated, but having deposits directly hit the account was pretty nice.
Clear Now is way to go… It takes out of the teants checking account, notifies the teanat via email 4 days prior to due date, deposits direct to your account. The only con is it cost $14.95 for the first house and $2 for every house after. There is a pro also…Clear Now started reporting to the credit beaures for on time payments. This will help build the credit for Rent 2 Own options
Wow, this is the first I’ve heard of ClearNow reporting to the CBs. That’s really cool, for 2 reasons. One like you said it helps your T/Bs improve their credit and two if they don’t pay on time they get stung like paying a late mortgage payment so they have more incentive to pay. Obviously scumbags with trashed credit won’t be put off by the negative credit items but it may help keep the middleclass folks paying on time.