Landlord Tools for Organization

October 1, 2009 · Posted in Landlord Tools · Comments Off 

Along with a strong work ethic and a lot of patience, the most important trait for a landlord is organization. You have a tremendous amount of detail to keep track of and you never know when you’ll need any particular piece of paper or record. You need an organizational system that you can update quickly, get information from easily, and keep all your records secure.

Here’s a cautionary tale that will make my point clear. I knew a landlord who needed to evict a tenant. The only trouble was, he couldn’t find his copy of the tenant’s lease! He didn’t remember exactly what the lease terms were and certainly didn’t have the tenant’s signature on a document that spelled out the house rules. With no other options left, this landlord did something dangerous, unethical and even illegal – he entered the tenant’s apartment, poked around until he found the tenant’s copy of the lease, ran out, made a copy for himself, and snuck the tenant’s copy back in.

It’s easy to imagine what this landlord risked. If the tenant found out, he could have had the landlord arrested. Even if the tenant didn’t press criminal charges, a housing court judge would certainly have dismissed any eviction complaint. By using, and sticking with, a system of organizing his records, the landlord could have avoided all this.

I recommend using property management software to keep all of your records organized. At the same time, you should have a paper filing system so that original documents are available when you need them.

The most important part of my system is the landlord software. It keeps all of your documents organized automatically by tenant, building and owner; this means that you can find everything related to one tenant, for example, by simply searching on that tenant. When you go to a tenant record, you can click on tabs to see the tenant’s rent status, incidents, maintenance issues, lease document and so on. Read more

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