Owner Resources
Guaranteed Rent, Worry-Free Property Management for Landlords in Virginia —
That’s RentSimple.
AUTOMATED PASSIVE INCOME
Once you give us the keys, you will never look back! Our simple belief is that owning rental property shouldn’t be complicated, and if you hire someone to manage it for you, it should come with a GUARANTEE! We know that the goal of being a landlord is generating passive income that lasts—income that is automatic. We are the team you need to turn that goal into reality so that you can “Live More, Manage Less!”
Owner Portal
Check your property status, view reports, reach us any time through your Owner’s Portal.
EXTRAORDINARY GUARANTEES
Most landlord rental management companies provide the standard “feel-good” guarantees with very little at stake to back it up. At RentSimple, we believe that you shouldn’t leave your rental property to chance. That’s why we offer the following guarantees which are unmatched in our industry:
RentSimple Rent Guarantee: If the tenant doesn’t pay rent, we will credit up to one year's management Fees!
RentSimple Eviction Free Guarantee: If we ever need to evict a tenant, we will place a new one for free!
RentSimple Good Pet Promise: 100% of pet damage covered— equal to one year's management fees!
RentSimple Happiness Pledge: Renting should be fun—if you are not happy, cancel your agreement at any time with 30-days notice.
BEST-IN-CLASS TECHNOLOGY
We have searched endlessly and have assembled the best integration partners to assure that our platform and services are seamless and that our offerings to you set the standard for modern property management.
ONLINE PORTALS
Access to your account 24/7—by any device, anytime, anywhere. View statements, payments, and schedule transfers; view work orders, and track their status. Receive instant notifications on updates, and so much more through our convenient online portals. Plus, you have secure access to your documents and payment history—all in one place.
24/7 PROFESSIONAL MAINTENANCE
Our team ensures that no maintenance issues are missed, and we filter for responsibility to ensure crucial issues are addressed immediately. We are available via phone or text for emergencies, and residents have access to a live representative to walk them through any issues they are having with a property. Our intuitive Resident Portal also allows them to submit requests for maintenance that have not yet become urgent— complete with pictures. This is just one way RentSimple protects your investment.
GAAP COMPLIANT ACCOUNTING & FINANCIAL REPORTING
We implement bank-grade levels of security for all of our accounts— and ensure that they are audited each month by an Independent Certified Public Accountant. We also issue detailed monthly statements that account for every transaction that occurs on your property. Rent is paid promptly through our portal each month, and owners receive monthly distributions via ACH bank transfer directly to their account.
OWNER FAQ’S
We select the tenant for the Owner, without the owner's involvement, as it is in our owner's best interest. There are strict Fair Housing laws in Virginia that many owners may violate without knowing it and part of our job is to protect you from running aground of them. For instance, we often hear, “I don’t want any kids, because they can be hard on the property”. This is a big Fair Housing violation and carries stiff monetary penalties. All it takes is one Fair Housing complaint and you could be spending thousands of dollars having to defend yourself in court, and you WILL lose. While your intentions are good, most of our clients are not up to date on Fair Housing laws. Letting someone pick a tenant, who does not understand the laws, puts a client at risk. The best way to reduce the risk of a Fair Housing violation is to have clear, non-discriminatory rental criteria, that is written, and transparent.
To help keep our owners out of trouble, we developed objective, non-discriminatory, written, rental criteria that is posted on our application. For more information on Virginia Fair Housing laws, please visit: http://www.dpor.virginia.gov/FairHousing/
Additionally, since we guarantee that rent is paid each month with each tenant we put in the home, we want to be sure we are the only one picking the tenant.
That’s right, we are so committed to what we do that we guarantee rent will be paid each month or we will work for free for up to one year! This shows our clients that we are thier trusted partner and truly have their best interests at heart.
Our distributions go out each month on the 15th of each month via ACH, directly into your bank account. Learn more about our pricingby visiting our pricing page.
Yes, if we ever need to evict a tenant, we will find a replacement tenant at no additional cost.
Not usually. Prior to listing the home, Owners can handle the repairs needed to make the property rent ready, if they choose. Once the property is leased, we require that we use only our preferred vendors. This ensures leasing deadlines are met, as we work with these vendors regularly and know what to expect. Plus we’ve been doing this a while, so we have built up great contractor relationships to ensure your home is taken of.
For this very reason it is important to hire an experienced property manager to manage your rental property. For most of our properties, damage done to the home is a very rare occurrence. The most common issue we address at the end of the lease is doing a professional level cleaning and performing touch up cleaning. RentSimple requires that all carpets are professionally cleaned each after each lease by one of our approved contractors. If there is any damage done to the property we will repair and deduct from the Security Deposit held in escrow.
All of our leases are for 12 months. The only exception is when the end of the lease would fall into one of the slow months (Nov, Dec, Aug), in which case we would extend the lease out to be rented into a better time of the year.
We hold the security deposit in a separate escrow account. Per the Virginia Residential Landlord Tenant Act this money is the property of the tenant and can only be used for past due rent or damages to the property. RentSimple acts as the fiduciary for this trust account and distributes the money, less and repairs or missed rent.
Our services are directly customized to meet the needs of the Single-Family Home Investor and Accidental Landlord, therefore, we do not currently accept multifamily or commercial clients.
- Take Professional Photos – This is something we include with every management package for free! We believe it is worth the investment in our clients to take this step on their behalf. Additionally, under our Professional and Premier Plans we included an HD Video Walkthrough. This gives the prospective tenant the opportunity to take a realistic virtual tour of the home remotely and can rent the property sight unseen.
- Zumper and Zillow Network – We are a paid syndication partner of the Zumper and paid Zillow Premier Partner. These 2 platforms account for nearly all of the good rental leads in our area.
- Self Showing Technology – Our secure platform lets prospective tenants tour the property on their schedule. This has proven to triple our number showings and qualified applicants. This is becoming a growing trend in the industry Nationally, and we are one of the first to implement this technology locally.
Pets are pretty much allowed everywhere now including some restaurants and commercial airlines! Because of the way the world is changing in this way, we decided to be a proactive & pet friendly management company. Because allowing pets in your rental home is not without risk, we further decided that we would guarantee any damage done by a pet 100%! This is included on EVERY plan we offer and opens up the tenant selections pool for our Owners by 70%, which means more rental income, and better tenants! The only exception is we do not allow any dogs that are classified as a dangerous breed or dogs over 50 lbs. that are not in a Single-Family Home w/ at least a .25 acre lot.
It begins with our Core Philosophy and ultimately this really starts with YOU, the Owner. Our simple core value is “Great Places + Great People = Lasting Returns.” If either of these 2 inputs are missing, the equation is off. We make sure our values are always aligned with our clients and for that reason we have to turn down a lot of potential client relationships that we feel have the mindset of “It’s Just a Rental”. Our Clients all have an invested a lot of financial capital into their home and it is important to us that we preserve this. This begins by having our Trusted 3rd Party Inspection Team out to conduct an initial assessment of the property. They will identify any specific updates/repairs that need to be made to the property and help us determine how to best market the property. This initial step does so much in saving money in repairs in the long run, getting the right tenant, and getting it rented quickly. Also, we believe its important to do the right thing by our community and put a great product out in the market. A Great Resident will ultimately be making this a Great HOME.
For tenant occupied homes, tenants submit a maintenance request via their online tenant portal. Our portal allows tenants to submit a work order request by providing a description of the issue as well as upload photos of the issue. Tenants can also track the status of their request online and communicate directly with the selected contractor.
When a request comes in, we assess it and see if it needs immediate dispatch or if we can possibly troubleshoot the issue with the tenant over the phone or via text chat. There are many common repair requests that our team are trained how to troubleshoot. If the issue needs to be fixed, we send a work order to one of our vendors. We use all licensed and insured 3rd party contractors and do not markup the repair cost by using in house contractors.
Our contractors then submit an invoice to our company for approval. The before and after photos of the repair get attached to your owner statement each month, so you can see what type of repair was made. You also get a copy of the work order we submitted to the vendor, explaining what we want them to fix, and a copy of the vendors invoice. We make sure the cost of the repair is fair and that the work was completed satisfactorily.
The Management Agreement allows us to approve any repair under $350, without having to bother our clients. Larger repairs over $350 require owner approval, so we will contact the client in those cases. Exceptions to the $350 approval rule include emergency maintenance and habitability issues. If we have to act quickly to protect persons or property we will do so, to protect our Owners’ best interest.
Once a repair is completed and invoiced, we email the tenant a survey asking them to confirm the repair was completed satisfactorily, was the vendor was professional, and to rate their overall experience with the vendor and our team.
It depends. Being a Landlord means having to perform repairs from time to time but part of our initial philosophy is to catch and fix issues prior to renting out the home. We also require that appliances (HVAC excluded.) to be every 7-10 years for this very reason. We want to be proactive not only because it provides a better product, but also because it reduces expenses in the long run. Older homes should plan on about $1,500 to spend on initial repairs and updates to the general appearance of the home. After that, it can be common not to have to perform a repair for quite some time. Newer homes will require far less repairs than older homes and our average repair cost is typically around $200. Owners should plan on keeping a personal savings account for replacing carpet, paint, and kitchen appliances every 7 years. Larger Appliances have a typical lifespan of 10-15 depending on the quality of manufacturer.
RentSimple also holds $350 in escrow to be used to pay our contractors as repairs happen. This money is your money and remains in escrow under the end of the Management Agreement.
During a one-year lease, the property will be inspected 3 times --- Once during move in, once for the annual Smoke Detector Inspection, and once at the end of the lease. Most of the tenants we place are long-term tenant and will renew the lease annually therefore, we will inspect the property one more each time each year on a recurring basis. It is very important to maintain a consistent inspection schedule to maintain the property and catch any maintenance issues but inspecting the property any more than this will frustrate the tenant and erodes the trust that is necessary in a great Landlord-Tenant relationship.
We get this question a lot and we want long-term term tenants too, just not long-term leases. A long-term lease is just another empty promise. Essentially, what you are doing by signing a long-term lease is giving up leverage to the tenant. You are committed to them and it is hard to evict a tenant for anything other than extended non-payment of rent, and sometimes, as we saw during COVID-19, the right to evict a tenant is suspended on a Federal level. Additionally, even though a long-term lease is signed it is only enforceable by going to court. This costs money and in most cases the Judge will only award 60 days past rent, at which point you still need to collect from the tenant, which is extremely difficult and costly.
When a tenant is on 12-month renewal it ensures they abide by the lease because they need to earn the right to renew. Most of our tenants end up staying an average of 3 years but in some cases, it is just better to walk away form a tenant after the first lease term.
All of our Management Agreements are for one year and renew annually to coincide with each lease term. However, with our Happiness Guarantee, if you aren’t completely happy with our service, and we cant make it right, you can cancel with 30 day’s notice. Full Disclosure: this never happens! 🙂
Click on any of the “Get Started” or “Schedule a Call” links on our website and we can schedule a strategy session with our Founder and CEO, Will Austin. We will also provide a complimentary Rental Analysis and will walk you through our Onboarding process to see if we are a good partnership to manage your rental property!