How To Ensure You’ll Get Payments On Time From Student Renters

Renting to students can be awesome because if you have a property close to a campus, you know you’ll always be able to score renters. And, if the renters liked you, they’ll tell their friends and it will be a perfect network for getting more renters to occupy your space.

A common worry for landlords renting to students, however, is dealing with late rent. Students have a lot to pay for, and you don’t want rent to be something that they save for last. So what should you do to ensure that you’ll be getting your money on time?

Require a co-signer:

When the students sign the lease, it would be beneficial to make sure they have at least one co-signer that is signing along with them.

This will give you peace of mind that they have a source for getting the money if they themselves don’t have jobs, and, if worse comes to worse, there will be someone you can hold accountable for the late rent check.

You could even require that each student who wishes to rent your place has to provide their own co-signer along with it, so you’ll have multiple back-up options.

Give advice:

Many students will be first time renters, since they previously lived at home or in the dorms. They might be a bit overwhelmed with everything at first, so when they are signing the lease, make sure to sit down with them and give them some advice.

Advise them to send the check a week early to account for any delays there might be at the post office and to avoid it not being shipped on the weekend. Also tell them to make sure they have the money in their accounts before they write the check, so it won’t bounce and create a messy situation.

Adjust the payment situation:

Instead of accepting a separate check from each tenant, tell them to put it all onto one check, and have them tell you which of them will be their accountant of sorts that will be sending the checks to you.

Having one check is a great way for tenants to make sure they are all paying amongst themselves, because the accountant person can’t send it until they receive the money from the others. It would be horrible for them to find out there is a late fee because one of their housemates forgot to pay and they weren’t even aware of it.

My roommate is our accountant, so she will ask for our part of rent a few days before she is going to send it out, and the rest of us write her a check, which she then puts in her account and sends one check to our landlord.

This method is advised if you hold all the students accountable for missing the deadline. If they are all on their own, which some landlords do, then disregard this method and just have them pay by themselves.

Send friendly reminders:

If you would like, you could send them friendly reminder emails or texts to let them know that their rent is due soon. With the stress of school it’s easy to forget what day it is, so reminders could be useful, especially if you aren’t sending them a monthly bill in the mail.

My housemates and I don’t receive a bill in the mail for our rent since it’s the same every month, so we have to remember when to send it out.

Friendly reminders are a great way to touch base with your residents and make sure they remember it’s their favorite time of the month again. If you send the water/gas bill separately, maybe shoot them an email when they should be expecting it in the mail so they won’t miss the deadline for that either.

Will there be a warning?:

So, after all this, what will you do if your tenant does send you the rent check late? You can charge a late fee, but only if that is a written agreement in their lease that you went over with them. If it’s not in the lease, you can’t charge it as this article highlights, so make sure to decide beforehand if this is something you wish to implement.

If you are going to implement late fees, possibly give them a “heads-up” call two days after the rent is due to warn them that you haven’t received the rent and that late fees will be following.

Things happen, life happens, and if you are willing to give them a second chance, that is entirely up to you. As a student writing this, I would at least say to get the full story, to go talk to them to see what’s going on before pulling out the eviction papers.

It might only be one faulty roommate that is messing everything up for the others, and helping the other housemates out would be a great way for you to get involved and not have to get a whole new set of renters.

Source: Uloop.com