Do many of you do this? How well does it work? How do you handle late payments when a tenant should have deposited the late fee with the rent and did not? Does this interfere with the eviction process?Is there a better way?
ErnestPecunio, in the past I have read on this Forum other Park Owners who have successfully had their Tenants deposit rent at the Local Bank.One of the Park Owners even had the rent amount coincide with the lot number (ie…rent = $200 so lot #1 rent = $200.01 / lot #50 rent = $200.50). I find that pretty clever (if your Tenants are able to do that). Previously, one of our Lot Rents ended in cents. Half of the Tenants just rounded the Lot Rent up or down to the nearest dollar. They just could not handle paying the cents.My Husband and I have the Tenants mail the rent to our PO Box and then we deposit it in the Bank. Our Tenants have issues just getting the rent to the mailbox. In addition some of our Tenants do not have vehicles. Thus, getting to the Bank would be more than our Tenants could handle. However, if your Tenant base has vehicles and is a little savy, they could handle going to the Bank for deposits.We wish you the very best!
My tenants deposit their rent into the local Chase bank. I can see their deposit slips online. I send them 14 pre-printed deposit slips every January. As long as they use those, or remember to put their space number on the slip they do use, all is well. With this system you do lose the ability to reject any payment which is less than what the tenant owes. Fortunately, all my tenants pay by the due date or shortly after, so I just don’t sweat that. When I bought the park the manager had to knock on doors to collect the rent, and she was sure the tenants could not adapt to depositing their own rent. Wrong. Took two months and some extra explaining, and all is well. I wouldn’t go back to the old way.
Do partial payments interfere with eviction laws of most states? How are partial payments handled?
One of my tenants, a husband and wife team who ran a small business, was supposed to deposit every month. I gave them deposit tickets and stamped and addressed envelopes. But somehow they weren’t able to do the same thing every month. They’d get 2 or 3 months right then goof it up for 2 or 3 months. So, Dave is doing way better then I did at the auto deposit deal. As I recall, partial payments do goof up the eviction process, but check with local authorities to be sure.Jim Allen
We have two park and each one has a separate PO Box where rent payments are mailed. Our bank has a service where they pick up and deposit the checks daily and send me images of the deposit or other correspondence. I love this process. Not sure how many banks offer this but it could be worth looking into.
I just looked at a 50-pad park here in the Triangle that uses this system. The owners even moved deposits to another bank when they refinanced. Owners hand out pre-printed deposit slips at the start of the year which are used with varying success. The tellers know how to collect missing information (name, lot number, etc.). The owners (all local) can check the deposits online and follow up as necessary. Based on the information I reviewed, most residents know when to include the late fee. I think it works because the owners are local, accessible, and are prompt to address problems (for the residents or the park). There is no manager or greeter.When I was in banking, I foreclosed on a 60± pad park in western PA that collected rents via PO Box for out of town owners. The “manager” did not press residents on collections and the park was in dire shape, leading to my involvement. The owners were not present in any form (even remote owners can be “present”) and failed to keep up their obligations. So it can work with the right owner (attentive), the right size (probably <75 pads), and the right prep work at the property level.