I am about to go live with Rent Manager and Zego. They gave me the option of accepting partial payments or requiring full payments of the full balance. Not sure which way to go with this. Curious what others are doing. Thanks in advance.
I’ve been using RM with Paylease (now Zego) for 5 or so years. I’ve always allowed partial payments and never had an issue with it. Some of my tenants pay with two credit cards on months where their money is tight. I’ll take a split payment over a non payment any day. The tenant pays the transaction fee, so it doesn’t matter to me how they pay.
I would say the biggest down fall is if you’ve already started the eviction process, then they go and pay $10. In my state a partial payment starts the 30 day notice over. Work around is easy, just select the option “don’t accept payments” in Rent Manager.
Moving to Rent Manager and online payments was a game changer for me and allowed me to grow my portfolio to a size that I couldn’t have managed while still collecting money orders on site.
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I accept them. Some residents like to pay a bit ahead mid-month when a pay check comes in and I’m happy to let them. Haven’t done an eviction in Maine recently but check and make sure about the partial payments once you’ve posted an eviction notice… if I remember correctly my attorney’s advice was to not accept anything but full payment, so make sure you know where that button is.
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Thanks for the feedback. That all makes sense. I didn’t realize there was a button that I could use to toggle that feature on and off. Very good to know.
Accepting of partial payments depends on your state landlord tenant regulations. If evicting is a slow or difficult process you should never accept partial payments. Partial paments allowes tenants a oportunity to draw out the eviction process and for that reason works to the disadvantage of landlords. If you accept partial payments be prepared to act swiftly when you start getting excuses.
I do not have the luxury of accepting partial payments or allowing late payments for any reason without taking action.
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Hey Greg, that makes sense. Fortunately, I don’t think we have the same issue in Maine. Plus all my tenants are tenants at will so I can evict for any reason anytime with the proper notice. Good consideration…thanks for bringing up that point.
After you issue a eviction and assuming they refuse to leave what is the legal process and how long would it generally take to remove them from your property. If they own the home after eviction what is the process for removing or selling the home and collecting back rent… just curious for me to get a idea of how other jurisdictions protect landlords.
Regretably for me I operate in a socialist jurisdiction which results in a process that takes at minimum 6 mounts and often multiple years to get rid of bad tenants.
We accept full payment only. We get full payment or nothing. If we get nothing we file for eviction. Its too easy to let a delinquent tenant owning a partial payment to string along. Rules is rules.
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Greg,
That sounds terrible! What state are you in?
Maine generally takes a couple months start to finish but the general process is this:
-Serve the Notice to Quit
-In 30 days file to go to court and have the tenant served the summons (court is held 2 Fridays each month in my city)
-Win the case, get the Forcible Entry & Detainer from the court, have it served to the tenant
-If they don’t leave, get the Writ of Execution and have that served. The deputies will then come in and forcible remove the tenant.
-If they own the home and things get this far down the road then generally the home is in shambles and not worth salvaging. At this point I’d file for abandoned property which I think is a 10 day notice served to the tenant at last known address. Then you can do whatever you want with the home if it was owned by the tenant.
That is the general plan and usually takes like 2-3 months.
I like that…It is the reason I asked the question originally. I have a couple people that have been stringing along partial payments so I was thinking accepting “all or nothing” was going to be part of the new, stricter style of management. Just wanted to check and see if there were any downsides to this before enacting it.
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Do it. I’ve experienced no downside.
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btw, my policy across various communities is No Cash, No MOs no checks. Paylease/Zego’s 3 payment options only. Pay in full. Some people said I could never get 100% compliance with this but I have.
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That is terrific. It keeps things nice and simple. I might go ahead and just do it. It can always be changed if it doesn’t work!
Like Greg and others, I try to avoid partial payments. Two main reasons:
- Landlord-tenant disputes in court (most important)
2). Management hassles. (Even with use of a 3rd party online payment system).
But again, the biggest reason at least for me is #1 above. If trying to evict, I never want a magistrate court to strike me down for taking partial payments misconstruing my actions as “working with the tenant “. Result here could be more time (and rent) lost, as they can grant tenant more time.
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MikeO
Not a state…Ontario Canada. Worst province in Canada to be a realestate investor.
To show how bad it is up here I filed for an eviction 3 months ago and have not yet even recieved a hearing date. Socialism at it’s worst.
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That makes total sense
Wow that is terrible! I don’t even know how you can run a business under those conditions. Good luck…
Regretably if we had to depend on luck we could not make a profit. We have to be, how do I describe it, extreamly creative in flexing the regulations.
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I hear that. Good luck, hopefully you get some movement on the eviction proceedings soon.
@Greg, hey ask the judge (once you get in front of them!) if you can just willy nilly delay paying your taxes by 3 months. And maybe also delay paying your mortgage by 60 days. All the while, without consequences. It. Just. Doesn’t. Work.
Socialism never works.
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