What stresses you out the most as a landlord? In this video, Kaycee and Brentnie from Rentec Direct answer a common landlord question and break down the biggest pain points of being a landlord — and the tools and strategies that can help you manage them.
Being a landlord can be incredibly rewarding, but even for the best of housing providers, not everything is easy and painless. These pain points can be quite overwhelming and stressful, but fortunately, there are solutions for almost any pain point that being a landlord entails. Many issues can be resolved with simple solutions, and some can often be avoided entirely with careful consideration and planning.
In this video, Rentec Direct’s Brentnie and Kaycee will discuss common pain points for landlords and how you can handle them. Resolving your biggest points of frustration can make being a landlord feel much easier and more enjoyable.
The Pain Points of Being a Landlord (And How to Fix Them) – Video Transcript
Brentnie:
Hello, this is Brentnie and Kaycee. We’re here from Rentec Direct, and we’re going to go over some landlord questions again today. So this one is talking about the landlord experience, the biggest pains. So, landlords, please tell me at least your top three to five biggest pains of being a landlord. I have a property that I am debating on either selling or renting out, and I would love to know what I would be getting myself into, whether it’s actionable steps, issues with tenants, or ways of management or software. Thanks.
Kaycee:
Okay, I love this question because I feel like this is a conversation that I have almost weekly with people who know that I work in the rental industry, know that I’ve owned rental properties, and kinda wanna know, like, what is good about being a landlord, what is challenging about being a landlord. Do you often get similar questions too, Brentnie?
Brentnie:
Yeah, I do. I do all the time. And I feel like this is something that I get personally. I see so much on forums. We get a lot of questions on our blog and on our socials too. So definitely a common question and concern out there.
Kaycee:
I think with any job or any hobby or any ways of making an income, there’s always gonna be the pain points, but there’s also a lot of things out there that can help resolve pain points. And that’s one of the things we talk about, being experts in the rental industry, is how can we help landlords and people that we work with find solutions to these pain points? So when I think about pain points with rental properties, it can be challenging to manage your time. It can be challenging to deal with tenant complaints. It can be challenging to deal with changing regulations and landlord-tenant laws. What are some of the other pain points that you think of when it comes to rental properties that you’ve either heard about, or you’ve heard people give you direct experience?
Brentnie:
Yeah, I mean, the nitty-gritty of, like, the daily tracking, the financials. I know especially at the end of the year there’s a lot of, kind of, what do I do? I don’t know that I have everything together; that kind of panic during tax season. I know that that can be a big challenge for people who are especially newer. And then just finding good tenants too is obviously a pain point for a lot of landlords, just because your tenants are your bread and butter, and having a great relationship with them is going to impact your ROI and just your overall experience as a landlord.
Solutions and Tools for Tackling Landlord Pain Points
Kaycee:
Yeah, I think that’s a good point that you’re touching on. So the pain points of rental management that a landlord could experience are things that have to do with tenants, things that have to do with the administrative tasks, and things that have to do with maybe property maintenance or issues at your property. So those are, I’d say, some of the big three.
And thankfully, we’re able to think of ways to mitigate those pain points and make it a little bit easier. Tenant issues, I think of tenant screening as a great solution. Administrative tasks, using software like Rentec Direct can help streamline or automate as many of those financial records, record keeping, or streamlining the tax process as well. And then the property maintenance or issues at the property, having a good system in place to be able to keep track of maintenance, understand how old an appliance is, how old a roof is, so you can know when it’s going to be time to put repair work into it, but then also having a system to receive tenant issues and understand those maintenance requests to go fix something.
And then also I was thinking using, like, a good inspection app or inspection software as a landlord. So you can see something right away when you’re doing your own property inspections or when your tenant’s doing a move-in or move-out property inspection. So there are these tools that are available to landlords that can be pretty affordable for someone who is just getting started or wants to make sure that owning a rental property is even going to be worth their time.
The other tool I think that’s out there is, of course, property management—after you’ve owned a rental property for a number of years, but you want to be hands-off—you can pay a property manager to really help you with it and remove yourself from the equation. Sure, you might not make as much money because you’re gonna be paying a property management fee, but you’re gonna be able to really be hands-off and use it as a passive income source, or build long-term wealth into the future over those years.
Learn more: Do I Need Property Management Software?
Treating Your Rental Property Like a Business
Brentnie:
Yes, I totally agree with that. And I think that anything that you touched on– a lot of those pain points can be fixed by, yeah, just hiring a property manager. But if you are someone who really wants those higher margins, you want to avoid that management fee, or you want to keep your investment decisions really hands-on, I do think that a lot of the pain points of being like a DIY landlord can be mitigated by just having really strong structures in place. And I think that’s true with any business.
And when you are a DIY landlord, I think you really have to take a step back and consider this a business, even if it’s something that you’re doing on the side and it’s not necessarily your primary source of income, treating it like a business and making the extra step to get those financials and those tenant screening practices all in order will set you up to not have to actually spend some so much time on it day to day. And I think that with that, investing in a tool or a property management software will actually give you back a lot of your time.
Setting Up LLCs, Separate Accounts, and Property Management Software
Kaycee:
Yeah, so let’s break that down into some actionable steps. So treating a rental property like a business, great advice. You want to think about how you can set it up from the beginning, right when you start owning or managing it and being that DIY landlord, so it has all these systems in place to be automated. So, I—some people own their rental properties outright. That’s super normal.
You might also consider, if you want to be investing in more rental properties in the future, getting an LLC that could own the rental property. With an LLC, you can kind of keep things really separate. I think having a separate bank account for your rental properties to receive rental income into, and then do any expenses to pay out of, is a great idea, to have just like you would have your own business, you would have an own separate business checking account that helps you collect rent online, stay super organized, keeps your finances separate, makes it really clean for taxes.
And then we’re also saying property management software. Of course, we’re gonna mention property management software, because what that does is it allows you to receive rental income coming in. Every time that comes in, it’s automatically attached to your ledgers, your expenses, a tenant, a property. So there’s less manual entry, less tracking.
And then when you have expenses that you pay out, whether you’re paying yourself a rental management fee or you’re paying for a property update, property taxes, your mortgage payment—all of that, those payments can be automated in the system. And you can also make it so everything is tracked perfectly in the right ledgers, and you can really open up your software and, at a glance, know exactly what your property performance is.
Learn more: Do I Need Multiple Bank Accounts as a Landlord or Property Manager?
Final Thoughts
Landlord pain points are frustrating, but they aren’t world-ending problems. Almost any problem you can think of can be resolved with a little planning and a little know-how. If you found this video helpful, be on the lookout for a future topic where Brentnie and Kaycee will dive further into possible pain points for landlords and how to resolve them.