More than two-thirds of residential property managers surveyed now offer their residents the option of paying their rent or homeowner association dues online.
Specifically, 68 percent of those firms surveyed by New Heights Research allowed online payments last year. That’s up from 60 percent in 2013 and 55 percent in 2012, the first year the survey was conducted.
This follows the overall trend of consumers paying more of their bills online and fewer of them by check. Almost three-fourths (74 percent) of U.S. households with Internet access pay at least one of their monthly bills electronically, according to Fiserv. At the same time, 53 percent of U.S. households paid at least one monthly bill using a check in 2013, down from 61 percent in 2012.
This isn’t a big surprise to Anton Systems President and CEO Michael Antonelli. He says there’s a growing trend in the residential property business, especially at high-end properties, in which financially-sophisticated and Internet-savvy residents are demanding to do more of the property management functions themselves, such as making a payments and service requests online. And that’s good for property managers, since it reduces their operational costs.
SKYLINE Property Management Solution for Residential and Multi-Family Properties from Anton Systems is used by thousands of residential property managers and owners to control cash flow from operations and streamline operations and reporting. Now it just got even better. Anton offers users the ability to extend the functionality and flexibility of their SKYLINE property management software with additional tools developed by third-party vendors.
One of those is RentPayment, the leading online payment solution for residential properties. RentPayment is now fully and seamlessly integrated into SKYLINE software.
RentPayment is the most robust platform for rent collection and income reporting in the industry. It provides the largest suite of payment channels for renters and homeowners to pay rent and dues electronically. RentPayment is a complete cloud-based platform that enables managers and landlords to easily collect and manage all their electronic payments and income reporting.
Founded in 1999, RentPayment is led by multifamily industry experts and offers a robust payment solution that meets the needs of landlords of all sizes. It powers online payments for 40 percent of the Top 50 NHMC property management companies in the U.S. Partnering with over 700 property management companies, RentPayment enables online payments for over three million rental units in over 23,000 properties in 47 states.
RentPayment is the easiest way to accept rent online and give residents the multiple payment options they now demand:
- Plastic: RentPayment allows residents to pay their rent and homeowner fees with a credit or debit card through their computer or mobile device.
- Telephone: Residents can pay rent by telephone anytime by contacting RentPayments’ California-based call center.
- Text: RentPayments’ proprietary SMS channel, RentByText™, allows residents to confirm their rent payment with a simple text reply
- Electronic check: Residents can easily set up eCheck (ACH) payments to pay rent directly from a bank account.
- Cash: In a partnership with MoneyGram, residents can pay rent with cash at 40,000 locations nationwide.
- AutoPay: Residents can sign up for recurring monthly payments on time each and every month.
- Email. Residents can opt-in to monthly reminder emails to manage preferences, select payment method and pay rent on time.
Not surprisingly, RentPayment offers plenty of benefits for property managements and landlords at low transaction costs. It streamlines the rent collection process and reduces administrative time associated with paper checks and manual data entry. The risk of fraud and theft drops, while the rate of on-time rent payments increases, improving cash flow and increasing property profitability. There’s even a complimentary marketing partnership.
In addition to RentPayment, SKYLINE has other powerful features that enable tenants to do more themselves.
The facilities maintenance and work order processing function enables tenants to submit requests online. Property managers can easily create detailed work orders and schedule and track routine preventive maintenance tasks. The module dispatches both in-house and contracted service calls and records and tracks all job activity, including time and material expenses.
Plus, it’s all backed by Anton Systems’ 25 years of real estate and property management experience and thorough knowledge of the SKYLINE product to ensure you get the most out of your system.