The Best Way to Collect Rent from Tenants

Landlords and tenants have a lot of options out there when it comes to exchanging rent: physical cash, check, money order, payment apps, or property management software…But which one is the best way to collect rent? 

If you’re just getting started managing rental properties—or, even if you have a few under your belt— you may be looking at all these ways to collect rent and wonder which one is best for your business and what gives you the most control over the payment.

While rent payments are typically well-received, if you’re ever in the case of needing to block payments during an eviction process, something like a rent payment made via Venmo can really delay the process.

How to Collect Rent Payments

There are a lot of ways to collect rent that involve a physical exchange of money, such as cash, check, and money order.

While each of these ways to collect rent does have its merits, each comes with drawbacks as well.

Checks require a trip to the bank—for tenants and landlords. Between the withdrawal, handoff, and return trip to the bank, this can add days to collecting rent— which doesn’t make checks seem like the best way to collect rent.

Additionally, there can be the added uncertainty of having to collect the mail! Between mailboxes and delivery routes, your rent check can easily disappear into the unknown void. This can create tension issues as well for tenants and landlords: they say the check is in the mail, and you have no way of knowing if it actually is or not. 

Ways to Collect Rent Electronically

Aside from the “paper” ways of collecting rent, there are several ways to collect rent electronically. For example, with payment apps like Venmo and Cashapp or property management software for landlords.

We’ve written before about using Venmo to collect rent and why it’s not ideal—you’ll see why in this article as well. Landlords usually ask about payment apps because tenants ask about using a payment app.

Of course, you don’t want to make it any harder for the tenant to pay rent. However, remember that your rental properties are a business and should be treated as such. You wouldn’t, for example, send a Venmo transaction to pay for your groceries at the grocery store, nor should you accept rent payments via payment apps either. It can get messy, especially in an eviction situation. 

There are more benefits to collecting rent electronically by using rental payment software like RentRedi.

RentRedi is designed to collect rent and help you manage your rental properties. All its features are created to ensure you have the best way to collect rent from tenants, while also managing other important facets of your business: rental applications, vacancy listings, lease signing, and managing maintenance.

Feature Comparison

	RentRedi (ACH, Cash, Card)	Payment Apps (Venmo, Cash App)	Check	Money Order
Payment-made notifications	✅	✅	X	X
Automatic lease charges	✅	X	X	X
Auto-late fees	✅	X	X	X
In-app notifications	✅	X	X	X
Accounting Exports	✅	X	X	X
Custom Reporting	✅	X	X	X
Auto-payments	✅	X	X	X
Rent reminders	✅	X	X	X
Blocking payments	✅	X	X	X

The Best Way to Collect Rent from Tenants

When it comes how to collect rent from tenants vs the best way to collect rent payments, it’s hard to argue that anything is better than a rental payment app like RentRedi. 

RentRedi is specifically designed to ensure that landlords can easily collect rent online or from their phones. 

Once landlords set up their lease charges, tenants are automatically charged each month. They simply go into their RentRedi tenant app and tap the month they need to pay. Additionally, their tenant app also lets them set up recurring rent reminders and enable automatic rent payments.

For landlords, RentRedi offers more control over the rent collecting process: you can set up lease charges for the entirety of the lease, set up automatic late fees, send tenants in-app rent reminders, export your payments to your preferred accounting method, create custom reports, and, importantly, block payments should you ever need to.

When it comes to the best way to collect rent from tenants, neither checks, Cashapp, Paypal or Venmo can do all that! RentRedi is the best way to collect rent online.