What are Private Landlords?

If you’re new to real estate investing, there’s a lot of new vocabulary for you to learn, including the term private landlords.

In this article, we’ll explore what a private landlord is and if you’re a tenant, how to find one.

What are Private Landlords?

Firstly, private landlords are any rental property owners directly managing their properties, typically without a property management or property management company. If you manage your rental properties yourself, you are a private landlord. Equally, other terms to describe this type of investor are independent or mom-and-pop landlords.

Private landlords usually handle all aspects of the rental process, including rent collection, finding & screening prospective tenants, and maintenance.

Consequently, this can be beneficial when filling vacancies as tenants might prefer a one-on-one landlord-tenant relationship. This way, they know who their landlord is and who to contact regarding certain aspects of their renting experience. This could be any questions about their lease, maintenance issues, or how to submit their rent payments. Being a private landlord offers a personal touch to the tenant’s renting experience.

How to Find Private Landlords

Secondly, if you’re a tenant, you might be wondering how to find private landlords. Typically, you can use sites like Zillow, Trulia, HotPads, and Realtor.com. Usually, landlords will provide you with their business information (versus passing you along to a property management company) and how to contact them. Look for such phrases like “For Rent By Owner”.

Additionally, you can find private landlords on sites like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. Traditionally, property management companies won’t likely use sites like this as social media and forum sites require additional, personal input.

How Private Landlords Manage Rentals Themselves

If you’re a private landlord tackling the aspect of managing your own rentals, you might find yourself leaning towards tech to help simplify your business and operations. Accordingly, one key piece of tech to adopt is rental management software (also known as property management software) to efficiently manage your investment properties.

As an independent landlord, tech is useful for collecting rent, finding & screening tenants, listing units, signing leases, and handling repair requests. All these facets of your rental business can be streamlined and centralized using property management software.

Using Property Management Software 

Finally, adopting property management software is easy! There are a wealth of options in the real estate industry. As a property management software, RentRedi offers landlords a host of features to make the renting process easy for themselves and their tenants. Create rent charges, screen tenants with built-in prequalifications, applications, and full background checks, and manage maintenance requests.

Interested in learning more about RentRedi? Check out our demo here or sign up below!