Investor · Maryville, IL · Member since 2016 · 129 posts · 81 votes
My wife has expressed concern about allowing people who are applying for our properties to know our home address (to send applications when they need to be mailed). Even tenants who pay for rent know our address so they can mail the payment and she is a little uneasy with that.
My response is our business is registered to our home address and I've never really thought about having a P.O. Box or other because people could find our address with a basic search. Eliminating that option is possible to a degree, but would take effort I'm not sure is worth the hassle.
Her concern is what if a "nutter" gets mad at us and wants to take it out at our personal property? I'm not that concerned, but it is a reasonable question and I promised I'd ask the experts.
To make it a "two-fer," how about phone numbers? Do you provide your personal cell or a separate business number?
We try to create some distance by using a PO Box and a Google-voice phone number for our tenants (free service). As for paying rent, we require that all tenants use an electronic payment service (eRentPayment) - that might eliminate the need to provide a mailing address at all.
i think with Facebook and the Internet it's fairly easy to find anyone's address and phone number. I have my cell phone and home address listed on my fb business page. I also have one renter that comes to my home every month to pay. I give my renters my cell number. I want them to be able to reach me anytime for an emergency. They either text or call. If they call I usually let it go to vm, I'll listen and decide if it's an emergency or not.
I only do applications on-line through Cozy.co they won't have your home address.
We try to create some distance by using a PO Box and a Google-voice phone number for our tenants (free service). As for paying rent, we require that all tenants use an electronic payment service (eRentPayment) - that might eliminate the need to provide a mailing address at all.
Agree with @Andy Webb Use a P.O. Box and Google-voice number.
Your bank can also provide a "sub-account", so that your main account info is not shared. Just use the Sub account for rent deposits that the tenants can directly deposit to, if they need to have an account number.
I have a box at Postal Annex; it was closer than the UPS store. They give you a real street address and will accept packages and deliveries that require signatures.
I also have a google voice number and gmail account. You can put the google voice app on your Droid/iphone and you can text, receive/make phone calls. I'm in the approval process to accept ACH payments. I had to set up a business bank account and DBA, but that should eliminate folks mailing payments. The majority of my tenants are 30-ish so they will like the on-line convenience. Giving your personal phone will allow tenants to stalk your facebook because facebook pulls the contact info from the phone and suggests friends.
I also have concerns about the stalker-serial killer-tenant. It's all fun and games until you begin to evict someone.
I have a Google voice number for applicants. I don't have applicants mail in their app. They can email me, fax me, or bring it to me in person at a showing.
I too use google voice too for rental purposes. It's nice because you can shut it off when you can't receive calls. And it works for text messages too in conjunction with google hangouts. I really recommend google voice!
With todays technology and in a world where everyone posts their daily bathroom routines in line there is no secrecy. The inter web and mediums like face book make everything public knowledge.
There was a post several week ago where the individual was starting in real estate and voiced a similar concern. I googled his name and found his home address, phone number, employer, job title even a PR/news article about him with picture.
Owners that think they can hide are only fooling themselves in this day and age but it is still best in my wife's opinion to never have tenants come to your home in person. For us all our tenants know where we live.
If one becomes a problem there is no way you can hide you simply deal with the problem as part of the business.
I have a google number and have considered using it for business. I tend to agree with the comments regarding searching and finding info about me. I know it would be easy, and frankly, I'm not going to live the paranoid life where I hide from folks just because they may be crazy.
I do want to be somewhat isolated from the torrent of inquiries and pesky annoyance callers. I can always redirect calls by passing out a new number and blocking each call that I do not want to receive.
It seems at this point that the majority of you use a separate phone or address or both. I will probably go with the new cell number, and consider the electronic banking option as a requirement. Regarding applications, I may require Internet only going forward. Thank you for all the comments, I'll pass these ideas along to the wife and ease her mind!!
@Kurt Gardner Your wife has a legitimate concern about giving away your home address. I used to do this and then an irate tenant (my worst ever) showed up at the front door causing a commotion. We went and got a mailbox at the UPS store, changed the address on all our business cards, email signatures and on all leases going forward. It is possible that inventive tenants might find your home address using other means although I doubt most have the ingenuity or focus to do this, but you are making it easy - you are giving your home address to them! Trust me, no good can come from this.
My cell phone number is on my business card along with a business line. The business line is presently forwarded to my cell phone but can be set to ring at home; it also goes to electronic voice mail which is emailed to me - very handy when I am out of the country. I have found that tenants do not abuse having access to your cell phone number. The fact is that most people now communicate by email and tenants seem to prefer this mode of communication most of the time. My phone number is out there and they can call me in case of emergencies but I have found that this is not abused. There are times I absolutely want them to contact me such as water emergency, fire or some other calamity. I want to know if something serious is taking place in regard to my property. But I suppose like much else this all comes down to screening. Screen well and screen for behavioral issues and abuse of phone numbers should be a relatively rare event. I would say the larger potential costs regarding phone numbers arise if the tenants cannot contact you in case of emergency.
@Stephen E. - Thank you for the story, and I'm so sorry you had to endure that kind of torment. We've had one bad tenant, and even though she chased her own daughter around the front yard with a hammer, she never bothered us.
Post application, I feel fairly good about our tenants, and that really isn't so much the impetus for this thread; it truly is the pre-screening process. We use a TPV that does a criminal and credit background check and makes recommendations. We follow their suggestions so as not to be accused/guilty of discrimination. It doesn't hurt that the $50 application fee tends to screen out a bunch of ne'er do wells from the start.
Moving forward I believe we will no longer provide our home address on any general correspondence or business form. I am going to investigate the electronic options for payment a little more. @Yvette M., @Percy N., @Andy Webb you suggested you use electronic means...how do you handle pushback from prospective tenants who prefer to give a money order or pay in cash?
@Kurt Gardner, we use Cozy.co for screening tenants, where they have to enter their personal info. The next step in the process once approved is that Cozy can be setup for ACH transfers as well.
Those who do not wish to use it can mail a check or go to a branch of our bank (large bank) and deposit into a sub-account number we give them.
Late fees are designed to make sure people pay on time and hopefully prefer the online payment or self payment at the branch.
My tenants DO know where I live....only because I've had them drop things off to me......but I am hoping to change that going forward. The good tenants are fine, but the bad ones, for some reason seem to get really pissed off when they owe you money. They definitely get angry when you evict them......and the last thing I need is them knowing where I live. Obviously its not that hard to find out......but knowing and reacting on the spot is different than putting in the effort to find out.
@Kurt Gardner - we require payment by eRentPayment as part of our lease agreement. So far we have not had any pushback. In fact a lot of tenants really like the system, especially the auto-pay feature. I would say about 1/3 use the monthly auto pay, which we naturally love as well. One newer feature that eRentPayment offers: they will send the payment history to Transunion each month. This is an added pitch to sell our tenants on the payment system, since the bulk of them have less than stellar credit.
If you have an "under-banked" tenant that is unable to use any electronic system for lack of an account, you can find a bank that will issue you a deposit-only debit card. This allows the tenant to deposit into your account, but not make withdrawals.
I use RentPost to keep track of my tenants. Through the company they have a third-party network partner, Forte, that processes ACH payments. As far as I know, you can't "force" tenants to pay on-line. Check your state laws for types of payments you can accept. There are other companies that provide payment services: cozy, erentpayment, etc and you can pay the fee $3-ish, tenant pays fee or you split the fee with tenant.
My bank offers deposit-only ATM cards that I can give tenants, but I would only do this for tenants who have a positive rent payment trail. I have new tenants (limited English speaking family) who prefer to pay cash. I don't mind cash for this particular family and it gives me a chance to spy while I'm at the building, but I will eventually try to transition them to the ATM card.
For those in New York State, I'm not a lawyer but it appears to be illegal to force tenants to pay rent electronically.
Real Property Article 7 Section 235 - G
§ 235-g. Electronic billing and/or payment of rent. 1. A landlord shall not require a lessee or tenant to use an electronic billing and/or payment system as the only method for the payment of rent. A landlord shall not assess any fee or other charge for a lessee or tenant that chooses not to use an electronic billing and/or payment system. 2. Any agreement by a lessee or tenant of a dwelling waiving or modifying his or her rights as set forth in this section shall be void as contrary to public policy.
Interesting! I had not considered that it might be illegal to exclude or require a particular type of payment. Fortunately, if I am reading the Texas code correctly, I do have that right as part of a lease agreement:
Sec. 92.011.CASH RENTAL PAYMENTS. (a) A landlord shall accept a tenant's timely cash rental payment unless a written lease between the landlord and tenant requires the tenant to make rental payments by check, money order, or other traceable or negotiable instrument.
When I was house hacking yes, the applicants, tenants know where I lived. If any of my tenant/ roommates wanted to screw me over, they could have. But they didn't because I only lived with good people.
Unless you are really good about hiding, you're gonna get found. When poking around I saw a LLC, plugged in the address associated on the transfer docs (public land records) in Google and viola found the owner. For many localities they do publish the address the taxes are paid from, so keep that in mind. Localities vary regarding how public they make information, don't assume all the legal docs are private.
@Kurt Gardner hiding your personal life should be high priority. I know people will argue that if you work a little, you can always find someone's home address. I have heard people use the same logic for not locking the door to their house. It is the logic of, "if someone wants it bad enough they will just kick in the door." That logic falls short because most people are lazy. A criminal takes the path of least resistance, so anything you can do to make it harder will help you.
I use a PO Box now, but I didn't when I had my first got rental property. My first tenant said to me one day, "I drove by your house just to see where you live. You have a really nice home." We immediately got a PO Box and started using that for the business. A year later I moved to a new house and for five more years that tenant kept referring to my house at the old location. My friend who recently got into the rental business uses their home address. A few months ago they had a bad tenant and her boyfriend started verbally threatening them over a security deposit deduction. They saw his truck drive by their home several times over the course of a weekend. Nothing happened, but it was really scary. I have had one case where a neighbor of a tenant came over to my house to complain about the tenant. They looked me up on country records. It costs money to do that.
I use a business e-mail address because if you use your personal address, Facebook will recommend your tenant as a friend. Assuming your Facebook is properly secured they should see NOTHING about you if you don't friend them. If you want to friend your tenants on Facebook, use a business Facebook account, not your personal account.
For phone number I recently got Google Voice which will hide my real cell phone number. It still rings into my phone and I can even make it hop to other phones. Lots of great features on Google voice. If I end up with a crazy tenant, I can block their number on Google voice and if it gets real bad, I can dump the Google voice number and get a new one.
Personal security for me and my family is more important than money, so I will spend a few bucks and take some extra time to protect myself. Again, nothing will stop someone determined so my goal is to make it harder.
With todays technology and in a world where everyone posts their daily bathroom routines in line there is no secrecy. The inter web and mediums like face book make everything public knowledge.
There was a post several week ago where the individual was starting in real estate and voiced a similar concern. I googled his name and found his home address, phone number, employer, job title even a PR/news article about him with picture.
Owners that think they can hide are only fooling themselves in this day and age but it is still best in my wife's opinion to never have tenants come to your home in person. For us all our tenants know where we live.
If one becomes a problem there is no way you can hide you simply deal with the problem as part of the business.
You are missing the point. People who take precautions are not fooling themselves. Precautions are about making it harder for someone to find you. Your profile on Bigger Pockets is an example. You have hidden your last name, no picture and hid your profile. Either you are in the witness protection program or YOU are taking precautions. Could someone still find you? Probably, but it would arguably be a heck of a lot easier if you used your last name and posted a picture. The example of the guy you used should have been more careful. Your example proves my point, which is to take precautions.
Precautions are about making it more difficult not impossible.
We have a business, so most tenants & applicants contact us there. In fact, most of them come in to pay their rent in person. The phone number there is where most choose to contact us, but they also have my cell #. I have terrible service at home, so I tell them it is best to just use that for texts. We do not have USPS service at either our home or store, so a PO Box is the only address they get. However, we live in a small town, so anyone who wants to can easily find out where we live, and our home phone is listed in the phone book.
I did the PO Box and Google Voice way but the apartment building I just bought had a spare box in the mail boxes so I converted one of them to Suite #20 and will be dropping the PO Box. Google Voice is good for screening and forwarding if you ever need to send the call to someone else, or just share the call duties, but there are better services out there.
I'm not quite worried about crazies so much as I don't want renters showing up at my house randomly to drop off checks or money. The other thing is that if people think I'm rich or sitting on cash at some point of the month they may think I'm a good target to rob. To keep that from happening I've let everyone know that as soon as they hand me a check it goes straight to the bank for deposit and that I never ever accept cash. If they are the types that will only do cash I got them a deposit only ATM card and make them drop it off themselves.