Anyone with Hemlane experience
Member since 2020 · 4 posts · 3 votes
Hello,
Does anyone have experience using hemlane? This is my first rental property and was considering using this platform and was wondering if anyone had personal experience. What would be the pros and cons you have experienced, if any? Thank you
I am using it since 2 months now.
1st trial free month: Got an agent assigned to help with tenant placement. That agent was super awesome. He got lots of repairs done, placed a tenant. He took care of all the repairs, got multiple quotes, let me choose the vendors, ads, tenant showings, selections and finally placement.
By the time all the repairs were done, tenant started from 2nd month. 2nd month is with hemlane with 24/7 maintenance support. I had 1 maintenance request with the tenant and it went well. It is not completely passive as you are still the PM. Tenant initially contacted me for the repair and I asked them to contact hemlane. Hemlane took over, requested bids but only 1 vendor responded. Eventually the vendor I added to my account did the work and hemlane paid him.
I am not sure if that was the best price I got because there was only 1 quote. Need to see what happens later with the future maintenance requests.
Hey James. I just started using Hemlane this month. I only have few units. So far, its fine, but I feel like I'm overpaying for pretty much the same features (or less features) than the cheaper ones like Cozy and Avail. I did like that I could invite my property manager (who has her own Hemlane account) to manage a couple of my units, and I can pay her directly through it as well. I'm disappointed there's no signature feature to have my tenants sign leases, etc. I'll now have to do that via a third party like Docusign. I'll be interested to see if anyone else chimes in on this thread with their experiences. Also curious to know your thoughts if you end up going with it or what you choose instead.
Hi all! Any updates? I'm also looking as using this software, so any hands-on insight is much appreciated.
I've been using it for 3 years and love it. Their customer service is by far the best as my tenants can contact them directly for tech questions. I looked at Cozy and Avail but they didn't do it for me - couldn't add a leasing agent and contractors, text message to contractors, and tenants didn't like the higher fee for their credit report. Haven't used Hemlane's 24/7 repair coordination but considering it if people have feedback on that. Heard it was really good from someone who transitioned from Appfolio to Hemlane.
also considering....would love to hear people chime in on their experience....especially regarding the 24/7 repair support
I just signed up for the 1 month trial and I like the sleek, clean look of the site. It's easy to navigate too. I test drove Buildium, but have received a bunch of conflicting feedback and am not sold yet on their company. I currently use Cozy, but they've partnered with Apartments.com recently and I'm not a fan on how long it takes to withdraw the funds from the resident's account. I can wait 5 business (currently), but I need the payment out of the account asap. I'll update this with my experience.
I am using it since 2 months now.
1st trial free month: Got an agent assigned to help with tenant placement. That agent was super awesome. He got lots of repairs done, placed a tenant. He took care of all the repairs, got multiple quotes, let me choose the vendors, ads, tenant showings, selections and finally placement.
By the time all the repairs were done, tenant started from 2nd month. 2nd month is with hemlane with 24/7 maintenance support. I had 1 maintenance request with the tenant and it went well. It is not completely passive as you are still the PM. Tenant initially contacted me for the repair and I asked them to contact hemlane. Hemlane took over, requested bids but only 1 vendor responded. Eventually the vendor I added to my account did the work and hemlane paid him.
I am not sure if that was the best price I got because there was only 1 quote. Need to see what happens later with the future maintenance requests.
Ok, 2nd month, 2nd maintenance request from the tenant. Tenant saw some termites near fireplace and was worried. Tenant uploaded a photo to Hemlane and opened a Maintenance request but also pinged me on my phone (which is what I wanted to avoid, because of timezone differences). Hemlane started sourcing for this request. They only sourced for 1 vendor, who scheduled, inspected and gave a quote for $1350 - this took about 4 days.
One thing to note, hemlane only sources and works with licensed professionals, which they clearly documented somewhere on their website. In a way this is good but also expensive. Here is the good part, hemlane realized the quote was high and pinged me, plus, also reached out to an agent for a referral. Since the referral we got didn't have a license, hemlane didn't go with them and suggested that they will find someone else. The referral was from a trusted agent and they were in the termite business for a long time, I was open to go with them due to better prices.
Requested hemlane to consider them but also find other vendors. The hemlane co-ordinator didn't respond for a day (later learned he got sick and was off that day) and since it has already been 10 days since the request was opened, I decided to directly deal with this issue, got the inspection and work done in 2 days.
I wanted to avoid taking over the maintenance request and let hemlane deal with it to understand the process and see if this is sustainable with multiple homes with them. But I had to ultimately take over, because, the tenant was really worried it getting delayed. Not sure if this would be the case by a real PM on-site. I guess not. I have 3 other homes with an on-site PM and never got involved anything maintenance related, but I believe the repair costs are high ?
Ultimately, it bears repeating, Hemlane is not at all passive even with full maintenance plan, but it somewhere in the middle of onsite PM and doing on your own.
Hey Hemlane clients,
How has your experience been so far? It seems Hemlane has made some updates to their platform and maintenance protocol.
Are you feeling it is worth it? Are you still having to manage maintenance and repairs when Hemlane falls through? Does anyone have voucher/section 8 tenants using Hemlane?
Would love to hear more about the pros and cons of this platform and semi-self-managing.
Thanks!
I know this is old but I'm starting to look at replacing my PM with Hemlane. My BIGGEST concern is - what service quality do I get for the whole turnover process (move-out, inspections, getting it rent-ready, and finding a new tenant)? That's the "hardest" part I think when you're having to deal with a Remote property. Thoughts from people with Hemlane experience?
@Takahito Torimoto - Use it for my out of state and works great but you need a really good leasing agent. The one I have does the whole turnover process. The app allows me to see the tenants coming through the advertising and agent responds to them.
Right. Hemlane provides agent recommendations that they work with. You can use one of them for tenant turnover or you can use anyone that you know. You can just add them to your hemlane account.
I used hemlane recommended agent for my initial leasing after I bought the property.
For my new property my buying agent is helping find a tenant as well. Once tenant is in place I’ll use hemlane for maintenance issues.
We have Hemlane and none of our other tenants have had any trouble using it to pay their rent, but there is one tenant who seems to not want to use it. It was pretty difficult to get her to set it up in the first month, and now 3 months into the rental, she was on a trip to NY and got robbed, so needs to set it up with a new account to pay her rent and it's going on a week now, rent is late, and she is blaming Hemlane, meanwhile texting/calling us for tech support and calling Hemlane and saying she paid with debit card before (which is NOT true, we only allow ACH transfer), so Hemlane keeps telling her we have to change the settings to allow her to pay by card. I do not want to change the settings. I want her to pay her rent with a bank account, like she had been doing, and she had agreed to in her lease. Then she wanted to leave a check in the mailbox (we live locally) and have us come pick it up (to avoid using Hemlane, but if we do this once, that would be the method she would choose for every month going forward. Also, the mailbox is not locked, so what if she says she put a check in there and it's not there when we arrive? It also forces us to make a trip over there at our expense and her convenience, do the accounting manually, and deposit the check manually (probably mobile, but still stuff you don't have to do with the ACH transfer). Has anyone on Hemlane had this problem with tenants circumventing the use of Hemlane or basically just refusing to use it? Any solution to this? I'm also finding it super frustrating that Hemlane's answer is to tell her that we need to change something on our end. They need to just instruct her how to put in her bank account and routing number. I actually called and spoke with someone and they explained that they told her that because she was insisting that she paid by card before (that is not the case, though it may be incorrect recollection on her part rather than actually just lying to them to get to pay the way she prefers).
Hemlane hasn't handled any maintenance or turnovers for us yet, so I can't speak to how they would do on that. But just wondering if we should continue with it honestly if certain tenants will just choose not to use it and they are telling the tenants to contact us.
@Betsy Nolan - How frustrating that your tenant is not paying online. I'm sorry to hear this. While it's rare, we have seen this happen with a few tenants (especially those who are habitually late and have a different excuse each time). We've seen owners handle it in two different ways:
1. Lease Amendment - Where the Rent clause is adjusted to outline the acceptable payment method to be online via Hemlane. Please note that some states require one offline form of rent collection, and we typically see money order as that one payment method as it makes online more convenient.
2. Lease Incentive - Add an incentive of $15 to $25 per month off rent if you pay online until the lease comes up for expiration. Then, you can revise the payment method.
Hope that helps and that things get more seamless for you and your teanants.
We have Hemlane and none of our other tenants have had any trouble using it to pay their rent, but there is one tenant who seems to not want to use it. It was pretty difficult to get her to set it up in the first month, and now 3 months into the rental, she was on a trip to NY and got robbed, so needs to set it up with a new account to pay her rent and it's going on a week now, rent is late, and she is blaming Hemlane, meanwhile texting/calling us for tech support and calling Hemlane and saying she paid with debit card before (which is NOT true, we only allow ACH transfer), so Hemlane keeps telling her we have to change the settings to allow her to pay by card. I do not want to change the settings. I want her to pay her rent with a bank account, like she had been doing, and she had agreed to in her lease. Then she wanted to leave a check in the mailbox (we live locally) and have us come pick it up (to avoid using Hemlane, but if we do this once, that would be the method she would choose for every month going forward. Also, the mailbox is not locked, so what if she says she put a check in there and it's not there when we arrive? It also forces us to make a trip over there at our expense and her convenience, do the accounting manually, and deposit the check manually (probably mobile, but still stuff you don't have to do with the ACH transfer). Has anyone on Hemlane had this problem with tenants circumventing the use of Hemlane or basically just refusing to use it? Any solution to this? I'm also finding it super frustrating that Hemlane's answer is to tell her that we need to change something on our end. They need to just instruct her how to put in her bank account and routing number. I actually called and spoke with someone and they explained that they told her that because she was insisting that she paid by card before (that is not the case, though it may be incorrect recollection on her part rather than actually just lying to them to get to pay the way she prefers).
Hemlane hasn't handled any maintenance or turnovers for us yet, so I can't speak to how they would do on that. But just wondering if we should continue with it honestly if certain tenants will just choose not to use it and they are telling the tenants to contact us.
It is in the lease. She is one of those people who is so important that the rules really don't apply to her. But I like your idea of an incentive to use the system- carrot rather than stick - because the late fee disincentive which she has already accrued doesn't seem to change over her behavior. Then maybe it feels like her choice.
@Betsy Nolan - Thanks for the speedy response! If it's in the lease that she is required to pay online via email, then you may want to consider legal advice to serve a notice that she is in violation of the lease by paying other ways. Good luck and if I can help in any way, just ask!
I have two properties with Hemlane now. Quick feedback on the key points raised:
- Agent for leasing - this one all depends whether they've an agent for the area or not. I needed one for a small GA city and they had to look for one. She turned out to be fairly decent. Paid her 100% of leasing costs.
- Maintenance - They are quick to respond and the direct helpline is great. Hope the QOS stays up. For me its great to have visibility into communication with more expensive repairs etc. The one thing I miss from a traditional PM is that a good PM would often coach the tenant into self-help and maintenance, hence pre-empting the need for expensive repairs down the line.
3 properties now, 4th one soonish. Working well so far for me.
One tenant doesn't like Hemlane for maintenance requests, says they are late to react. For now, he is using his own contacts for maintenance and I am deducting from the rent.
1 tenant has been using Hemlane for more than a year and working well so far.
Another tenant is new and no maintenance requested yet. Will see how that goes.
We have Hemlane and none of our other tenants have had any trouble using it to pay their rent, but there is one tenant who seems to not want to use it. It was pretty difficult to get her to set it up in the first month, and now 3 months into the rental, she was on a trip to NY and got robbed, so needs to set it up with a new account to pay her rent and it's going on a week now, rent is late, and she is blaming Hemlane, meanwhile texting/calling us for tech support and calling Hemlane and saying she paid with debit card before (which is NOT true, we only allow ACH transfer), so Hemlane keeps telling her we have to change the settings to allow her to pay by card. I do not want to change the settings. I want her to pay her rent with a bank account, like she had been doing, and she had agreed to in her lease. Then she wanted to leave a check in the mailbox (we live locally) and have us come pick it up (to avoid using Hemlane, but if we do this once, that would be the method she would choose for every month going forward. Also, the mailbox is not locked, so what if she says she put a check in there and it's not there when we arrive? It also forces us to make a trip over there at our expense and her convenience, do the accounting manually, and deposit the check manually (probably mobile, but still stuff you don't have to do with the ACH transfer). Has anyone on Hemlane had this problem with tenants circumventing the use of Hemlane or basically just refusing to use it? Any solution to this? I'm also finding it super frustrating that Hemlane's answer is to tell her that we need to change something on our end. They need to just instruct her how to put in her bank account and routing number. I actually called and spoke with someone and they explained that they told her that because she was insisting that she paid by card before (that is not the case, though it may be incorrect recollection on her part rather than actually just lying to them to get to pay the way she prefers).
Hemlane hasn't handled any maintenance or turnovers for us yet, so I can't speak to how they would do on that. But just wondering if we should continue with it honestly if certain tenants will just choose not to use it and they are telling the tenants to contact us.
Just get a PO box and have her send it there, the idea for a credit if she pays online is good. What state are you in? My family has rented in NJ (pro-tenant) for 40 years and they would laugh you out of court if you tried to evict when a tenant is trying in good faith to pay their rent. Not everyone is going to go online to pay, no matter what.