If you’re a landlord who uses an Excel spreadsheet to manage your business and navigate the process on your own, this company is about to change your life.
TurboTenant is designed for landlords, by landlords, to help owners with one to dozens of doors run their business smoothly and efficiently. The platform not only helps landlords fill vacant units, it also ensures leases are up to snuff, centralizes communication between landlords and tenants, and ultimately saves time and money that can be invested back into their business. TRD sat down with CEO Seamus Nally and VP of Marketing Harrison Stevens for a firsthand look at how TurboTenant empowers landlords with smaller portfolios to grow their portfolios while managing their properties from anywhere.
A Landlord’s Best Friend
Both Nally and Stevens know firsthand how hard it can be for landlords just getting their foot in the door.
“I joined TurboTenant at the same time I became a landlord myself,” recalls Nally, who bought his first rental property in Upstate New York and has since expanded his portfolio to include 22 doors in NY as well as a brand new property near his home in Colorado.
The first challenge any landlord faces once they’ve acquired their property is finding a reliable tenant, which is where TurboTenant goes to work. The owner creates a unit profile on the platform, and TurboTenant then posts that unit on major online listing sites like Apartments.com and Redfin to solicit leads.
“As soon as someone expresses interest, we hit them with a pre-screener,” explains Nally. “It asks how many people are going to live there, do you have any pets? That little sanity check really helps a landlord when they return that phone call.”
The platform also uses machine learning to check listing language so that it reads naturally and conforms with fair housing practices. “My favorite example is that you can’t say ‘No Smokers,’ because you are discriminating against somebody,” says Stevens. “You have to say ‘No Smoking,’ which is an act. It’s little things like that which could get you sued.”
The TurboTenant listing process is fast and inexpensive compared to the traditional methods of posting flyers around town or finding a realtor to list it. Stevens, who has owned properties in Florida, talks about how, between paying realtors to find a tenant and hiring a property manager, a landlord who doesn’t manage their own doors can lose out on a major chunk of income.
“I didn’t want to give up 10%,” he says. “It’s not like I have all this margin. And that’s the beauty of TurboTenant, it’s so easy to do it yourself.”
“It Should Be Impossible To Be a Bad Landlord”
TurboTenant continues to guide the rental process through every phase, from finding the right tenant to making sure the lease documents comply with local regulations, to managing all communication between the landlord and tenant. The platform leverages the knowledge and experience of over a million units to help build each lease.
“We have internal people that check state laws on a regular basis, and we provide state, city, and even county specific lease agreements,” says Stevens. “That protects everyone from making mistakes.”
Once the lease is signed and the tenant moves in, TurboTenant serves as the communication platform between the tenant and landlord, keeping a record and ensuring that no messages linger unseen on WhatsApp or in an unchecked email account. And, instead of paying a property manager a chunk of your income to manage, as Stevens puts it, “my property which gets basically two phone calls a year,” TurboTenant makes it easy for landlords to take care of those requests themselves, saving them money to reinvest into more rentals.
“We’re not the property manager,” explains Nally. “We’re building a tool that helps owners manage it. If we’re doing our job, it should be impossible to be a bad landlord.”
The company is also leveraging AI in new ways, including a free tool they just released that allows landlords to upload a lease agreement and have it scanned for areas that may be problematic or which might not conform with state and local laws.
“Without AI, you couldn’t tackle this,” says Nally. “We look at it as an opportunity to build trust, to have thought leadership in this space.”
Helping Landlords Run and Build Their Business
Because its software brings every aspect of being a landlord onto a single platform, from finding tenants to collecting rent to accounting for expenses, TurboTenant gives owners the freedom to manage their portfolios from anywhere. The software even helps landlords price their rentals correctly using the Rent Estimate Report feature, ensuring that they don’t leave any money on the table.
Because 37% of TurboTenant signups are in their first year of being a landlord, the company emphasizes education as part of their offerings. TurboTenant offers free webinars covering a range of topics, from what to watch out for when facing violations to how to set goals to buy your next property.
“All these different educational offerings become a resource,” says Stevens. “We’re creating the handbook on how to become a good landlord.”
Of course, a major part of building a portfolio is being able to save money. TurboTenant offers two payment options: a free plan where tenants pay application and screening fees, and a $119/year plan that reduces application fees, waives tenant rent fees, and adds a host of other features including multiple linked bank accounts, free lease agreements and forms.
Even at $119/year, a TurboTenant subscription can save a landlord five figures just by eliminating the need to pay a property manager. “That $15,000 goes a long way to your down payment on the next unit,” says Nally.
And TurboTenant scales with a landlord’s portfolio. “The price doesn’t go up,” emphasizes Stevens. “Every property you add becomes a bigger financial opportunity for you.” Whether you’re managing five properties or fifty, TurboTenant streamlines every part of the process, from applications to service calls, keeping all of the information in a single place.
Visit the TurboTenant homepage to start your journey to becoming a great landlord.