As a landlord, if there’s a knot in your stomach that tightens as the rent due date approaches, you will definitely want to keep reading. Will it arrive on time? Will checks bounce or transfers falter? Despite the critical role rent plays in your business, many landlords unintentionally make the process more cumbersome by clinging to outdated or complicated payment methods. This frustration not only leads to inefficiencies but adds an unnecessary layer of stress to your daily life. Imagine stripping away that anxiety and embracing a seamless, professional rent collection system that eliminates these headaches. That’s why Furnished Finder (opens in new tab) has partnered with Baselane (opens in new tab) for rent collection.
Understanding the rent collection challenge
Rent collection is a critical aspect of property management, yet it often becomes a source of stress and inefficiency for landlords. Many still rely on traditional payment methods like cash or checks, or even ad-hoc solutions such as peer-to-peer payment apps like Venmo or Zelle. While these methods might appear convenient initially, they come with significant drawbacks, including security risks, lack of professional oversight, and cumbersome manual tracking.
The pitfalls of using peer-to-peer apps for rent collection are numerous. These platforms are not designed for landlords; they're intended for casual transactions. As a landlord, accepting rent payments via these apps exposes you to issues like fraud, difficulty in tracking payments and debts, potential eviction complications due to partial payments, and more. Not to mention, these platforms often lack the support landlords need.
The solution: streamlined rent collection with Baselane
To alleviate these challenges, Furnished Finder has partnered with Baselane, a financial platform designed specifically for real estate investors and landlords. Baselane offers a seamless, professional-grade solution for rent collection, providing you with the tools to manage your rental business more effectively.
Baselane features:
Automated payment processing: With Baselane, you can set up online rent payments effortlessly. Tenants can choose to pay via ACH, debit, or credit card, and even set up autopay options to ensure on-time payments every month.
Security and reliability: Unlike peer-to-peer apps, Baselane provides a secure environment for transactions, minimizing the risk of fraud and errors.
Ease of use: The platform is user-friendly, offering intuitive payment scheduling and reminders both for you and your tenants.
Financial clarity and reporting: Baselane's reporting tools provide comprehensive insights into your rental income, helping you make informed decisions about your property management.
Benefits of switching to a professional rent collection platform
The advantages of adopting a platform tailored for landlords are numerous. Firstly, it significantly reduces financial stress by automating processes and ensuring timely payment reminders. You’ll avoid the pitfalls of traditional methods, and your tenants will appreciate the professionalism and ease of paying rent through a secure portal.
Incorporating a system like Baselane not only safeguards your income but also enhances your credibility as a landlord. Tenants are looking for a seamless and reassuring rental experience, and offering a reliable payment portal meets this demand, making them more likely to choose your property over others.
Get started with Furnished Finder and Baselane
By integrating Baselane into your rent collection strategy, you take a significant step towards more efficient, secure, and professional property management. To start simplifying your rent collection process, log in to your Furnished Finder dashboard and explore the Landlord Tools section. Here you'll find options for online rent payments, tenant screenings, and more, designed to streamline your monthly rental operations and minimize hassle.
For more insights and expert advice, tune in to the Landlord Diaries podcast (opens in new tab), where industry leaders like Saad Dar of Baselane share practical tips and strategies for successful rental management.
Don't let outdated methods hold you back. Embrace the future of rent management today and discover a more effortless way to manage your properties. If you have questions or need further assistance, our community at Furnished Finder is here to support you every step of the way.
Episode 162 Transcript
There's always that moment as a landlord, you're like I hope they pay on time. And you just cross your fingers and that's what we want to avoid. We want to take that financial stress away. Give you the automation and more of that certainty and predictability, which is, coming with a Baselane.
Welcome to The Landlord Diaries, the official podcast of Furnished Finder, your trusted companion for building success and monthly rentals. I'm Kelly Bailey with eight Cash Flowing Monthly Rentals in Texas. And I'm Katie Lyon, Marketing Director at Furnished Finder and real estate investor with 13 furnished rentals across multiple states.
In every episode, we share real stories, practical tips, and expert insights to help you grow with confidence from securing better bookings to maximizing your rental income. So follow up the show and let Furnished Finder be your partner in building a thriving monthly rental business.
Today we're going to talk with Saad Dar from Baselane, our new partner for online rent payments. So Katie, I'd love to start. The conversation with you today, why did Furnished Finder feel like it needed a payments partner in the first place? It's incredibly important when you are renting out a property, how do you accept the rental payment, right?
You have to be able to take that money in a secure and safe way. So it's like a non-negotiable that we have an amazing partner to point landlords to and Baselane checks every box. Saad, I wanna ask you, what are landlords dealing with when it comes to getting paid in real life? What are some of the challenges that.
That landlords are going through on a day-to-day basis? Yeah, I think there's a lot in there. One of the things that we can see is that it's still quite manual. And it's something that is causing problems with the landlord and the tenants. So that's one of the challenges I think when we think about the different ways of paying.
There is data out there. There's surveys that have been done. We know that renters, especially professional renters, like in the midterm rental space, want to pay online, but we see still a high prevalence of paying through cash and checks and then what we call P two P apps like payment peer-to-peer apps like a Venmo or a Zelle.
We want to move away from those things and to go to online rental payments so we can be more professional, more secure, and be able to also get paid on time and faster payments as well. Yeah. One of, one of the things I dealt with when I was. Very first becoming a landlord was like, okay, how do I accept money in a way that is like practical?
It's easy to get, it's secure. So it might, I think on the surface it seems very easy, right? We'll just take the rent payment, right? But that's not so easy, especially when you have. People who might not be right by you, or maybe they're traveling and they're not to the city yet and you wanna get their deposit or their first month's rent, or maybe you wanna be able to accept it online, or the tenant wants to be able to pay with credit cards.
So I think it's one of those things that seems very simple and you might not. Understand the complications of it until something goes wrong. And Asad, I know you have thought about what can go wrong in a million different ways. So I would be interested to hear a story from you maybe that you've heard from another landlord or just through your day-to-day life of when was the time that it didn't go the way that someone expected it to go.
Yeah. There's so many stories of that. I can tell you one where. We were working with a mom and her daughter who were managing a few properties together, and they were just winging it on Zelle. And I was talking to her at this event and she's my mom's asking me to do this. And I've gotten behind on keeping accounting of who paid and how much.
And then if you have late fees. In that case she did. They were also not charging the late fees. They looked back and like manually apply it like months later, and then the tenants would get upset and so they were actually making money on the property, but the process was causing a lot of financial stress, I call it, because especially as small landlords, we care about payments that are on time.
They're structured. Why? Because we have to pay the bills. I gotta pay the mortgage, I gotta pay the insurance. I don't want to delay those things because I didn't get paid on time. And that's an example where they were using Zelle and we, invited them to Baselane. They set up their online auto auto pay.
When the renters auto pay, obviously the landlords are happy they get paid on time on day one or two of the month start. And then again, if they get, behind you have a lease agreement, you can assess the late fees automatically as well. I think that's like a common thing that I see. These days, a lot of these peer-to-peer apps, and we're trying to make it more automated, less stressful by getting you paid on time and faster.
And one thing that I've come across, with my midterm rentals is that idea of daily limits, right? It's it's not great when you have to take a payment one day and then take the other half another day, especially if you're on top of their move in date or they just forget to send the other half.
So it just makes it more complicated and I love that. I personally have used Baselane rent payments already. And what I really liked was how easy it was. For the tenant to be able to set up their payments, they can choose to set up auto pay if they'd like, and it gets those, sends those rent reminders to both myself as a landlord and to the tenant.
So that was super helpful. What are some other things that could go wrong? I think security is one as well, that Baselane. Covers. Yeah. First it's, they're not designed for us landlords, and this has been the challenge in the US is like we've been left behind as real estate investors. We don't have technology built for us.
It's built for paying your friend for a pizza slice. Or a night out for dinner, right? But then you start collecting rent on these applications, or cash app or Venmo or things like that. It's not designed for this purpose. So there's a lot of issues with it when you dig into it. One is, as we mentioned, inability to schedule and pay automatically, right?
That's one of the issues. The other is getting access to your money. It seems like it's instant. Because of the idea that it's in your wallet. But if it's in your Venmo wallet or cash app Wallet, it doesn't mean you have the money. You still have to transfer it out to another account that you own, like a bank account where you're paying all your other bills.
And so in fact, it's slower in that case. There's a poor sort of tabulation of invoices and payments. So if you have a, if you have an eviction scenario, if you have. Things go south and you need to have a clean report to submit to your, whatever authorities. How do you do that? Are you gonna send them Venmo screenshots or cash app screenshots, or are you gonna print out like a nice report of a tenant ledger from Baselane?
Security is an issue, right? There's a lot of fraud. Every time you look at Zelle, Venmo, and all of these, especially when you're adding people you don't know off the internet. And a lot of times in this case, that's our business. We are inviting tenants that are, we don't know them. We might have screened them, but we've never met them often, and my properties are outta state, so I never meet them, right?
And so now you're adding strangers and you might get something wrong. You send the money. You might not be able to retrieve it if you send it to the wrong place. And again, there's other issues with the access to the account and security around those accounts as well. And so that's another issue.
Another issue is partial payments. Depending on what city you're in, if you are, let's say again, you have a eviction scenario, or I always plan for the worst case, right? You wanna plan for the worst and be ready. Sometimes partial payments can hurt you. So if you're owed $2,000, but somebody pays you 50, they could say, oh, I made a payment.
I'm working on the rest. And that might nullify your process for a eviction diversion program or eviction program, for example. And so platforms like Baselane don't accept partial payments. You only get full payment. Or there's no other option other than that. And then I think you mentioned some of the other things, like payment limits being an issue, right?
So if you have payment limits and you split the payment, especially for nicer units, you're also gonna forget the accounting for that. And then it might be a dispute down the road and you might not be able to know what happened and what date and what was it, what was the reason for you have to do more work so you're actually creating more work for yourself.
By doing this. And one more thing I'd say is support. A lot of these platforms, again, they're not built for landlords or real estate investors and renters. So they don't have the support network for you to be able to call in and say, Hey, I have a lease issue. I had this problem. Or your renters, if they call in same thing, they're not gonna be able to help you as much.
And so all of those things combined really caused a lot of. Challenges for landlords whether it's one property or two, or three or four. And sometimes, there's also hidden fees for transferring money and processing payments. And so that's, those are all the things you wanna avoid when we're dealing with these kinds of P two P apps or other ways of paying that I would say are more manual and more expensive.
I think it's really important that everybody remember that your booking is an entire process. And at Furnished Finder we're a direct. Connection site, right? We connect you with tenant leads and we give you the tools to make them into true tenants. So you're gonna go through, you're gonna communicate, you're gonna confirm those details, you're gonna do a tenant screening, you're gonna get an online lease, right?
And then the next step is, arguably, one of the most important is getting that rental money, right? Because otherwise we can't pay the mortgage, we can't pay the bills, right? Like that. That's what. Is the end game for all of us. To be successful and to be able to create this good environment for the tenant is we have to have that transaction right?
We wanna make it easy and we wanna make it professional. And even if you have one property or you are renting an A DU in the back of your house, or you are renting a basement apartment. It's still really important to have all of those tools locked in. And oftentimes when you're using something like Venmo, you're using something like Zelle.
You're accepting paper checks, you're opening yourself up to all this risk that SOD is talking about. But you're also making it harder than you realize by trying to say, okay, I'm gonna take the easy step now, and then all the work catches up with you. And the other thing is you are gonna wanna come off as a professional.
I think it's, I think it's. A travesty when someone as a landlord says, I'm gonna send a professional screening through TransUnion, I'm gonna send a digital lease, right? I'm gonna do all of these things, and then, oh, you can just Venmo me your rent. Please, like even if you only have one property, this is a business for you, right?
And you need to treat it as such. And you want to set yourself up as a landlord. A landlord is not someone who accepts Venmo, right? You wanna have professional processes. So that's why we, we partnered with Baselane and I know we've been a little bit soft about introducing Baselane and who they are and what you guys really have to offer, but that's because it's worthy about talking about what is this challenge and why does it matter.
So Saad, before we get any further, give us like the high level what is Baselane. What do you guys offer, especially for those landlords who might have one or two properties or who are just getting started or who might think to themselves, what I'm doing right now is just fine. Why would I change it?
Yeah. Baselane is a financial platform with banking and payments built for real estate investors like you and me for the mom and pop landlords. I think there's about 15 million of us in the US and our mission is to help you. Run your real estate business with a very organized, automated way and give you tons of time back and give you financial clarity through our reporting and our sort of tax center, and allow you to really, again, it is a business and we're here to help you run that business professionally with ease and also help you scale it if that's what you're looking to do.
And so that's really what Baselane is. Offer I would say an a fantastic online. Rent collection portal where landlords can come in and easily in a couple of minutes, set up your lease terms to be able to collect rent with for each of your properties. We have a very effective and simple and modern experience for landlords and for renters.
We get amazing reviews on that. We spent a lot of time on that. And they can set up auto pay, they can set up manual pay, they can pay with a CH, debit credit card, and that's all available with very competitive pricing on the fees. If you are collecting rent into Baselane in our banking platform.
The Aach fees are wa for the renter, so it doesn't cost anybody anything. All of that is free. You also get two day rent, so that means in two business days, your money is in the bank account. I care about getting paid on time and we want our renters to pay on time, and Basin helps with that. It helps with the reminders, the automation. It will nudge the renter. It'll let you know if they're late in case you need to intervene and help. That's a big part of it. And we've also built other tools. Renters can get incentivized by to pay on time, like building their credit score up if they pay on time, things like that.
And your tenants are gonna love it 'cause they're gonna say Thank you, this is super easy. I can just do this in a minute. And I'm done. And they have all the re, the receipts, all the invoices are there. Everything is in one place.
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I love what you're saying and I think this is a great time for me to add in my personal experience with Baselane rent payments. When you're switching, you're like, Hey, what I'm doing is working. Why do I wanna put in the effort to switch to something else? Some of the things that I was.
So excited about for this partnership was the idea of having that $0 a CH payment option. And for those that may not know what a CH is, it's just bank to bank transfers, right? So it was really nice to be able to offer that and not require a tenant to have to pay towards that a CH, but then also have that flexibility to pay by credit card or debit card if that's something that's important to them at 3.49% with.
Baselane. So it's very competitive. And then as far as the process went, it's okay, I'm in the middle of trying to secure this tenant. I don't want to confuse them with all the steps along the way. And it was really nice to see how it, it actually simplified the process. One thing that I really liked that wasn't available on the other rent payment options that I was using was Baselane create you a.
Payment link when you set up the rent schedule. So before I've even completed the setup process with the tenant, I've done the tenant screening, I know I'm moving forward. I'm in the process of setting up the lease. Once they sign, I can already have that rent schedule initiated on Baselane and I can copy the link and either text it or.
Email it to them, so it makes it easy, right? Then the communication and say, Hey, if you're not familiar with Baselane, the things that I like is it's the trusted Furnished Finder platform for rent payments. It also is a very simple way to, to manage your rental payments all in one place.
You can set up the auto bill if you like, or you'll get rent reminders, and it really is an, a great conversation with your tenants. I just actually onboarded a tenant today. And she like signed the lease. So we sent her the link. Now, one thing that's important is you wanna collect the security deposit in advance of handing over the keys, right?
Obviously. So we sent that over. They're moving in next week, but they're paying this week and I'm gonna have all the cash in. Before we do the exchange and, give them access to the property. And that's great. And by the way, that's in Philadelphia. I'm in, I'm not there. And it's all remote and we can do that.
So that's it's really convenient and it's super easy. It's the easy button for renters. I was just about to say in my eyes, the way that I define Baselane is every tool you need to accept payments in a professional and easy way. Something that I've learned in business and this very much carries over into being a landlord, is make it easy for someone to pay you.
Okay? And for a tenant, we want it to be easy for a tenant to pay you. And the thing is when you say, you can Venmo me, you can z me, you can do whatever. That's also a red flag to the tenant because they don't want to be scammed. Okay? So they are looking for someone that is professional and they are looking for someone who can give them a secure portal to pay their rent online.
And a lot of these travelers are looking to rack up credit card miles to pay for their flights back home or whatnot. Or maybe they're putting it on a corporate card, if they're on a work contract, things like that. You need to make it easy. To pay you. And Baselane makes it easy to get paid. And again, we don't realize this, and I've been presenting this at conferences is there's something called financial management.
We're all doing it, but we don't realize it. What is that? That's like balancing the checkbook, paying the bills, making sure that things are getting paid on time and that actually causes financial stress. And we've done surveys on this with our audiences and our customers, and we don't realize it, but you and I.
When rent week is happening and we need to get paid, we're stressed out a little bit. We're all, there's always that moment as a landlord, you're like I hope they pay on time. And you just cross your fingers and that's what we want to avoid. We want to take that financial stress away and give you the automation and more of that certainty and predictability, which is, coming with a Baselane.
Yeah, you can have these rent reminders sent automatically to your tenants, right? And you can have a late, if you have a late fee and someone's late paying rent, you don't have to be the bad guy. Baselane can be your bad guy. It's in the lease, right? It's in the lease. It's it's in the lease. It just, it helps you like put your.
Rental into action. I just, I don't know. I'm at this phase in my landlord life where anything that makes my life a little bit easier, a little bit more streamlined is great. And even if you don't have a lot of properties, I think it's important to look at every aspect and just be like, what can I do smarter?
What can I do more efficiently? What I, what can I do more professionally? And accepting online rent payments. It just, it's how we expect to pay these days, right? Like it's just how we pay for things. My son actually went to a conference at a local hotel the other weekend, and it's a ca it's an entire cashless hotel.
He could not pay, they did not accept the dollar he had to pay online. Like it's just it's where we're going, right? And you want to make sure that you're a part of that business and your renters are used to it. They're paying everything they pay, whether it's their daily, Netflix subscription for the month or whatever music app, like they're used to these kind of modern, interfaces.
And so they're looking for that kind of experience when they come to you. So this is where you wanna avoid the hey cash check Cash app, Venmo. Whatever, like the clunky process with text messages and do the professional, method with a nice link and email onboarding all of that. Yeah, I think this is a good time to remind everyone too, if you're newer to Furnished Finder and you don't have your first property yet in the monthly midterm rental space, the midterm rental tenant type is the best tenant type out there.
And, do your research, you can decide what you want for your landlord experience. But what Katie and I say time and time again on the show is tenants are gentle on the property because, they're not moving in the. Furniture they're not putting things up on the walls.
They're just showing up their suitcase. They're professionals or families relocating to an area where, you know, the likelihood of them not being able to pay would be rare in the midterm rental space, right? Like evictions are rare in the midterm rental space. This is a professional tenant type that is thankful to have a home away from home while they're working or relocating to an area, and they really are the best tenant type.
So before we tell you where to get started and how to find Baselane in your Furnished Finder account, Katie sod, any last things you wanna add? I would say, I just wanna share that Baselane has all kinds of customers. We have so many folks that are starting out. They have one unit, they have two units, and they've heard about us through Furnished Finder or BiggerPockets or online forms that they came to us.
'cause they wanted to solve this problem. So I would reach out, ask lots of questions. We're also starting to offer, group demos and trainings if you wanna just do a. Onboarding together with other people like yourself. And so we're putting those resources out there in collaboration with Furnished Finder to help you get started and make this easy for you.
I think I would just add that like the general sense that we have gotten since we announced this partnership has been so much excitement and almost just a sense of finally, Furnished Finder and Baselane have gotten together because at Furnished Finder we. Pride ourselves. And it is like the core of our business that you as a landlord are in control of your listing.
You're in control of your booking, right? We give you direct communication. We don't have those booking fees. All of those things that you guys all know and love about Furnished Finder. Trying that goes hand in hand with monthly rentals. A big part of that is how are you gonna get your money and Baselane, like we, we have dug into this partnership so much and the sense of relief and just joy that we are hearing from people of ugh.
Finally, you guys have found each other. It's been like, like we've been like on a long lost island just waiting to connect. So there's a reason for that, right? Like when you're seeing leaders in this space come together and celebrate it, and it's for a good reason, right? Like you guys as the way that you.
Set up landlords for success is very compatible with how we do, and it's something that we know every landlord will really find success on. Even if you have one property or if you have a hundred. And that's something that's really unique and it's hard to find but you truly are like, if you are not in a position to accept online rent payments, you are leaving opportunity on the table.
And I, I don't say that to be scary. I don't say that to overemphasize a point, but it's just the truth. If you are not giving your tenants an option to pay online in a secure way, like you're leaving money out there you are leaving renters, right? You're not playing it at your full game.
You. All right, so where to get started, you want to log in or go to your Furnished Finder dashboard and go to the section called Landlord Tools. We have everything you need to be able to operate your monthly midterm rental business. There. We've got the tenant screenings, the lease state specific leases, and then.
Online rent payments with Baselane. So get started. If you have any questions, put it in the comments. We definitely like to stay involved in your journey. Let us know if you are just getting started or you've been with Furnish Find your many years. We love to hear those comments. Don't forget to subscribe.
We, we like to wrap up with some fun rapid fire questions. So let's do that. And I'd like to kick it off sod with, what's one thing about the Baselane team culture that might surprise landlords listening today? We are customer obsessed. We talk about our customers, what they want, what they need, and we build it.
Oh, I love that. You're good at rapid fire. What's one of the top requests right now? Oh, there's so many. One of them is a more sophisticated multi-user access, so accountants can log in and other folks like that, we're making it even more sophisticated With your CPA can log in, a team member, a virtual assistant.
Oh, great. Other people you work with can log in. Yeah. That's awesome. Alright, Saad, you have midterm rentals and we love talking to people who are also living the landlord life like Kelly and myself. If you had to buy your next midterm rental tomorrow, what city would you invest in? Probably in the Atlanta area, 'cause I moved down to Atlanta a few years ago from New York.
And I would want it to be more local. I think there's a benefit to that. Saad, we really appreciate you being here today. Check in the show notes of how to get, to Baselane. And then reminder, just go to Furnished Finder and your landlord tools. Y'all have a great day and we'll catch you again next time on Landlord Diaries.
Thank you.
Thanks for joining us on this episode. If you're enjoying The Landlord Diaries, be sure to like, subscribe and share it with others. With over 300,000 listings across the country, Furnished Finder makes it. Easy for landlords and tenants to connect directly. No middleman. No markup. Ready to list your property.