What if I already have a tenant in my rental home?

That's great!  It means we can take our time and be judicious.  Here are the most important first steps

1.  Notify the resident that Victory Property Management will be taking over their lease, and will be the company to send payment to going forward

2.  Get us a copy of the lease, in particular, but also give your account manager a general run down of your experience wit the current resident.  Without knowing the exact lease terms we are dramatically limited in our ability to plan or enforce

3.  Get us their full contact information, all avenues, all contacts, but also highlight the best method

4.  Get us formal records regarding the payment situation. If they're in good standing, we don't need much other than confirmation of how much the deposits are, where they'll be located, and how they'll be handled on move out. Most owners send us the deposit to hold in our trust account

Once we have these two items we send the resident a verification notice of what the deposit amounts are, who is currently holding them, and what the intended plans are. This will cover us from evolving terms once they move out

5.  Within 30 days our account managers are expected to inspect the home, however that can be difficult if we don't receive these items promptly.  We want to build rapport early in the process, so we usually do not do an extensive interior inspection unless there are issues we or the resident feel warrant that.  It's more of a meet and greet, quickly assess, and do a thorough inspection of the exterior / general condition of the property, community, and features.  Of course, this also gets us face-to-face with our new residents most of the time and allows us to send the clear message that our company is both fair and reasonable, but also highly engaged with all aspects of their stay with us

Payment:  In order to avoid having a rent payment go to the wrong location, it's imperative that we move quickly to update the resident's payment instructions, instill trust, and provide them a portal / link.  That means it's imperative that we receive the 4 items above quickly

Even still, residents often have auto payments setup, or are unsure if we can be trusted, or simply forget and it's not unusual for the first payment to be sent with the method they're used to

We also need the following direct deposit authorization form so we can then disburse those funds to you

ACH / Direct deposit authorization form with instructions for returning

Residents are notoriously difficult to get a key from, so it's significantly better if you provide us with 3 copies of each one, but at this stage particularly one for some access.  If we negotiate one with the tenant we often give a $10 or $15 credit for the hassle