This special article is for Realtors who hate doing rentals. Are you a realtor who hates doing rentals?

“I don’t do rentals.” If you are you a realtor who hates doing rentals, we hear you. How many times have I heard a Realtor colleague tell me how much they’d like to make “I don’t do rentals” their mantra.

But then, whether it’s out of the hope of a future buyer lead or simply a moment of generosity, they’ll relent. “Okay, I’ll do a rental. Just this once….”

Famous last words. Next thing that well-meaning agent knows, the thankless rental grind has begun.

If the following scenarios sound familiar, you’ve experienced the notorious Northern Virginia “rental schlep” firsthand.

1. You take hours away from nurturing sales leads or planning your next marketing campaign to show rental properties to your client. (And in accommodating your client’s work schedules you sit in late-afternoon Beltway traffic).
2. You wait…and wait…and wait for your rental client, who never actually shows up. (Because after all, they got held up at work. And they’re not paying you for your time.)
3. Your client finally decides on a rental. Hooray! Except, as you’ve come to find out, this is when your paperwork nightmare actually begins. Time to get the printer-scanner all warmed up.
4. You have to collect application fees and earnest money and then scan/send the paper application (which appears to be covered in coffee stains and bacon grease from the client’s breakfast and keeps getting jammed in your document feeder.)
5. You have to circle back to the tenant to let them know more information is needed because of some (surprise!) derogatory information that turned up in their credit report. Which they somehow forgot to mention to you).
6. It turns out that if you want to close this thing, you’ll have to do even more work like overseeing the lease signing and making sure everyone gets a copy.
7. And then, once the lease is signed, it’s time to wait some more. The days drag by as you wait for your small commission check. Which, you decide, probably worked out to be slightly less than a minimum-wage rate.
8. After the lease is signed, you get back to focusing on sales (which is, after all, why you got into real estate in the first place). And you decide it’s probably best not to even calculate the opportunity cost of that rental you just took on.
9. “I hate doing rentals,” you tell your colleagues. And they all nod sympathetically, remembering the last time they did the rental schlep in the hopes of forging a client relationship. 

Is there a solution? We think so. At WJD, we’re proud to have perfected an automated rental process that gives the agent just one job. 

Just open the door.

That’s right. Show the property and then send your client to our website – that’s ALL you have to do! Your clients will complete our interactive Rental Application and submit the required funds (processing fee and security deposit) electronically from our site. We will handle the application processing, communication with the homeowner, communication with your client, the lease signing, the walk-through, literally every aspect of the process. And then we make sure your commission check is sent as soon as we receive the executed lease back from your clients. Granted, we can’t help you with the occasional no-show clients or the Beltway traffic while you drive to the next showing. But if you’ll open the door, we’ll promise to take care of the rest.

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