Eli Secor / January 17, 2024
There are many different property management software out there that can help independent landlords. Which one is right for you? Here we’ll provide you with a TurboTenant software and app review.
We’ll give you an overview of the software as we offer our thoughts, including highlights and areas for improvement. We’ll also discuss a couple of alternatives that you might consider — depending on your needs — and finally leave you with our overall takeaways on TurboTenant landlord software.
TurboTenant Landlord Software Features:
TurboTenant is online property management software that helps landlords through the listing process. Here’s an overview of TurboTenant’s key features.
Advertising/Listings: With TurboTenant, you can create a listing along with a description, photos, and amenities, that gets published to over a dozen top listing sites. One of the things that stands out to us is that there’s a place to link videos. They also syndicate to over a dozen notable sites, including Redfin, Apartments.com, Zumper, and Apartment List, which we get many of our leads from.
Prescreener: They also automatically send a list of questions to leads. We find this to be really helpful because it shows people what the criteria are upfront. The questions address income, pets, number of residents, smoking, and move-in date.
Applications: Through TurboTenant, you can also request an online application with the applicant’s name and email address. The application includes standard questions and also allows you to customize, even with the free plan. You get to choose who pays the application fee.
Tenant Screening: TurboTenant uses TransUnion to get credit reports, background checks, and eviction history. Just invite the prospective tenant to apply and TurboTenant will contact them to verify their identity. You choose whether they pay or you pay, and results are instantaneously available.
Lease Agreements: We also like that the responses from the application prepopulate to a state-specific lease agreement automatically. Their state-specific leases (for all 50 states) are a great feature to have and also allow you to add custom questions. Once everything is completed, you can request digital signatures from tenants, including outside documents you upload.
Online Rent Collection: TurboTenant also includes one of our favorite features: online rent collection. TurboTenant makes it easy to have separate bank accounts for each property, as well as separate payments between roommates. You can schedule payments, automate late rent charges, send reminders to tenants, and provide a credit boost option for tenants. With their Premium subscription, you can get an expedited payout and connect to an unlimited number of bank accounts.
Rental Property Accounting: Through their partnership with REI Hub, TurboTenant also offers an accounting feature. Information such as rent rolls, expenses, and other records are integrated into REI Hub, which provides a full range of tax and investment performance reports. This feature requires a separate accounting add-on.
Maintenance Management and Tracking: Something that stands out for us is that TurboTenant has an app and is not just browser-based. Their app provides in-app messaging and maintenance requests, where they can upload photos to communicate maintenance issues.
Rental Price Analysis: By surveying local vacancies, TurboTenant will give you an idea of where you sit in the pricing range (comparables). While it’s not a very detailed analysis, it gives you a great visual of where you are and what potential tenants are seeing in terms of price range. We think that this is a great starting point for adequately pricing your rental.
Landlord software that simplifies your rental business. A comprehensive dashboard and integrated accounting software provides a full view into your income and expenses.
STRENGTH: Complete Solution
Highlights:
These are some of the features that we think make TurboTenant stand out:
- Prescreening function: We think it’s very important to get the ball rolling by quickly figuring out who is a good fit for your rental. TurboTenant offers a prescreening application, which allows you to customize questions about pets, smoking, income, move-in date, and number of occupants. As soon as renters inquire, the application is automatically sent to them.
- State-specific lease generator: TurboTenant also offers state-specific leases, which stands out to us. It’s important to have a lease that is made to adhere to your local laws and regulations. However, it’s important to note that they do not get into county or city laws. The nice thing is that this feature allows you to get the required forms for your location, which you can upload along with the lease.
- All-in-one electronic signing: With TurboTenant’s Premium subscription, you can upload external documents and have tenants sign everything at once. Everything stores together, keeping you organized.
- Free rental analysis tool: We like that TurboTenant offers one of the only free rental analysis tools on the market. This feature comes in handy when looking at other properties in your pricing range, giving you better insight into how to price your property.
- Customer service and support: We have found that TurboTenant’s customer service, along with their tutorial articles and videos have made using the software easier. It has been fairly easy for us to find the answers to our questions.
- Robust accounting features with REI Hub subscription (additional cost – $15-80/month): While this feature comes with an additional fee, it allows you to get rid of other software, such as Quickbooks.
Areas for Improvement:
While TurboTenant offers a variety of useful features, we think there are certain areas that could be improved.
- When listing on certain websites, especially Apartments.com, your phone number will appear on the listing, which we haven’t found a way to disable.
- We also think that the screening is a bit expensive — $55 with the free plan or $45 with the Premium plan. This is a little bit more than other services that we use. While this doesn’t necessarily affect landlords, this may possibly reduce the number of applications you get.
- TurboTenant does not offer an automatic rental reference verification feature, which we find handy. Other platforms, such as Avail, automatically send a questionnaire to previous landlords who were listed as references.
- While the REI Hub add-on provides great accounting features, it is a bit pricey. They point out that Quickbooks is more expensive, however.
Pricing:
| Free | Premium | |
| Cost | $0 | $8.25/month or $99/year |
| Units | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Syndicated listings | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customizable application questions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Credit, criminal, and eviction screening reports | ✓ | ✓ |
| State-specific leases | $59 each | $0 |
| Online rent payments | Tenant pays $2/ACH transaction | $0 |
| Maintenance tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Property accounting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Expedited rent payments | ✕ | ✓ |
| Unlimited connected bank accounts | ✕ | ✓ |
| Verified applicant income | ✕ | ✓ |
| Electronic document signing, including uploads | ✕ | ✓ |
| Landlord Forms Pack | $199 for 32 rental forms | $0 |
Alternatives to TurboTenant:
TurboTenant may be the right option for many, there are also other software that may fit your needs and requirements.
RentRedi offers a premium maintenance add-on and they will handle your maintenance requests for you. They have a system that will triage your maintenance issues by routing calls to their call center and sending out professionals, even if it’s at midnight. No more late night emergencies!
Avail is another great option for a featured property management software product.
If all you need to do is collect rent, PayRent is a great rental collection app. They have about every feature you could want, if this is your main priority.
Also Read: Avail Landlord Software Review: What We Think
Also Read: Azibo Landlord Software Review: What We Think
Our Takeaways:
“The free plan is great for landlords who don’t require a lot of extra features with their property management software. TurboTenant offers advertising and listing capabilities, robust online rent collection, as well as an application and screening process that is comparable with other products. I like the leases and documents function, but it’s not free, so if you’re able to get your leases somewhere else (Rental Housing Association, for example), then you might not need this. If you do, and you have more than a handful of units, the Premium plan is probably worth it, and comes with extra features discussed earlier. I also like the Income Insights feature, in particular, that verifies the accuracy of a renter’s self-reported income, giving me peace of mind that what they are telling me is true.”
– CHRIS LEE, LANDLORD GURU
“I recently started managing a number of my units on TurboTenant and have been very happy with the user interface, as well as the comprehensive tools and features. I also like that vacancy ads are syndicated to a wide range of popular rental listing sites, getting my unit in front of a huge number of prospective tenants. Similarly, the prescreening questionnaire that’s automatically sent to applicants saves me time because it lets me eliminate potential tenants who do not meet basic criteria around animals, smoking, income, and move-in date. The state-specific leases make it easy and quick to move an applicant to an official tenant. TurboTenant provides great customization, important addenda and forms, and the ability to bring all documents together for easy e-signing.”
– ELI SECOR, LANDLORD GURU
TurboTenant Landlord Software Review: FAQs
Is TurboTenant a legit website?
Yes. TurboTenant serves over 600,000 landlords and 2 million tenants.
How does TurboTenant make money?
According to their website, TurboTenant makes money by collecting and keeping the screening fee. Since they buy them in bulk (at a cheaper rate than landlords), they can make money off each report.
What credit score does TurboTenant use?
Once subscribed to TurboTenant’s Rent Reporting feature, they will send your on-time payments to TransUnion and Experian.
How does TurboTenant verify income?
Through TransUnion, TurboTenant will verify tenants’ income by cross-referencing the tenant’s reported income with information reported to the credit union.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and Landlord Gurus may earn a commission. Our mission remains to provide valuable resources and information that helps landlords manage their rental properties efficiently and profitably. We link to these companies and their products because of their quality, not because of the commission.
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