EQUILLORE - MEDIA RELEASE - October 15, 2007

Help at hand for residential property investors chasing rentals from tardy tenants

“Many of these people don’t plan to be bad tenants – they simply don’t know how to manage their finances correctly,” says Deon Botha. “What should be a straightforward deal between property investor and tenant can become extremely complicated. It doesn’t have to be, though.”

Botha is CIO of Equillore, a company that has combined technological resources with legal skills to take the sweat out of collecting rent and compromising one’s assets. The Rentmaster product is housed in the Lease business unit of the Equillore group.

Between 25 to 30% of renters habitually pay late, have to be reminded to pay, or default completely. And according to insiders, it’s not necessarily the low end of the rental scale where the problems lie. Within the R5 000-R15 000 a month scale there are a fair amount of bad apples – which can prove deadly when one is trying to meet bond demands.

“Organising tenants and seeing to maintenance of the property are important, but unless you’re collecting the rent it’s all going to go pear-shaped,” says Botha.

Rentmaster focuses on this specific angle. Marketing manager, Lynne Kuter, says: “What sets us apart from other agencies who deal with rental properties is that while we all deal with issues such as credit checks and debit order collection, we are the only company that offers property investors a 100% guarantee of rental for three months.

“It took us four years to create a sustainable risk pool – and the system has proven itself. Now we are underwritten by Santam. Currently, we have no outstanding debt,” says Kuter.

The secret of the success, she reckons, is to offer a complete rental-based package that concentrates on the collection of rent. Rentmaster takes clients through a step-by-step process that is professionally documented and includes the signing up of tenants, and prodding of tenants after non-payment, with no legal costs for recoveries or evictions. Clients pay 4% of the rental plus R34.20 a month for the service.

“It’s managed electronically, so it’s easy to operate nationally,” says Kuter. The website at www.rentmaster.co.za is the first port of call for potential clients, with telephonic contact an additional form of communication. The telephone is also used to remind, and then galvanise, tenants who default.

“It sounds like a heavy approach but we’re not going out there with a baseball bat,” smiles Botha. “We try and find out what the problem is. If there is no response, then we’re all over them like a rash. But you’d be surprised how things can be worked out when you actually get talking.”

Kuter adds: “At the end of the day, however, property investors want to protect their investments. That’s why we offer the three-month guarantee option that gives the investor peace of mind. If it comes to a serious situation, we operate swiftly."

The rental market is complicated by legal acts such as the Prevention of Illegal Eviction (PIE) act. The Act was initially passed to protect farmworkers and similarly vulnerable tenants from being unfairly evicted from their homes. But unscrupulous tenants sometimes use the Act to attain “squatter” status, whereby they do not pay rent and it takes months and months to legally evict them. Paying legal fees to facilitate this gets costly.

“The property investor gets knocked three times – by the delinquent tenants, by the lawyers, and by a dysfunctional court system which often takes very long for cases to be heard,” says Kuter.

“Rentmaster is a business solution is aimed at property managers and the investor who is personally managing his or her properties. It’s legal without any exorbitant lawyers’ costs, it’s practical and it’s easy to use,” she explains.

The company is about to release a similar package, called Tenantmaster, that will protect tenants.

Ends

Issued by HWB Communications
On behalf of Equillore

Contact us for further information

www.rentmaster.co.za