IT Start-Up Founder and Property Investor Streamlines Buy-to-Let Business through Property Management Platform with 50% Time Saving
By embracing innovative new landlord platform, Alphaletz, Naresh can now keep track of his compliancy and rent payments, saving valuable time and enjoying less stress!
Founder and CEO of RemoteStar, Naresh Harwani helps IT start-up founders build world class companies. Naresh’s journey into property investment started ten years ago with a single let. He has since expanded his portfolio to include 6 HMOs and 3 single let properties, totalling 39 units. He has an ambitious goal of adding 3-4 new HMOs per year.
Managing a full-time IT consultancy career and a property investment business means Naresh’s time is extremely valuable to him. He prefers not to use an agent and instead likes to build a direct relationship between landlord and tenant. By putting the effort upfront in finding the right tenant match, he saves a lot of work throughout the tenancy period. Naresh prides himself on being a good, responsive landlord.
Landlord Challenges
“My biggest issue has been managing information as I store things across spreadsheets, email, and Google Drive. It can be really difficult to quickly find answers, so using a landlord app where everything is in one place is proving really helpful. It’s great to be able to quickly check any missed rental payments or if there are any certificates to renew.”
As his property portfolio increases, Naresh is considering other options to help streamline the daily management. “Now that I have an increase in the number of tenants, I’m reluctantly considering a search for an agent, particularly for newer properties that are further away.”
An agent typically charges around 8-15% of the monthly rental fee so this is a decision that must be well considered. Alongside considering an agent, Naresh wants to embrace technology to help automate the daily management of his properties, tenants, and finances.
“I can see the value in using an agent for initial viewings and finding new tenants, but there is still so much to keep on top of, even after the new tenant is found and moved in. With fines for non-compliance being as high as £50,000, and even a potential criminal record, one forgotten certificate can literally put a landlord out of business, after years of hard work building up a portfolio.”
End of Year Financial Reporting
“I’ve just started using Alphaletz, and I can already see it’s going to be really useful for the end of year tax return. I need my income and expense history to send to my accountant, and that’s so easy to do now by running a quick report in the App.”
“I’m not good at keeping receipts. The app helps me to stay on top of expenses by taking a photo of the receipt, uploading it into my Alphaletz account and allocating against the property.”
Landlords have been changing the way they manage their business by setting up limited companies to become more tax efficient. For anyone who has multiple properties with shared ownership or different company entities, tracking income and expense creates additional complexity. The ability to add different property owners to properties, means individual reports can be run at the click of a button. This saves so much time, while providing accurate financial reports.
“My properties are split between myself, my limited company, plus an additional investor so a system that helps me track finances by owner or investor is invaluable. It’s also handy to link different bank accounts to properties.”
Staying Compliant
Whether you use an agent or not, compliance is still your responsibility. As property portfolios increase it can be easy to forget renewal dates, particularly when certificates are valid for different amounts of time and can run for example from 1, 5 or 10 years.
“Compliance issues are always on my mind. I actually don’t know when my EPCs are running out. With the Task Management System in the app, I’m now reminded ahead of time which is really invaluable”
Also, by tracking all emails, notes, conversations, and photos, landlords can track a full history of correspondence with tenants, proving extremely useful if any disputes occur.
Alphaletz takes the guesswork out of when or what happened. Whilst it can take time to build up the data in the App, the savings in on-going management time make it extremely worthwhile.
Challenges
- Too much wasted time looking for information across different systems such as spreadsheets, email & Google Drive
- Expense management
- Tracking missed rent payments
- Staying compliant
Solution
Alphaletz.com Smart Landlord App
Benefits
- A single place to store all property, tenant, and finance information.
- Ability to upload receipts and link to properties or show as a general expense
- Dashboard summary view showing rent status, tenancy status & task list
- Financial reporting for end of tax year. Reports can be run at any time and show income and expense by property owner.
- 50% time saving on daily management
