Blog
The LeaseRooster blog
What we are learning about running rentals, plus product news from the LeaseRooster team.
Posts
101 posts-
Automating rent reminders and late fees
The parts of rent collection worth automating are the ones you do identically every month and resent doing by hand: the reminder before the due date, the reminder after it, and the fee that attaches on a fixed day. Money -
Should you accept partial rent payments?
Taking half the rent feels like progress and sometimes is. It also resets the number on any notice you have served, so the answer depends entirely on whether you have started the formal process yet. Money -
What to do when a tenant stops paying rent
The first two weeks decide how this ends. A landlord who finds out why, writes it down, and sets a date recovers more money than one who sends four reminders and then files. Laws and rules -
How to write a late rent notice
There are two documents here and they do different jobs. One is a reminder that gets most rent paid. The other is a statutory notice that starts a legal clock, and it fails on details like which days you are allowed to count. Laws and rules -
The best CRM for landlords under 100 units, described honestly
Six ways a small landlord can keep track of tenants, vendors, and leads, from TenantCloud and DoorLoop to a Zoho vertical and a plain spreadsheet. Each entry says only what the vendor's own pages said in September 2026, and LeaseRooster is last, with a disclosure. Blog post -
What credit score should a landlord require?
There is no correct number, and that is the useful finding. What matters is that the number exists in writing before the applicant does, that it fits your market, and that you have a written answer for applicants who have no score at all. Screening -
Great credit score, terrible tenant: the signals that actually matter
A credit score predicts whether someone repays credit. It was never built to predict whether they pay rent on the first, keep the unit, or stay past month eight. Four signals that do more work, and how to write each one into criteria you can defend. Screening -
The tenant screening checklist every landlord needs
Most screening mistakes happen before the application arrives, in the gap where there is no written standard yet. This is the checklist, in the order the steps actually happen, with the four lines that never belong on it. Screening -
How to verify tenant income and employment
Pay stubs are the easiest document in this whole process to fake, and they are still what most landlords ask for. A ranking of the documents by how hard each is to forge, a short employer script, and the income rules that vary by state. Screening -
Questions to ask a tenant's previous landlord
Start with a question the reference cannot fake. Then eleven more in a fixed order, the two you are not allowed to ask, and the reason the previous landlord is worth more than the current one. Screening -
Adverse action notices: what landlords must send
The obligation is wider than a denial. A bigger deposit, a co-signer requirement, or a higher rent can all trigger it, and the notice is required even when the report was not the main reason. Here is what goes in one and when it goes out. Laws and rules -
The rental deductions checklist, sorted the way the form is
Schedule E has fifteen expense lines. Most missed deductions are not exotic, they are ordinary costs that never got sorted into one of those lines. Here is the list, plus the four that get left off most often. Money