BOUNCING CHECKS
More landlords and renters embrace electronic payments and shun snail mail
MORGAN Munsey is a landlord in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a Brooklyn neighborhood with long-time, older residents that’s gotten an influx of young renters. Munsey houses both types of tenants in his townhouse properties — but for the younger crowd, he says, they’ve mostly forgone the traditional rent check and opted for a more techfriendly method of payment.
Tenants like Lindsay Branham and Andrew Ellis take advantage of Cozy, a website that allows Munsey to sign leases, collect rent and send it straight to the bank. “My under-35 crowd is all Cozy,” Munsey says.
Munsey is one of many New York City landlords trying to do away with tedious stacks of paper and trips to the bank to deposit checks. The growing trend means that paying for New York City real estate is getting as easy as the tap of a button. There are now several options for e-payment, from apps to direct deposits to online management portals.
Options for rent transactions, either between roommates or to a landlord, include Venmo, PayPal, Google Wallet and Square’s Cash app. Though there’s no recent info on how many renters use such methods, a study by David Hao Zhang using data from 2014 found the dominant methods for paying rent were cash (22 percent), check (42 percent) and money order (16 percent). Electronic methods made up about 15 percent.
Anecdotally, the move towards adopting these payment methods started about three years ago, says agent Kevin Kemble. Kemble worked in Brooklyn for Citi Habitats and is now at Halstead’s Bed-Stuy office. “I’ve seen a serious increase” of landlords open to accepting rent through online payment systems, he says. “But this last year is the biggest increase I’ve seen in landlords actually requiring electronic payment only and discouraging other forms.”
Renters, however, should be wary of what’s legally allowed when it comes to app payments. Triplemint agent Josh Juneau warns that Venmo technically isn’t supposed to be used for business transactions. But it’s a safe option for roommates to Venmo each other and cut one check for the whole rent, making it easier on both them and their landlords. “That’s how I pay rent, actually,” he notes.
Large property managers, like Douglas Elliman Property Managers and Clinton Management (which handles Douglaston Development’s rental portfolio) prefer direct bank transfers like Chase QuickPay or online property management portals like Appfolio, Buildium and Quickbooks to facilitate bank-tobank transfers.
Julia Heffernan, a 29-year-old illustrator living in East Williamsburg, took advantage of a “tenant portal” powered by the website Propertyware as soon as her landlord implemented it in 2013. “It’s useful. Besides just the rent payment, I can submit repairs or issues on there as well as see all my paperwork and lease history,” she says. “I hate dealing with checks and mail and stamps. I’d much rather just open my computer and take care of it . . . and it takes two minutes.”
These online management portals, Juneau says, are not only common, but they also “work out well for people paying with credit cards. They get all those miles just for paying rent, an added bonus.”
Related, a major NYC landlord managing over 20 rental buildings, can set up a recurring transaction, automatically withdrawing from a renter’s bank account or charging his or her credit card.
If racking up points by paying rent sounds appealing — but your landlord doesn’t accept it — there’s Plastiq, a startup that allows renters to pay via American Express, Visa, Mastercard or Discover. For a 2.5 percent fee for credit cards and 1 percent for debit cards, Plastiq will either facilitate the electronic payment between you and your landlord or simply mail a check for you.
Still, not all city landlords have caught onto the e-payment wave. “It’s landlord by landlord,” Kemble says, who notes that he works with a major Brooklyn landlord with 700 units “who will only take check or cash or money order.”
Munsey estimates that roughly 40 percent of landlords in Bed-Stuy accept some form of e-payment. “Most of the landlords here are older and rather do it the old-fashioned way,” he says. “I think the younger landlords are doing e-payments.”
There’s hope: Renters on the hunt for new apartments with the convenience of e-payment can always ask landlords if they’ll work it into the agreement. “I see many new leases have a rider for enrolling in e-payment only, from smaller buildings in Carroll Gardens to larger new developments in Downtown Brooklyn,” Kemble says.
It’s something Kemble, a resident of a floor-through apartment in Cobble Hill, wouldn’t mind himself: “I wish my landlord allowed it as I would rather get those glorious credit card points.”
“I hate dealing with checks and mail and stamps. I’d much rather just open my computer and take care of it.” — East Williamsburg resident Julia Heffernan