Tag: documentation for landlords

Property Management Record-Keeping: How to Properly Destroy Sensitive Documents

In the age of an increasing need for cyber-security due to rampant identity theft, the common person has a good grasp on what sensitive information needs to be protected. That protection doesn’t end when it’s time to toss out the old and bring in the new – especially not when it comes to the kinds of documents you handle in property management. Applicants hand over their social security numbers, credit and criminal backgrounds, and your own information is all over your business documents, taxes, and filings. During the transition from paper to digital files, you will inevitably end up facing the issue:

How do I get rid of these excess or expired documents?

Legally speaking, whether you are managing only one property or multiple, by retaining consumer information for business purposes, you are subject to legal obligations in your method of erasure and disposal. You or your Retention Officer should be well-read on how to properly keep, protect and ultimately dispose of your records.

Physical Destruction:

Digitization will result in the need to eliminate your property management file folders, stacks of papers and old copies of licenses and ledgers. The end result of whichever method you choose is that the documents cannot practically be read or reconstructed. These methods include:

Burning
Pulverizing
Shredding

Electronic Erasure:

Anyone who’s ever watched a crime drama knows that your deleted files are never really gone. The “trash” or “recycle” bin of your computer is a holding area for files you don’t want to see anymore. Even when you “empty” those areas, the files are still in your machine and are recoverable – by you, if you’re desperately trying to find that document you didn’t mean to delete or by an unauthorized person looking to make a profit from stolen data.

The simplest way to go about ensuring that your sensitive data is effectively erased is to seek out software that’s up to the task! A software that performs a “Secure Erase” and other erasure / overwriting tactics can completely wipe a hard drive and prevent anyone from mining data from your systems.

Redaction:

One of the most direct things you can do to protect your documents prior to discarding them is to redact as you go. Redactions are the obscured bits of text in a document that are obscured, censored or deleted for a variety of reasons, all of which are ultimately for privacy.

If you are not digitally reacting documents that you are legally obligated to keep on file, then you are putting your business on the market to be targeted by hackers and identity thieves. However, it is not enough that the documents are redacted – they must be redacted correctly.

Redaction failures can be defeated by the embarrassingly easy process of copy + paste, leaving your and your tenants’ information at risk in case of a breach. A properly sanitized document erases all metadata and source information, and irrevocably deletes information behind the black redaction boxes. In other words, it creates an entirely new document that replaces the original and severs ties to any information that the original contained. It is a picture of the redacted document, and not the document itself.

Your goal at every step of the process is to be legally compliant but also orderly and secure!

Frontline Property Management invites you to explore our entire series on Record Keeping! Our business is your business, and our integrated systems ensure that our information is streamlined, secure and adaptive. Our multiple departments and property managers work together seamlessly to provide great service to you and your tenants.

If you would like to learn how we can help you manage properties in the DFW area (and beyond!) – start a conversation with us today! We protect your frontline so that you can worry about your bottom line.

Property Management Record-Keeping: Business Documents

As we’ve said before, being a landlord is a business. To stay on top of your business, you need to maintain all files that support the structure of your operations. You are building your financial future – consider your paperwork the bedrock!

In Texas, you are not required to have a rental license in order to rent your property to others, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t engaging in a highly regulated and litigious business. Like trouble, property management mistakes can be easy to get into and hard to get out of. No one has ever been hurt by crossing too many Ts and dotting too many Is – especially when you are your own oversight!

Files that you want to have on hand (or accessible and easy to find) include:

Licenses as required by your state, eg, Real Estate Broker’s license
Employee & Vendor Records (Including verification of liability insurance for Vendors)
Audit Records
Property Insurance Documents
Templates of Contracts that you use for your tenants

Accessibility is important in the event that someone needs to find documentation on your behalf. Your lawyer, business partner, or employee should not have to disassemble your property in order to find these documents!

Most of these can (and should!) be cached digitally – but keep in mind that these documents may have sensitive information embedded in them. Properly redacted documents will keep your (and your tenants and vendors’) information confidential and safe in the event of unauthorized access to the files, or if the physical files are lost.

You may find that you would rather trust a company that employs licensed professionals to do all of this work for you! Our Property Managers are experienced not only in working with tenants, but also in teaming up with the Tenant Coordination and Accounting Departments to keep your business organized, legally compliant, and secure!

Have a property that you need help managing? Just fill out this form and we will reach out to you to see how we can help!

Property Management Record-Keeping: Owner Files

We are all well practiced in sorting out junk mail, whether it’s in our physical mailbox or the various email inboxes that easily become overpopulated with information, offers, and copies of copies (of copies) that you simply do not need.

When managing your property, how do you know what documents you need?

What are Owner Files?

As we go through this series of Record-Keeping Basics, we’ll help you to distinguish between the different types of files that you’re handling to better help you organize. We’ve already reviewed Tenant files, and Owner files cover much of the same type of information; however, this is information that pertains directly to you and your business practices involving your property.

For instance, to provide the basic specs of the property in order to compose a profile for advertising purposes you need:

Property Deed
Property Tax Records
Your Marketing Profile (Compiling photos and information will make it quick and easy to market your property!)

To ensure that your property is a habitable environment, you will need:

Property Insurance Policy Records
Property Maintenance Records (Requests & Repairs)
Move-In Inventory & Condition Forms
Move-Out Inventory & Condition Forms
Photos of any damages sustained by the property
Photos of any repairs or upgrades to the property

In order to operate as a business, you need to know what your expenditures are to figure out where your bottom line needs to be. Consider documents like:

Mortgage Payments
Tenant Ledgers – we’ve reviewed how to do this!
Property Maintenance Invoices

Lastly, property management is about relationships. The contracts you keep with other businesses are your keys to success. Make sure that you retain copies of:

Vendor contracts
Employee Records (if you hire an assistant to help you)
Owner-Management Agreements
All Correspondence with the above entities

How Should Owner Files be Organized?

Firstly, your Document Retention Officer (you, if you are managing your own property) should be involved in all aspects of document organization. By no means should you purge without consulting your DRO or your own Document Retention Policy. Consistency is key.

Your attorney and accountant also need to be kept apprised of your record retention policy. If necessary, they will need to be able to locate documents on your behalf, and as such must know where they are and how to access them.

All this being said, you do not necessarily have to have the most high-tech integrated system – those aren’t free. Using readily available resources such as computer files backed up into a cloud storage may be perfectly fine for you, if you are organized and have only one or just a few properties to manage.

However, if in your cost/benefit analysis you find that your time can be better utilized elsewhere, property management software provides a system that is already in place – you just have to be consistent in inputting the information!

But if at the end of the day you decide that your time would be best utilized spending time with your family, investing in your hobby, or any one of a million things more thrilling than dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of your paperwork – then perhaps what you’re most interested in is finding a property management company with the experience, staffing, and attention to detail you need for your rental properties.

Frontline Property Management is in the business of building relationships with owners like you!