What is a Rent Ledger and Do You Need One?

Photo by Sarah Elizabeth on Unsplash

As a landlord, your entire business operation relies on a healthy influx of rental income. All operating expenses are covered by it, and anything left over is profit, so it makes sense to ensure that your rental income is tracked and organized. 

No matter the size of your portfolio, life can get busy, and it is all too easy to miss a late rent payment or fail to charge a late fee.

To prevent these oversights and help to maximize income and cash flow, landlords maintain a rent ledger.

What is a rent ledger?

A rent ledger is an accurate report that details each tenant’s payment history, as well as their name, address, and up-to-date contact information. 

With this collection of information on hand, you can avoid the hassle of sifting through leases, receipts, and bank statements when checking rent payments. 

The report provides a summary of key information, such as the set rental payment for each property, the amount paid, the next payment due, and whether there are any arrears owing. This, coupled with the tenant’s contact details, enables a landlord to quickly ascertain whether rent is outstanding and how to get in contact to issue reminders to pay, late notice fees, etc. 

The importance of rent ledgers

One of the primary motivations for investing in real estate is to profit from the income generated through the rental payments. Like any business, the income must be carefully tracked and maximized to ensure an optimal profit and cover the business’s operational expenses. In this sense, a rent ledger is much the same as a business accounts receivable report. 

By maintaining an accurate, up-to-date rent ledger, landlords need access to a real-time overview of what rents have been received and which are outstanding. This snapshot is vital in determining when you can pay your outstanding expense invoices, and how much rental income you can transfer as clear profits. 

Rent ledgers not only help to manage and monitor cash flow and stay on top of any rent arrears. In the event of a tenant dispute or an eviction process due to non-payment of rent, a rent ledger becomes vital documentary evidence that you may need to rely upon. No matter where the property is located and what state eviction rules may apply, as a landlord, it is your obligation to prove that a tenant’s rent was unpaid. 

Having to evict a bad tenant is never an easy task, and the time it takes eats into that property’s profits. Maintaining an accurate rent ledger ensures that you can easily prove the arrears in rent to assist you in successfully evicting a tenant as quickly as possible. From there, you can move on to assessing the property for damage, making the appropriate repairs, and renting it out to a new tenant. 

Different uses for rent ledgers

Rent ledgers serve a range of purposes to different individuals within the property sector. Their use extends beyond a landlord keeping track of their rental income. As well as landlords and property managers, buyers, tenants, and lenders all use rent ledgers.

As well as outlining a rental payment history, rent ledgers answer such questions as:

• Is the rent currently being paid in accordance with the lease agreement?
• How long has the tenant occupied the property?
• Have late fees been issued?
• Is the current incoming cash flow likely to continue?

Rent ledgers can be used to predict the continuation of the current cash flow, as well as identify any opportunities to increase it. 

Landlords and property managers

Rent ledgers are valuable to property owners and managers for a range of applications. 

As well as tracking rent and arrears, they assist in keeping track of lease renewals. Tenants must be contacted with a lease renewal offer, and if they decline, the property must be remarketed in time to minimize any lost income between tenants. 

By comparing current market rental prices to the amount tenants are paying, landlords and property managers can ascertain whether there is an opportunity to increase rent. Properties can then be earmarked for a rent increase or marketed for a new tenant when the lease renewal comes around. 

Rent ledgers are also useful when selling a rental property. In order to maximize the sale price, it is helpful to be able to demonstrate that the property is generating a consistent rental income. By providing a real-time rent ledger to potential buyers, they get an accurate snapshot of the property’s cash flow status, which will assist in their decision. 

Rent ledgers also detail the amount of security deposit being held on a property. This record is helpful at the end of a lease when determining how much deposit to refund to a tenant after any deductions have been made. 

Lenders

When a buyer seeks to purchase a rental property, the current cash flow of that property is a key consideration. 

When a lender works through the underwriting process to determine how much a buyer can borrow, the debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) is a key metric used. The DSCR ratio compares the mortgage repayments or debt to the currently available operating income. This calculation is used to determine whether the purchase is a viable option and whether a lender can provide the necessary financing. 

Tenants

Rent ledgers are also useful to tenants when applying for a new rental property. 

By including a copy of their previous rent ledger report in an application, tenants can show that they are reliable with good rental payment history. 

Tenants can also use a rent ledger as evidence in the case of a rent payment dispute or a contested eviction. They can easily demonstrate inconsistencies in the rent ledger if they have bank statements or other receipts to back up their claims. 

Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash

Final thoughts

Maintaining an accurate rent ledger is well worth the trouble. Running any business successfully requires diligent record-keeping. With a rent ledger, users can ascertain at a glance whether rents have been paid on time, whether any late notices need to be issued, what income is outstanding, and more.