Payment Gateway Fees
Hello all
I could not help myself in posting a response to this thread.
I am a real estate agent principle and operate a rent roll of approx 400 properties within the Ray White group. We employ 4 staff members plus one admin to maintain a rent roll of this size. I believe we offer a large benefit to Landlords as this is what we do all day every day, and like you all with your jobs we become very knowledgeable with the legislation. The Tenancies act is complicated and fraught with danger for Landlords that can at times be flippant to the law. Payment gateway is a third party web based company called ipayrent and the fees do not come to the agent at all. The fees are charged by and go direct to the third party for their services the same as the bank charge for these same services. There are many advantages for the Agent and the tenant. The agent has an upload file that is emailed to the agency daily and this automatically receipts to the tenants electronically coded account. For us to manually receipt 400 tenants would take one person 6-8 hours per day and tenants decide to use their own codes that cannot be traced back to the correct tenant (what a mess this creates for property managers). This also eliminates the human error that can occur from the bank tellers, the tenant, the agency. Easy when you have a handful of tenants but not so easy when you have 400. The Banks are only now starting to get up to this level of service so the third party company has been the Industries only option till recent. If we decide to change banks we would have to let every tenant know new bank details and wait until all tenants have started in the new account before closing the old, this can take 3 months or more and upsets the tenants and throws out their payment schedule. With the third party it is one notification and tenant is not interrupted with their payments. Further to this Banks charge us huge fees to operate a trust account as it is, plus the yearly audit fees with the accountants and OCCBA want there cut as well yearly. It all sounds on the out side that the Real Estate agent makes the cash but let me tell you that on average the agency receives $1100- $1500 per property per year for all that they do before expenses and wages are taken out. Hope this clears up some misunderstandings in the thread.
Hello all
I could not help myself in posting a response to this thread.
I am a real estate agent principle and operate a rent roll of approx 400 properties within the Ray White group. We employ 4 staff members plus one admin to maintain a rent roll of this size. I believe we offer a large benefit to Landlords as this is what we do all day every day, and like you all with your jobs we become very knowledgeable with the legislation. The Tenancies act is complicated and fraught with danger for Landlords that can at times be flippant to the law. Payment gateway is a third party web based company called ipayrent and the fees do not come to the agent at all. The fees are charged by and go direct to the third party for their services the same as the bank charge for these same services. There are many advantages for the Agent and the tenant. The agent has an upload file that is emailed to the agency daily and this automatically receipts to the tenants electronically coded account. For us to manually receipt 400 tenants would take one person 6-8 hours per day and tenants decide to use their own codes that cannot be traced back to the correct tenant (what a mess this creates for property managers). This also eliminates the human error that can occur from the bank tellers, the tenant, the agency. Easy when you have a handful of tenants but not so easy when you have 400. The Banks are only now starting to get up to this level of service so the third party company has been the Industries only option till recent. If we decide to change banks we would have to let every tenant know new bank details and wait until all tenants have started in the new account before closing the old, this can take 3 months or more and upsets the tenants and throws out their payment schedule. With the third party it is one notification and tenant is not interrupted with their payments. Further to this Banks charge us huge fees to operate a trust account as it is, plus the yearly audit fees with the accountants and OCCBA want there cut as well yearly. It all sounds on the out side that the Real Estate agent makes the cash but let me tell you that on average the agency receives $1100- $1500 per property per year for all that they do before expenses and wages are taken out. Hope this clears up some misunderstandings in the thread.