James Barrett, Tenant Turner co-founder
In 2009, James Barrett became an accidental landlord after his home lost a third of its value during the Great Recession. He was eager to turn a profit on the home but ran into struggles with finding high-quality tenants.
Barrett naturally looked to technology since he was a software product manager, but he couldn’t find anything to suit his exact needs.
“In a sea of listing sites, I couldn’t find one solution that holistically solved my primary problem: finding a quality tenant as quickly and easily as possible,” Barrett said. “So I teamed up with my best friends, fellow landlords and software developers to build Tenant Turner with a mission to make happier, more confident renters, owners and property managers by improving the leasing experience.”
The Tenant Turner team builds software that helps property managers save time that would otherwise be spent on doing things like finding tenants, scheduling walk-throughs and conducting background checks. Available on both computers and smartphones, the platform uses a unique listing syndication tool that funnels leads from some of the most popular websites into the prequalification process.
The company is able to weed out any unqualified tenants from the get-go, allowing for property managers to spend their valuable time with serious renters. Tenant Turner then scores and schedules the best fit prospects.
The automated showing schedule allows landlords to seamlessly communicate with Tenant Turner on their availability. Once a renter comes through for a showing, the landlord can then find even more information about the individual and do a background check.
“For those prospective tenants who prefer to call and speak with a human, our customer service representatives can prequalify them over the phone. So regardless of site or preferred form of contact, our property managers have a centralized repository for all tenant prospects and showing coordination,” Barrett said.
Tenant Turner also shares data with its customers to help them understand the best ways to improve their leasing and rental process. Reports are made available and easy-to-understand right on the customer’s dashboard.
Based in the Mid-Atlantic region, Tenant Turner has a large presence with landlords in the region but also throughout the nation. And although growth is on the horizon for the company, they are not looking to expand rapidly.
The current strategy is to find a customer in a new market and then learn as much as possible about that region before planting roots there. The East Coast and Texas are next on the docket for expansion.
And although there are plenty of available options for property managers, Tenant Turner strives to offer the most comprehensive and simple solution: a user-friendly piece of software that will solve a problem and be available to users who need it most when and where they need it.
“Our founding team understands this problem because we’ve all self-managed rental properties so we built an intuitive, mobile-first software solution that saves property managers 16 hours per listing and can cut their rentals’ days on market in half,” Barrett said.