Email address required to rent a unit ???

rmason

Does everyone require their tenants to have an email address to rent a unit.  About 95% of our tenants have up to date email addresses.  But seems like, as in most cases, the 5% that don't cause most of your problems.  How is the email address requirement stated in your lease?

teamcapitola

We don't require email addresses, however we will charge $2/month for mailed invoices / receipts.

We've found (over the last 10 years) that clients who ONLY have an identification card (no drivers license) cause 99% of my incident reports and delinquency.

In the past we required a valid drivers license to rent, but we loosened the rules a bit to include any valid government issued ID. I'm thinking we may go back to it though.

As far as rental requirements go, you (your facility) can require whatever you want in order to rent, as long as it is applied to EVERYONE Equally, and doesn't involve "protected class" (I.e. race, sex, etc.) It just needs to be posted in the office along with your facility rules.

Mind you, its a balance between what you require, and what the average renter will tolerate before going elsewhere....

i43storage

We do not require an email as we have older tenants who rent from us that do not use email.

ESS

i43storage said:

We do not require an email as we have older tenants who rent from us that do not use email.

Same here. I just write "Does not do email" in the front notes so we don't ask them for one again.

themage

We do not require an email address, but the number of people who don't give us one is declining. We also charge a paper invoice fee. For us, the troublemakers seem to have out of state licenses or peeled the address update sticker off of their license. Most of our tenants with non-license IDs have been pretty good.

MamaDuke7

teamcapitola said:

In the past we required a valid drivers license to rent, but we loosened the rules a bit to include any valid government issued ID. I'm thinking we may go back to it though.

Be careful with this as it could be discriminatory.  For example, my daughter doesn't drive due to Epilepsy, so she only has a state ID.  But she'd be the best tenant you had because she pays everything early!  But if you denied her based on ID type, that would be discriminating against her medical status, though not intentionally, of course.  But that wouldn't mean much in a lawsuit.

Just something to consider.