The Part-Time Landlord's Guide to Not Dropping the Ball

I have a full-time job. I also have 12 rental units. Most days, the landlording takes 30 minutes. Some days, it takes 4 hours. And those 4-hour days always seem to land during my busiest work weeks.

Here's how I keep things running without dropping the ball.

Accept That You Will Drop the Ball Sometimes

Let's start here. If you have a full-time job and rental properties, you will occasionally miss something. A late payment you didn't catch. A maintenance request you forgot about. A lease renewal you started too late.

The goal isn't perfection. The goal is catching things fast enough that they don't become expensive.

Missing a late payment for 1 day? No big deal. Missing it for 11 days? That's $1,400 and a 3-month payment plan. I know because it happened to me.

The Morning Check (5 Minutes)

Every morning before work, I do a quick scan. I check my email for tenant messages. I check my RentGuard alerts for anything overdue. I scan my maintenance sheet for anything aging.

This takes 5 minutes. Most days there's nothing new. But when there is something, I catch it at 7am instead of 7pm. That early catch makes a big difference.

The key is making this automatic. Like checking your email or brushing your teeth. You don't think about it. You just do it.

Batch Your Tasks

Don't try to handle property stuff throughout the day. You have a job. You can't be on the phone with a plumber at 2pm when you're in a meeting.

Instead, batch property tasks. I handle everything between 7-8am and 6-8pm. Tenant calls, vendor coordination, administrative stuff. Two blocks per day.

Tenants learn your schedule fast. When they text me at noon and I respond at 6pm, that becomes the expectation. Most things can wait a few hours.

Exceptions: emergencies. Water leak, no heat, broken lock. Those get handled immediately. Everything else waits for the batch.

Have Reliable Vendors on Speed Dial

The biggest time sink in part-time landlording is finding vendors. If a pipe bursts and you don't have a plumber, you're spending an hour calling around at 10pm.

Build your vendor list before you need it. You need at minimum: a plumber, an electrician, a general handyman, and an HVAC tech.

I have 3 vendors I trust. I send them a text with the unit, the issue, and access instructions. They handle it. I don't have to be there.

Finding those 3 reliable vendors took about a year of trial and error. But now they save me hours every month.

Automate What You Can

I'm a spreadsheet landlord. I like my Google Sheet. But I've learned that the spreadsheet can't remind me of things.

The single most valuable automation I've added is overdue rent alerts. Instead of remembering to check my rent roll every day after the grace period, I get an email if someone's late. This alone has saved me from multiple missed-payment situations.

If you can automate one thing, automate the alerting. The data entry and tracking you can do manually. The "hey, something needs your attention" part shouldn't depend on your memory. I share my full setup in the spreadsheet landlord toolkit.

Templates Save Hours

I have text templates for common situations. Saved in my notes app.

Rent is overdue: "Hey [name], I don't see [month] rent yet. Everything okay?"

Maintenance acknowledgment: "Got it. I'll get someone out there this week."

Lease renewal: "Hey [name], your lease is up on [date]. I'd love to renew. Let's chat about it."

Copy, paste, customize, send. What used to take 5 minutes of composing a careful message now takes 30 seconds.

The Weekend Review

Every Sunday, I spend 20-30 minutes reviewing the week. Who paid, who didn't. What maintenance is open. Any lease expirations coming up.

This is my safety net. If I missed something during the week, Sunday catches it. Nothing goes more than 7 days without being reviewed.

The Tool That Changed Things

The single biggest improvement to my part-time landlord life was adding monitoring to my spreadsheet. I built RentGuard because I needed something to watch my data when I couldn't.

It reads my Google Sheet every day and emails me when rent is overdue or maintenance is aging. I don't have to remember to check. It checks for me.

For a part-time landlord, that's the difference between catching a problem on day 1 and catching it on day 11.

If you're juggling a career and rental properties, descoshop.com is worth 5 minutes to set up. Free forever.