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Managing Leases & Tenants in Stessa
Managing Leases & Tenants in Stessa

Add and remove units, set up tenants and rents, and input other important lease terms to make sure your metrics are accurate.

Victor Perez avatar
Written by Victor Perez
Updated over a week ago

Setting up your Leases & Tenants page properly is essential to getting the most out of your Stessa account. It's the only way to model projected rents correctly, keep track of lease expirations, and reconcile actual rents coming in with specific units.

The schedule of rents from the Leases & Tenants page is what Stessa uses to populate the Income calculations on your Property and Portfolio dashboards. If your rent roll is out of sync with reality, your dashboards will be too!
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Where Can I Find the Rent Roll?

The Rent Roll is located on the Leases & Tenants page, and is organized by Portfolio and then Property. Each line represent a specific unit, with unit details on the left and current tenant details on the right.
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Click "Add Tenant" (or an existing tenant name) to pull up a second page where you can manage leasing information for the specific unit.

How Do I Add, Edit, and Delete Units?

You can update unit numbers and names, bed and bath counts, and add unit notes directly by clicking on those fields. Clicking the "Docs" icon or number will shortcut you to your Documents page, with the results pre-filtered for the specific unit.

To add new units to the rent roll, just click the small gear icon in the upper right corner and select "Add Unit." To add projected income from parking or laundry or any other source that's not a rentable housing unit, use the same gear icon and select "Add Other Income." To delete a unit, select "Delete Unit" from this same menu and then confirm which unit you'd like to remove.

How Do I Add Units & Tenants via CSV Upload?

If you have many units (or tenants) to add to your rent roll at once, select "Upload from CSV" after clicking on the gear icon at upper right. Your header row in the CSV data file should include the following exact column names:

  • Unit

  • Bedrooms

  • Bathrooms

  • Square Feet

  • Tenant Names

  • Rent Amount

  • Market Rent

  • Deposit

  • Move-In Date

  • Lease Expires Date

  • Notes

How Do I Add, Edit, and Delete Tenant & Lease Details?

To add, edit, or delete tenants and leases, just click on the Current Tenant, Rent, or Status areas to pull up a more detailed screen for any particular unit.

Once the next screen appears, use the "Tenants" section to add tenant names and contact info. If you have two signers on the lease, use the "Add Co-Tenant" button to get more lines for additional names and contact info.

To edit an existing tenant name because you made a mistake, click the small pencil icon at far right. To forever delete an existing tenant, click the trash can icon. If a tenant is moving out, click the "Set Move-Out Date" button instead. This will allow you to close out an existing tenant and then add a new one, while still preserving the historical tenant and lease data.

If an existing tenant is renewing their lease or going to month-to-month (MTM), scroll down to the "Rent History" section. Click "Renew Lease" to add a new term and/or update the rental rate. Click the "Set as Month-to-Month" button if there's no longer a fixed lease term. You'll also have the opportunity to update the rent amount.

To set up a new tenancy that starts in the future, click on "Add Future Tenancy" at the very bottom of the page. Pro Tip: You can also use this "Add Future Tenancy" button to enter a tenancy that started and ended in the past, for reference or other purposes. The key dates do not have to be in the future.

Finally, the "Security Deposit" and "Tenancy Notes" fields are both directly editable. Just click either one to add more important details.

What If I Do Short-Term Rentals?

If your Property is set up primarily as a short-term vacation rental, we recommend switching your rent roll for the property over to "Short-Term Rentals." To do this, just click on "Long-Term Rentals" at upper right, and then select "Short-Term Rentals" instead.

Also be sure to read more about how to Track Short-Term Rentals with Stessa.

If your property happens to have a mix of long-term and short-term rental units at a single address, we recommend selecting whichever use generates more income annually. There is currently no way to designate short vs long-term rental at the unit level.

What If a Property is Not Currently in Service?

To denote a property as not currently in service, just select "Not in Service" from the drop-down menu under "Long-Term Rental." This will exclude occupancy data for this property so that it doesn't negatively impact your dashboards.

Note that this designation is intended only for properties that are currently undergoing major renovations or are otherwise not available for lease. If you simply have a vacant unit, there's no need to mark the property as "Not in Service."
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Still Have Questions About the Rent Roll?

Use the blue circle at lower right to drop us a note. We'll get back to you shortly.

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