HomeRelay guides and answers for self-managing landlords
Every guide, comparison, and plain answer we have written about running rental maintenance without a property manager, in one place. Start with a cornerstone, or dig into a specific question below.
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Guides and answers
- Maintenance dispatch software for landlords | HomeRelay →
Maintenance dispatch software that contacts your vendors, escalates on silence, and reassigns no-shows. $69/mo for 1-4 units, $99/mo at 5+ units.
- Tired of being a landlord? A third option | HomeRelay →
Tired of being a landlord usually means tired of being the dispatcher. Before you sell or hire a property manager, price the third option: automation.
- Maintenance software for self-managing landlords | HomeRelay →
How self-managing landlords run maintenance without being the middleman: QR intake, AI triage, dispatch, escalation, follow-up. $69/mo, $99 at 5+ units.
- QR code maintenance requests: how they actually work →
Tenants scan a QR code and report the issue. No app, no login, no account. How QR code maintenance requests work from scan to finished repair.
- Accidental landlord guide: the minimum system you need →
You inherited a house, got PCS orders, or couldn't sell. Now you're a landlord. The minimum system that keeps one rental from eating your life.
- What to do when a contractor doesn't show up | HomeRelay →
A working playbook for contractor no-shows on rental repairs: what to do in the first hour, when to move on, and how to stop repeat offenders.
- Year 2 landlord burnout: outsource it or automate it? →
Year two is when landlord burnout hits: the novelty is gone and the interruptions are not. Deciding between a property manager, automation, and selling.
- How to find reliable contractors for rental property →
Where reliable contractors actually come from, how to vet one, why good ones stop answering landlords, and how to build a two-deep bench that picks up.
- Free landlord software: what it does and doesn't do →
Free landlord software is genuinely good at rent and records. It logs maintenance instead of running it. Where free stops and what the step up buys.
- The real time cost of self-managing a rental property →
Self-managing eats time in pieces: vendor phone tag, scheduling triangles, follow-up. Count the real hours, then price what buying them back costs.
- Hire a property manager or use software? The real math →
Property managers run 8 to 12% of rent before add-on fees. Software runs a flat fee. The honest breakdown of when each one actually makes sense.
- After-hours rental maintenance without being on call →
How to handle 11pm tenant calls without being the 24/7 dispatcher: what counts as a real emergency, and how after-hours intake actually works.
- What is maintenance dispatch? A landlord's plain answer →
Maintenance dispatch means the system ranks vendors, contacts them, escalates silence, and reassigns no-shows. How dispatch differs from plain tracking.
- How to manage maintenance requests for 5 rental units →
A working maintenance system for a 5-unit landlord: one intake channel, a ranked vendor bench, and follow-up that runs without you chasing it.
- How many rental units can you realistically self-manage? →
The self-management ceiling is coordination load, not unit count. What breaks landlords as they grow, and how systems raise the ceiling without hiring.
- Managing rental property from out of state | HomeRelay →
How out-of-state landlords keep repairs moving: QR intake, AI triage, a local vendor bench you can build remotely, and dispatch that runs itself.
- How fast should a landlord respond to emergency repairs? →
Emergency repair response norms for landlords: acknowledge fast, separate the two clocks of reply and arrival, and know what counts as a real emergency.
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