Digitize Landlord Onboarding

Owners do not visit the office with a labelled pack. They reply to the negotiator who did the valuation, often from a phone, often over several days. The signed mandate, the property-tax notice, and the diagnostics land in three messages, and the only person who knows which one is missing is the person who sent the original request.

That person is also the one who goes on leave. A colleague covering the desk cannot tell whether the co-ownership rules were requested, received, or already rejected because the scan was unreadable. The listing date does not wait for that reconstruction.

Email also collapses two decisions into one. “The owner replied” is not “we may advertise”, and it is not “we may collect rent”. A portal separates those decisions by giving each document a status the whole office can see — the same reason teams leave email for a client portal on tenant work. The landlord side needs it just as much, and usually gets it later.

Ask for what this mandate actually requires. A sales instruction and a lettings-management instruction share identity and proof of ownership. They do not share a rent-collection account or a power to sign a lease. One template, with a few items marked not required, beats two improvisations.

Proof of ownership is a title deed or a recent property-tax notice (taxe foncière), not a utility bill in the owner’s name. Identity is an official document for every person named on that title. The mandate itself is a signed copy whose scope matches what the agency is about to do — sell, let, or manage — and whose signatories match the title.

Diagnostics are their own items, not one upload called “technical file”. Energy performance (DPE), and where the property type requires them, lead, asbestos, electricity, gas, risks (ERP), and the legal surface. For an apartment, add the co-ownership rules, the latest general-meeting minutes, and a statement of charges. If the agency will collect rent, add bank details in the owner’s or the company’s name, plus non-occupant landlord insurance. If a lease is already running, add that lease and the move-in inventory so the new manager is not guessing.

Indivision, a married couple, and a property company (SCI) all break a single request addressed to “the owner”. If only one person receives the link, the others’ identity never arrives, or it arrives as a photo forwarded in a family chat with no record of who sent it. Each person named on the title gets their own items and their own magic link.

A company owner is a different list: registration extract, articles, and evidence of who may sign the mandate. Do not ask that company for a director’s household insurance or a personal bank account unless the mandate is genuinely in the person’s name. Mixing the lists is how you chase a property-tax notice from someone who does not own the flat.

Owners photograph documents. Say so. A readable photo of the title’s first pages is enough, and a phone-image to PDF converter is there when the file is a set of pictures rather than one PDF. What does not work is asking the future tenant, or the building manager, to collect the owner’s ID for you.

An upload is not an approval. The check on a title is whether the names match the people who signed the mandate, and whether the address matches the property you are about to market. A diagnostic check is the date: an energy certificate issued outside the current validity rules, or a lead report for a building that is exempt, is not “done”. Mark it as needing an update, or as not required, and say which.

Bank details fail in a specific way. The account name should be the owner or the company on the mandate, not the negotiator, not the tenant, and not a relative who “usually handles it” unless that person has authority on the file. Reject the item with that reason, on the item. A note that only says “please resend the bank details” produces a second document that is wrong in the same way.

Write the note where the document sits. The next person covering the file should see who rejected the electricity diagnostic and why, without opening the negotiator’s mailbox. That trail is what separates a checklist from a shared drive of PDFs dated yesterday.

Ready to advertise is a short list: mandate approved, ownership checked against the signatories, and every diagnostic required for that listing approved and in date. Ready to collect rent adds bank details and insurance. Post those two gates in the office so a keen negotiator cannot list a flat whose energy certificate is still only “received”.

Then close what does not apply. A pure sales mandate does not need a rent account. A house does not need co-ownership minutes. Leaving those items open makes a finished file look incomplete and trains the owner to ignore the next request, including a real one.

Keep this file separate from the tenant pack you will open later. Building the tenant file answers whether an applicant can move in. The landlord file answers whether you may offer the property at all. One portal can hold both. One folder named after the address cannot tell them apart.