Paying legal fees to facilitate this is costly. The Act was initially passed to protect farm workers and similarly vulnerable tenants from being unfairly evicted from their homes.īut unscrupulous tenants sometimes use the Act to attain 'squatter' status, whereby they do not pay rent and it takes months and months to legally evict them. The rental market is complicated by legal acts such as the Prevention of Illegal Eviction (PIE) Act. If it comes to a serious situation, we operate swiftly.' That's why we offer the three-month guarantee option that gives the investor peace of mind. Kuter adds: 'However, at the end of the day, property investors want to protect their investments. 'It sounds like a heavy approach but we're not going out there with a baseball bat,' smiles Botha. The telephone is also used to remind, and then galvanise, tenants who default. The website at is the first port of call for potential clients, with telephonic contact an additional form of communication.

'It's managed electronically, so it's easy to operate nationally,' says Kuter. Clients pay 4% of the rental plus R34,20 a month for the service. Rentmaster takes clients through a step-by-step process and includes the signing up of tenants, and prodding of tenants after non-payment, with no legal costs for recoveries or evictions. She reckons the secret of the success is to offer a complete rental-based package that concentrates on the collection of rent. Currently, we have no outstanding debt,' says Lynne Kuter, marketing manager. 'It took us four years to create a sustainable risk pool – and the system has proven itself. 'Organising tenants and seeing to maintenance of the property are important, but unless you're collecting the rent it's all going to go pear-shaped,' says Botha. Within the R5k to R15k a month scale there are a fair amount of bad apples – which can prove deadly when one is trying to meet bond demands. According to insiders it's not necessarily the low-end of the rental scale where the problems lie. It doesn't have to be, though.'Ģ5% to 30% of tenants habitually pay late, have to be reminded to pay, or default completely. 'What should be a straightforward deal between property investor and tenant can become extremely complicated. 'Many of these people don't plan to be bad tenants – they simply don't know how to manage their finances correctly,' says Deon Botha, CEO of Rentmaster, a company that has combined technological resources with legal skills to take the sweat out of collecting rent and compromising one's assets.

A new product has been launched to protect property investors against tenants defaulting on their rent, giving them a 100% guarantee of rental payment.

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