When you're ready to end a lease, there are a few steps that we suggest you complete in Buildium. Your business may have additional steps and requirements upon tenant move-out, but this list is a great way to get started.
- Complete a move out inspection
- Enter additional charges
- Apply deposits to charges
- Refund remaining deposits held
- Print and send tenant statements
- Move out tenants
1. Complete a move out inspection
It’s best practice in the property management industry to complete an inspection upon move-in and move-out. Completing a move-out inspection can help you identify any damages or causes for concern that you may need to deduct from the tenant’s security deposit for.
Completing a move out inspection is simple using Property Inspections from Buildium and HappyCo.
Click here to learn more about Buildium Property Inspections
2. Enter additional charges
If there are deductions that need to be made from a resident’s security deposit for cleaning costs, damages, or early termination fees, you first need to enter any charges onto their lease ledger for the items in question.
If there is already a balance on the lease ledger that you want to apply the security deposit to (such as an overdue rent balance), there is no need to add additional charges.
Click here to learn how to enter a charge on a tenant's lease ledger
Once the charge is saved, the tenant lease ledger should show an outstanding balance in the amount of the charges entered.
3. Apply deposit to charges
When you’ve entered any charges to indicate what the tenant owes you from the security deposit, you need to take the step to apply the deposit to those charges. A withheld (or applied) deposit are funds that are received as a liability from a tenant, that are then reallocated as income to cover an expense.
Click here to learn how to withhold a tenant deposit and apply it to charges
Please note: withholding a deposit does not move the security deposit from the bank account it’s currently sitting in, it only tells this system that the funds are no longer a liability.
If you need to move the money from one bank account to another to pay out expenses, navigate to Accounting > Banking to transfer the funds.
4. Refund remaining deposits held
If you withhold the entire amount of a tenant’s security deposit to apply to charges, there should be no available balance to refund the tenant.
If you only withhold a partial amount of the deposit, the next step is to refund any remaining deposits held.
Click here to learn how to refund remaining deposits held to a tenant
5. Print and send tenant statements
When you complete the financial transactions associated with a move-out, send a final tenant statement. You can choose if you want the tenant's deposit refund amounts on the statement by navigating to Settings > Application Settings > Residents.
Click here to learn how to generate a tenant statement using mailings
Once the tenant statement has been generated, you have the option to print and manually mail the statement, email it as a PDF, or use Buildium’s EZMail feature to have us print and mail the statement for you.
6. Move out tenants
The final suggested step in when ending a lease is to move out all the tenants and indicate the lease has ended in Buildium.
To move out all tenants and end a lease:
- Navigate to Rentals > Rent Roll, then click on the lease you want to end.
- From the lease summary page, click the tenants tab to see a list of current tenants on the lease.
- Click Move out in the contact card of one of the tenants you want to move out, confirm the date, then select all tenants.
- Click Move out, then click OK when you see the message informing you that the lease end date will match the move out date.
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