Add your first lease
Save a tenant, rent, deposit, and dates on a rental property so the rent roll can track that lease.
Who it is for
Use Add lease when one tenancy should live on a property you already hold. The dialog title is Add lease. The line under it says "Add the tenant's email now so their secure portal is ready as soon as the lease is saved."
The property has to appear in the Property menu. Rehabfolio includes a project when its strategy is rental, buy and hold, or BRRRR, when its stage is Rental Inventory, or when it already has a lease. A flip that is still in construction does not appear until you change the strategy or stage, or you already attached a lease.
Add lease is disabled when that list is empty.
Before you start
- A property the rent roll can see. Change strategy to rental, buy and hold, or BRRRR if the menu is empty.
- The tenant's name. It is required. Email is required on a new lease.
- Monthly rent and deposit in dollars. Dates are optional but they drive vacancy math later.
Steps
Open Rentals and start the lease
Click Rentals in the left sidebar. Click Add lease at the top right. If the button is disabled, no rental property is available yet.
Choose the property and the tenant
Set Property. Type Tenant name. Type Tenant email. The hint says "Used for secure portal sign-in and lease communication." The placeholder is [email protected].
Add the phone only if you will use SMS
Tenant mobile number is optional. The hint says "Optional. Use E.164 format, for example +16175551212." Leave SMS rent reminder consent off unless the tenant has opted in. The hint says "Enable only after the tenant explicitly opts in. Email reminders continue independently."
Enter the money and the term
Type Monthly rent and Security deposit in dollars. Set Start date and End date. Set Status to Active or Ended. Notes is optional.
Save
Click Save lease. The confirmation is "Lease added." Cancel closes the dialog without saving. The lease shows on Leases & collections in the table titled Leases. An active lease also appears under Tenant portal access.
What the fields mean
Property is the project the rent, expenses, and maintenance stay attached to. Tenant name is required and is the name on the rent roll. A blank name on an older row shows as "Tenant not entered."
Tenant email is what lets the tenant get Email sign-in. On a new lease the field is required. On Edit lease you can clear it, and the portal row then says "Add tenant email" and "Email required."
Monthly rent is the billed amount for one month. The form shows dollars. It is stored in cents. Security deposit is stored the same way and is not a rent payment.
Start date and End date are calendar dates. A lease covers a month when the start month is on or before that month and the end month is on or after it. An active lease with no end date stays open. Ended revokes the tenant portal and guest access for that lease.
Status on the rent roll is a green pill for active and a gray pill for ended.
Tips and troubleshooting
- "Invalid tenant phone." You turned on SMS rent reminder consent without a number like +16175551212. Add the number or clear the checkbox.
- "Invalid rent." or "Invalid deposit." The amount cannot be negative. "Invalid date." means a date was not a real calendar day.
- "Your role doesn't allow that action. Ask an owner or admin." This sign-in cannot save the lease.
- Do not turn on SMS consent until the tenant has opted in. Email reminders do not use that checkbox.
- Add lease stays disabled until a rental property exists. The operating plan empty state says "No rental properties" and "Change a project strategy to rental, buy and hold, or BRRRR, or add a lease."
- Many leases at once belong in import leases from a CSV.
What to do next
Record the first month in record a rent payment. Send the tenant in with give the tenant a portal. The rest of the rentals page is in open the rentals workspace.
Next step
Continue with Move a lead on the pipeline.