Understanding Automated Rent Reviews

For our customers across the globe, "Rent Reviews" is a common term, but the terminology may vary. In Europe and Asia-Pacific, it's known as "Rent Review," while in North America, the process is referred to as "Lease Renewal" or "Rent Escalation." To better understand these terms and others, please refer to our Glossary of Regional Terminology.

What are Automated Rent Reviews?

Automated Rent Reviews is the automated adjustment of the rental rate of a property, based on user-defined terms according to the Tenancy/Lease agreement. Automated updates are currently only based on fixed increments. Automating this task ensures that reviews are never overlooked and always executed on time.

How to Set Up Automated Rent Reviews

To set up automated rent reviews:

1. Navigate to the relevant Tenancy/Lease record and create a new rent review from the rent reviews tab
2. Enter the details of the Rent Review/Escalation, there are mandatory fields for the automation, which include Description, Review type, Review date, and New Annual Rent.
   1. Be mindful of the "Review date" you select, as this is the day, the Rent Review/Escalation is both performed and becomes effective. 
   2. Currently only non-percentage Review types can be automated, you can change your Review types to non-percentage in Settings under "Review types"
3. Select the checkbox to perform update automatically, you also have the option to include any rent adjustment invoices (if there are any) with your automated Rent Reviews/Escalations, simply by checking the Attach rent adjustments checkbox 
4. Review, change or add, any correspondence, forms and agreements, reminders or auto tenant notifications. 
5. Select Save and add another to conveniently create multiple Rent Reviews/ Escalations or Save to only create one.

What happens on the Rent Review date?

1. Based on your reminder settings you will be able to see upcoming automated Rent Reviews/ Escalations on the Dashboard or in the Rent Review Hub and make any changes ahead of the automation.
2. The system will communicate any pre-defined automated Tenant notifications about the upcoming Rent Review/Escalation.
3. Based on your pre-defined terms, Review type, Review date, and New Annual Rent. The system will automatically increase the new annual rent and automatically create adjustments invoices if necessary. 
4. We will then automatically communicate the updated rent to your tenant using your preferred correspondence and Forms and Agreements templates via the defined communication channel

What happens when there is advanced billing?

Let's take a closer look at how our Automated Rent Reviews work when you have advanced billing set up. 

Situation: A tenant's rent review is scheduled for July 1st, with rent billed on the first of each month and set to generate one week in advance.

Automated Process:

1. One week before July 1st, the system will handle billing as usual, issuing an invoice for the current rent amount.
2. On July 1st, with the Rent Review effective, the system will automatically:
   1. Generate an Adjustment Invoice to account for the new rent rate for July. Note: You will need to tick the Attach Rent Adjustments option if you want these sent automatically to your tenant
   2. Create a new Rent Template reflecting the updated rent amount for future billing.