Baselane: Features, Pricing and Integrations

Baselane is a banking and bookkeeping platform for rental property investors, with rent collection built into it. Landlords open property-specific checking and savings accounts, banking services come through Thread Bank, transactions are tagged to properties for Schedule E and tax reports, and tenants pay rent through a portal by ACH, debit or credit card, with automated invoices, reminders and late fees. The site says more than 50,000 real estate investors use it. In the rent payments category it is the vendor whose real product is the bank account, and rent collection is the reason to move the money there.

Who it fits

The database tags single-family rental. Baselane’s customer pages are organized by investor type: multi-property, short-term, mid-term and long-term rental investors, plus a separate banking page for property management companies, and its testimonials come from owners of two to more than 40 properties. The buyer is a self-managing landlord who wants rent, banking and bookkeeping in one login, and who would rather not pay for a property management system. The free Core plan makes that a low-risk test.

It fits less well for a manager already on AppFolio, Buildium or another PMS, which collects rent natively and keeps the ledger there; Baselane names no PMS integration. A third-party manager holding owner funds would be buying Baselane as a bank next to its PMS rather than as a rent tool: its property management page pitches separate owner and operating accounts to support PMS reconciliation and trust accounting. Ask how those accounts satisfy your state’s trust account rules before going further.

Pricing

Baselane publishes two plans. Core is $0 a month and includes the accounts, debit cards, bookkeeping, tax package and automated rent collection. Smart is $20 a month on an annual plan, with a 30-day trial, and adds two-day rent deposits, automatic transaction tagging, receipt matching, balance sheet reports and shared access. On Core, rent deposits take five business days, per the rent collection FAQ.

Tenants carry most of the payment fees. The pricing page lists ACH at $2 to $5, waived when rent is deposited into a Baselane account, and debit and credit cards at 3.49 percent. The rent collection FAQ says ACH is $2 and that the landlord can cover it, pass it on, or waive it with a Baselane deposit account. Split rent payments, through Livble, cost the tenant $30 or more a month, and rent reporting is $5 a month. Ask which ACH figure applies to your account, and do the math on a 3.49 percent card fee for your rent level before you tell tenants about it.

Integrations

The record names no PMS. The integrations Baselane names are accounting ones: QuickBooks and Xero sync on the pricing page. Split rent runs on Livble, which is its own vendor in this category. If you use a PMS, ask whether Baselane exports a ledger it can import, or whether you would be keeping rent in two places. For a landlord without a PMS, Baselane’s tenant ledger and rent roll are the system of record.

Limitations and questions to ask

Start with the bank. Baselane is a financial technology company, not a bank, and its deposits sit at Thread Bank with pass-through FDIC insurance subject to conditions. Ask what those conditions are for your entity structure, and what happens to your accounts if the bank partnership changes.

Then ask about payment controls. Ask whether you can block partial payments or stop online payments from a tenant you are evicting, and check with your attorney how your state treats a payment accepted mid-eviction.

Then ask about the fee optics. Late fees, the ACH fee and card fees all land on the tenant. Ask what the tenant sees at checkout and whether your lease and state law allow each charge.

Alternatives

The rent payments vendor list compares the category on the same facts. PayRent also serves independent landlords without a PMS and publishes a full fee table. PayYourRent starts at $9.95 a month for one to five units and reports rent to all three bureaus. Livble is the split-rent product behind Baselane’s installment option. For the whole field, read the rent payment platforms side by side.

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