Fee Transparency means that all costs associated with a service are fully disclosed up front. Yardi offers a few different ways to increase transparency in your property’s fee structure. You can:
Add the Cost Estimate to your RentCafe website, prospect portal, and resident portal.
Send fee data through your ILS feeds.
Send fee data through RentCafe API v2 to third-party websites.
CAUTION: If your organization is not using Yardi to handle certain extra costs, such as renter’s insurance, you are still required to provide this fee information to the customer. You can manually add in fees for payments that are not processed by Yardi through Voyager 8.
The setup requirements vary, depending on where you want to provide fee data:
RentCafe websites | RentCafe prospect portal | ILS feeds | Third-party websites |
All fee data is available on RentCafe property websites through the Cost Estimate. This displays on the Floor Plans and Apartment Availability pages.
Requirements:
| All fee data is available in prospect portal through the Cost Estimate on the Terms & Rental Options page and in the top menu.
Requirements:
NOTE When you are using Revenue Management, the optimized Terms & Rental Options page is not supported. | All fee data is available in the RentCafe ILS listing and has been made available to third-party ILS vendors. Any vendors who have completed the required updates can leverage the RentCafe feed to retrieve fee data.
Requirements:
| All fee data is available in RentCafe API v2 for approved v2 vendors.
Requirements:
NOTE Although the Cost Estimate is not currently available for third-party websites, the Cost Estimate property setting is required to ensure all data syncs from Voyager to RentCafe for RentCafe API v2 to send. |
NOTE: RentCaffeine is not required to enable the Cost Estimate settings, which impact fee transparency on your RentCafe and third-party websites, portals, and ILS listings. However, the Cost Estimate will only show on your RentCafe marketing website if it has been published on RentCaffeine.
Purpose
The White House issued an initiative to be more transparent with hidden fees incurred by consumers. In property management, potential customers may see the rent amount on your website, but not be made aware of application fees, admin fees, renter’s insurance fees, and so on, until after they’ve begun the application.
As a response to this initiative, RentCafe has created tools which will allow customers to see the “true cost” of the leasing journey up front. It begins in Voyager 8, where you can add and configure fees associated with renting at your property. Then, on your websites you can add descriptive narratives and a cost estimator that allows customers to see a list of all standard fees and calculate the projected costs of leasing.
Yardi’s goal is to standardize the process of providing these fees.
Cost Estimate overview
The Cost Estimate allows prospects to calculate the total cost associated with moving into and living at a property. The link to open the estimator appears on your Floor Plans and Apartment Availability pages, on specific floor plans or units, and on the Terms & Rental Options page. It is available regardless of the layout or optimization level of these pages.
There are three main sections on the Cost Estimate:
Application Cost: Includes application charges, such as security deposit, application fees, earnest money, and admin fees.
Move-in Cost: Includes move-in charges. Amounts are prorated by the Move-in Date selected in the filter.
Monthly Cost: Includes any move-in charges that are flagged as required, as well as modifiable charges with values if your property is set to include those in the lease summary.
TIP: If the Add Modifiable Move-in Charges in Lease Summary setting is selected, modifiable charges that have a value in Voyager are also included. If a charge is modifiable, it will show the disclaimer, “This charge is subject to change at the time of move-in.”
Additionally, you have the following two sections for miscellaneous additional costs:
Personalize your cost: Includes People, where you can add additional adult applicants and leaseholders, and Service, where you can include any additional amenities you want to add, such as garage spaces, cable internet, and in-unit washer/dryer.
Situational Fees: Includes fees that may apply depending on the state of your lease, such as month-to-month fees, late fees, early termination fees, or NSF fees.
When viewing the Cost Estimate, the prospect can use the Floor Plan, Unit, Move-in Date, and Lease Term filters to see how costs change depending on their rental preferences. These filters automatically populate based on the floor plan or unit from which the prospect accesses the Cost Estimate.
To enable the Cost Estimate for your property, you need the Property > Content & Settings > Settings > Apartment Search Settings > Cost Calculator user permission, which grants access to the Enable cost estimate/calculator property-level setting, under the Apartment Search Settings section.
When you select the Enable cost estimate/calculator property setting, the following disclaimer appears:
Cost Estimate Disclaimer Text
You have chosen to enable the Move-In Cost Calculator tool (the "Cost Calculator"), which is designed to help you present your tenant prospects with the initial and recurring monthly fees and costs of entering into a lease for one or more of your properties. By enabling the Cost Calculator, you understand, acknowledge, and agree, that the fees and costs, including the General and Special Fees and Monthly Costs, are set entirely by you (not Yardi), whether you input them manually or pulled by the Cost Calculator from your Voyager or other Yardi property management software database. You also understand, acknowledge, and agree that: (1) Yardi does not and cannot provide legal advice about the sufficiency of the Cost Calculator, and that you may not rely on the Cost Calculator, any Help menu information, or any other statements by Yardi as legal advice; (2) you are solely responsible for actively maintaining the currentness, accuracy, and completeness of your fees and costs; and that (3) Yardi makes no representation or warranty of any kind, express or implied, regarding the accuracy, adequacy, validity, reliability, legal compliance, or completeness of your fees or costs. For questions about whether the Cost Calculator meets the specific needs of any property for which you choose to enable it, you must consult with your own compliance or legal team.
After you select the Enable cost estimate/calculator setting, the Cost Estimate is automatically added to your website.
The following procedure describes how to use the Cost Estimate as a prospect.
How to use it
Click the Estimate your costs link. The Cost Estimate page appears.
Under Get started by selecting your unit, move-in date, and lease term, complete the filters:
Floor Plan: Select a floor plan. This determines the units from which you can pick.
Unit: Select a unit for the floor plan.
Move-in Date: Your desired move-in date. This automatically populates the current date or first available move-in date for the selected unit.
Lease Term: The number of months for the lease.
In the Personalized your cost section:
Under People, click the + or - buttons next to Applicants or Leaseholders to change the number of additional people you want to include in lease cost calculations.
Under Services, click the + or - buttons next to individual services offered by the property to change the services you want to include in lease cost calculations.
Click Apply Now. The Terms & Rental Options page appears with your selections from the Cost Estimate already populated.
You can also click the Email My Estimate button to save a copy of the Cost Estimate results for yourself.
Cost Estimate reference
You can add the Cost Estimate to your RentCafe marketing website and portals. The Cost Estimate appears as a link on the Floor Plans, Apartment Availability, and Rental Options pages of your property marketing website.
Voyager 8 fee setup
In Voyager 8 or CRM IQ, or under the Voyager Admin role, you can add and adjust any applicable fees for use in the Cost Estimate. Changes you make from the property record Cost Estimate settings update in RentCafe in real time.
NOTE: Not all fields for existing fees can be edited from the Property Fees and Unit Type Lease Fees screens. Instead, those fields must be edited at the fee’s source.
Before you begin
The following fee types must be set up to show on the Cost Estimate:
Move-in charges on Voyager unit types.
Application charges on Voyager unit types.
Applicable property fees (late fees, NSF fees, etc.) in Voyager Property Control for each property.
(Optional) Custom fees for the Voyager property and unit types in Voyager 8.
How to do it
From the top menu in Voyager 8 or CRM IQ, go to More > Properties > Properties. The Properties screen appears.
In the Property filter, enter the property for which you want to configure property and unit type lease fees, then click Search. Matching properties appear in the grid below.
In the grid, click the hyperlinked property Code. The property record appears.
To add or edit property fees:
From the property record side menu, go to Cost Estimate > Property Fees.
If you want to edit existing property fees, review the fields for the fees that appear in the data grid.
If you want to add a new property fee, click the Add New button (+) in the top-right corner of the screen. New rows appear at the bottom of the data grid.
Complete the fields in the data grid. You can scroll to the right to view more fields for editing. For field descriptions, see the Grid reference below.
Click Save.
To edit unit type lease fees:
From the property record side menu, go to Cost Estimate > Unit Type Lease Fees.
In the Unit Type filter, select the unit type for which you want to add or edit lease fees.
Select the tab corresponding to the lease fees you want to edit:
Move-in Charges: Any fees that are charged at move-in, such as pet fees.
Move-out Charges: Any fees that are charged at move-out, such as cleaning fees.
Application Charges: Any fees that are charged when the prospect submits their application, such as earnest money.
Custom Fees: Additional fees that do not fit into any of the other lease fee types.
If you select the Custom Fees tab, to add a custom fee, click the Add New button (+) in the top-right corner of the screen. New rows appear at the bottom of the data grid.
Complete the fields in the data grid. You can scroll to the right to view more fields for editing. For field descriptions, see the Grid reference below.
Click Save.
Grid reference
Any fields that are grayed out come from standard Voyager fee setup and are pulled from other datasets in Voyager (for example, Property Control or Unit Types charges). While these data points cannot be configured on these screens, you can still add other attributes and definitions to these fees.
Additionally, you can fully configure any custom fees that are not standardized in Voyager from these screens.
The order in which these fields appear depends on whether you are viewing the Property Fees screen or a tab on the Unit Type Lease Fees screen. Some fields are specific to certain screens. Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are required.