Lease management is mostly date management. A lease is a set of obligations with dates attached, and almost every expensive surprise in a portfolio is a date that passed without anybody acting on it. This page is the four that bite, in the order they usually cost money, for a landlord or manager without a dedicated system.
The notice deadline inside a break or option
Where a lease contains an option to renew, a break, or a rent review triggered by notice, the deadline is usually strict and the consequence of missing it is the loss of the right entirely. This is the most expensive date in any lease and the one least visible, because nothing happens on the day it passes. Extract it at signature, not at expiry.
The rent review or escalation date
A step, an index-linked uplift or a scheduled review that nobody applies is money not collected, and it compounds quietly because the base for the next step is wrong too. A review missed for two years is not a two-year problem, it is a permanently lower rent. Diary it at signature with the calculation method beside it.
Insurance, compliance and certificate dates
Safety certificates, inspections, licences and anything the property needs to be lawfully let. These have hard consequences and they are the ones most often held in somebody's memory, which works until that person is on holiday. They belong against the property in the record rather than in a calendar that leaves when its owner does.
Expiry, which is the least dangerous
Expiry is visible, it announces itself, and in most states the tenancy simply continues on a periodic basis rather than ending abruptly. It gets all the attention because it is easy to see, while the three dates above quietly cost more. A small portfolio is usually better served by extracting the first three at signature than by any system for tracking the fourth.
Questions people ask about lease management
Do I need lease management software for ten units?
Rarely. What you need is the four dates extracted at signature into something that survives you being unavailable, which can be a shared calendar over a written record.
What is the most commonly missed date?
An option or break notice deadline, because nothing prompts it and the consequence is invisible until the right has already been lost.
Where should the dates live?
Against the lease in the record, so that anyone opening the tenancy sees them. A calendar entry with no link to the document is half a system.