Start with One Property.
You can set up your first rental in one sitting. This is the order we suggest.
Step 1: Add Your Rental and Tenant
Enter the address and units, then who lives there and what they pay. A few minutes for a rental and its tenant; add more rentals the same way.
Step 2: Invite Your Tenants
Keep texting them on Messenger. Invite them to the portal so repairs and notices land on a dated record, not in a chat thread.
Step 3: Add Your Building Systems
Record the age and condition of your major building systems: furnace install date, roof age, water heater condition. "I don’t know" is a fine answer. Dweller uses this to rate your buildings once key parts are checked, and to show what is due for replacement.
Step 4: Start Managing
Track rent, log expenses on their CRA lines, get each building rated once its key parts are checked, and export the year for your accountant.
Step 5: Then a Month Looks Like This
Rent day. Your tenant gets a short email on the day rent is due. When they’ve sent it, they tap “I’ve sent it.” That’s all they do.
The 5th. You get one email (and another on the 10th if anything is still open): who says they’ve sent it, the day they said so, and any e-Transfer reference they gave. Check it against your bank and tap once. Each tenant gets a receipt. Anyone who hasn’t paid stands out.
The middle of the month. A tenant notices a leak under the sink. They report it from their phone with a photo. You see it, book the plumber, and they can see it’s booked.
The Jobs You Only Do Now and Then
These come up a few times a year. Dweller keeps the dates.
A new tenant. Post your ad anywhere. Send everyone who asks the same application link, then give each person you invite to view their own booking link. You see applicants side by side, their references answer online, and you send an offer. The lease is written on NL’s Residential Tenancies Act, and you both sign it online.
Notices. For raising the rent or ending a tenancy, Dweller fills in the notice, laid out like the government form, and counts the dates from how you serve it. It won’t let you pick a date that’s too early. You’re the one serving it.
The deposit. It keeps the record of the deposit you hold, works out the interest, and shows the 10-day deadline on your dashboard when someone moves out.
Year-end. Every expense lands on its T776 line. In the spring you send your accountant one file, not a box. Your accountant still does the return.
The building. Dweller keeps track of the age and condition of your building systems and warns you when one is near the end of its usual life.
What’s due. Once enough systems have install years, Dweller shows what is due within 12 months, in 1–3 years and in 3–5 years, in today’s dollars, and lists what it can’t date yet.
How Dweller Gets Its Numbers
The rules, in plain words. If Dweller doesn't have the evidence for a number, it says so instead of guessing.
Property Health
A building gets a Property Health number only when all three of these are true:
- You've answered its safety questions (smoke alarms, CO alarm, exits).
- At least half of its parts have been checked. A check you already have, like a WETT report, counts.
- Every wear item has an age. “I don't know” is a fine answer.
Until then we say Not yet rated and name the few things to check first. Nothing unknown is counted as fine.
Parts are judged in three ways:
- Wear items (roof, furnace, water heater, windows): these wear out, so age counts. A furnace past its usual life is flagged by age.
- Structure (foundation, chimney, drains, sewer line, framing, masonry): judged by inspection, never by age. An old foundation is “not checked”, not “due for replacement”.
- Known hazards (FPE/Stab-Lok and Zinsco panels, aluminum wiring, knob-and-tube wiring, Poly-B piping): flagged as soon as they're identified, whatever their age.
Repair Forecast
- Years remaining come from typical lifespans for each system, adjusted for Newfoundland weather, and from any condition check you record.
- Each dated item goes in one group: Past typical life, 1–3 years or 3–5 years. Anything dated only by the building's age, or with no year at all, goes under Can’t date yet. Those are listed and counted, never added to the bill, until you answer one quick question.
- Structure such as foundations, drains and original piping is repaired as needed, not replaced on a schedule, so it never gets a price by age. In an old building we name those as possible big-ticket items, not in the estimate.
- All figures are ranges in today's dollars, labelled as estimates. With fewer than 3 dated systems, or a likely total under $1,000, we show no dollar figure and tell you which install years to add instead.
Notice Dates
We follow the Residential Tenancies Act, 2018 of Newfoundland and Labrador. Not legal advice.
- Rent increase (s.16(3)): 6 months' written notice for a monthly tenancy (8 weeks for weekly), no more than once every 12 months, and not during a fixed-term lease. Dweller refuses a date that is too early and shows the earliest one that works.
- Entering a unit (Statutory Condition 5): at least 24 hours' written notice. A time sooner than that is flagged with the earliest allowed time.
- Serving a notice (s.35): the date it counts from depends on how it was served. Registered mail counts from the fifth day after mailing, and email only counts when it goes to an address the tenant gave for documents, sent before 4 p.m. to count that day. A message in the Dweller portal is not one of the ways the Act allows, so the portal copy is labelled not legal service.
- Security deposit (s.14(9)): return it within 10 days after the tenant moves out, unless the tenant agrees in writing or you apply to the Director to keep some of it. It shows on your agenda as a legal deadline.
Try It on Your Own Units.
30 days free. No credit card required. Start with your first property.
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