Business Email for Property Management: Tenants, Owners and Maintenance

A property manager serves two customers who must never be confused: the tenant who needs a boiler fixed tonight, and the owner who needs to know what it cost and why. Every message to either may be evidence later, in a deposit dispute, an eviction, or a complaint to a regulator. Email on your own domain, with separate addresses for each flow, is how a small agency keeps those records straight without a ticketing system.

Quick answer

Create leasing@, maintenance@, rent@, owners@ and office@ on your own domain, plus name@ for each property manager. Make maintenance@ and leasing@ groups, so a request never waits on one person. Send tenant notices from office@ with the property address in the subject line, and keep the mailboxes for as long as your local rules require. All of it is free on OquMail.

The addresses to create

• leasing@youragency.com for applicants, viewings, references and new tenancies. A group with whoever shows properties and the manager.
• maintenance@youragency.com for repair requests from tenants. A group with the property manager and the office, so a request reported at 7 am is seen by whoever starts first.
• rent@youragency.com for rent questions, arrears and statements. A mailbox read by accounts, kept apart from maintenance so money and repairs are never in the same thread.
• owners@youragency.com for landlord clients: monthly statements, approval of repairs, renewals. A group with the manager and the owner of the agency.
• office@youragency.com for formal notices, contractors, insurers and the regulator. A mailbox with one archive.
• name@youragency.com for each property manager who writes to tenants or owners.

Notices that must be in writing

Rent increases, inspection notices, end-of-tenancy notices and deposit deductions must usually be in writing, and in many places email only counts if the tenancy agreement says so. Check your agreement and your local law, then send every notice from office@ with the property address and the notice type in the subject line, for example "Flat 3, 12 Oak Street – inspection notice – 14 days". Ask for a reply confirming receipt. Where the law requires a posted letter, send the email as well, so the thread shows the date. Keep the mailbox; a notice you cannot find is a notice you cannot prove.

Maintenance that works by email

1. Tenant emails maintenance@ with the problem and a photo. Put the address on the welcome letter, the fridge magnet and the tenant portal.
2. The group delivers it to the manager and the office. One of them replies within the hour with the ticket reference, which is simply the subject line kept intact.
3. The manager emails the contractor from their name@ with the tenant's contact details and the access arrangement, copying maintenance@ so the thread is complete.
4. Approval from the owner, if the cost needs it, by a reply from owners@ that the manager keeps in the same thread.
5. Contractor invoice arrives at office@ or rent@ and is matched to the thread by the property address.

Set it up in an afternoon

1. Add your domain in OquMail and paste the MX, SPF and DKIM records at your registrar. The DNS checklist has the exact values.
2. Create office@ and each manager's name@ first, then a name@ mailbox for each person who replies to customers.
3. Create the shared addresses as groups and add the right people as members. Each member gets a copy in their own mailbox, so nothing depends on one person checking one inbox.
4. Set a signature on every mailbox in webmail with the phone number, the address and the licence or registration number where your trade requires it.
5. Put the new addresses in the Google Business Profile, on the website, on invoices and on the vehicles, in that order; the profile is where most local leads start.
6. Turn on two-factor authentication for the owner account. Invoice fraud starts with a stolen inbox.

Mistakes specific to the trade

• Managers using personal addresses for tenants. When the manager leaves, so does every record of what was promised. The retention guide sets out what to keep.
• Owner statements sent with other owners in copy. One owner, one email, every time.
• Maintenance requests taken by phone or WhatsApp with no email record. The deposit dispute is decided on paper.
• Deleting a former tenant's mailbox threads to save space. The free plan gives each mailbox 5 GB; a tenancy's worth of email is a few megabytes.
• Ignoring the privacy side. Tenant references, ID copies and bank details are personal data; the privacy address guide explains what an agency should have in place.

Common questions

Should every property have its own address?

No. Addresses are for flows, not buildings. Put the property address in the subject line and search on it; a mailbox with three years of maintenance@ threads is searchable by street name in seconds.

What about out-of-hours emergencies?

Email is not the channel for a burst pipe at midnight; give tenants an emergency phone number. Put it in the maintenance@ signature and in the auto-reply you set in your mail app for out-of-hours, and ask them to email maintenance@ afterwards so the record exists.

How long do I keep tenant email?

At least as long as a claim could be brought, which is years rather than months in most countries, and longer where deposit or tax rules say so. Keep the mailboxes, export them when a manager leaves, and write the period down in a one-page retention policy.