Common questions.

An AI app designed and built for people with a handful of properties who manage everything themselves. Three tools: Fraud Guardian screens tenant application documents for signs of fraud. Maintenance Guardian tracks your property assets and estimates when things are going to need attention. Finance Guardian tracks income and expenses and flags tax items automatically. All from your phone.

About six years ago I blew my back out. Had to step back from contracting and pivot to equipment repair — lighter work physically. That bought me some time but it wasn't a long-term answer.

I started messing around with local AI models just to see what they could do. No real plan. One of them suggested building a tool for property owners and I laughed at first — but I kept thinking about it. So I looked at what was out there and didn't really see much except large property management platforms built for people with a hundred units, not a handful.

I knew rentals. I knew nothing about building an app. So back to AI I went — and after months of very little sleep, juggling this and keeping the repair business going, here we are. I'm proud of what it's grown into.

— Jeff, founder

Not at all. If you're working on your first rental — or just thinking about it — you can use this. It's free, and even if you never run a single scan it'll give you a clearer picture of what managing a property actually involves. No minimum unit count, no experience required.

Most property management software is built for companies with dozens or hundreds of units. RentalGuards is built for someone managing a handful of properties themselves — no staff accountant, no maintenance crew, just you. You pay per scan. No monthly fee, no subscription.

RentalGuards is a web app — nothing to download from an app store. On iPhone: tap Share in Safari, then "Add to Home Screen." On Android: tap the menu in Chrome, then "Add to Home Screen." Once it's installed, open the app and create your free account.

Full install guide →

An email address and a phone. That's it. No credit card required to create an account or claim your free credits.

3 free credits land in your account automatically. You'll get a welcome email that walks you through what to do next. Install the app to your home screen when prompted — takes 30 seconds and you'll want it there for push notifications. Then run your first scan.

Yes. iPhone on Safari, Android on Chrome or Brave. Full browser compatibility guide →

It scans the documents your applicants submit — pay stubs, IDs, employment letters, rental applications, tax returns — and looks for signs of fraud. Not just one document in isolation, but all of them together. It checks whether the numbers add up, whether the details are consistent across documents, and whether anything looks tampered with.

It tracks your major property assets and tells you how long they have left. Snap a photo of the nameplate on your HVAC, water heater, furnace, or breaker panel — Maintenance Guardian reads the model number, looks up the manufacturer lifespan for that exact unit, and gives you a years-remaining estimate adjusted for your climate. An AC in Florida doesn't last as long as one in upstate New York. We factor that in. You also get a condition assessment when you snap a photo of the asset itself — roof, equipment, whatever needs tracking.

It keeps your books straight and tells you where you actually stand. Snap a receipt and it gets categorized and linked to the right property. Load a bank statement and we pull out every transaction, match it to your properties, and flag anything worth a closer look. Tap Run the Numbers and you get a plain English CPA-style breakdown of your income, expenses, and net position — not just what the bank account says, but what your numbers actually mean. At tax time, export a summary by property and hand it to your CPA or use it yourself.

Two ways. First, math. A legitimate pay stub has to balance — gross pay, tax withholdings, net pay, year-to-date totals all have to be internally consistent and match real federal and state tax rates. We calculate what those numbers should be and flag anything that doesn't match. Second, cross-referencing. We compare every document in the bundle against every other one. A pay stub claiming $5,000 a month while the employment letter says $2,800 for the same job is a problem. Dates that don't line up between documents are a problem. We catch the conflicts that look fine on any single document but fall apart when you put them all together.

Pay stub math errors — even small ones most people would miss. A Medicare withholding off by $20 sounds minor but it flags a tampered document. Employer name mismatches across documents. Income on a stub that doesn't match what the employment letter says. Dates that contradict each other. Template-farm documents where two supposedly unrelated documents share identical layouts down to the font spacing.

Pay stubs, photo ID, employment verification letters, rental applications, W-2s, and tax returns. Upload any combination — minimum 2 documents, maximum 6. The more you include, the more the cross-reference layer has to work with.

No. The scan checks for signs of digital editing or forgery — altered fonts, inconsistent layouts, suspicious metadata. It doesn't verify that an ID was issued by a government or confirm the person in the photo is who they say they are. What we check is whether the document has been tampered with.

You get a fraud risk score from 0–100 (Low / Moderate / High / Very High), a plain-English explanation of what was found, and a list of specific flags. If nothing is flagged, you get a summary of what was checked and passed. Every result can be exported as a PDF for your records.

3 credits per Cross-Check scan. At beta pricing that's $3. At full launch it's $6. You get 3 free credits when you create an account — your first scan is on us.

You buy credits in packs and spend them on scans. Credits never expire — buy them whenever, use them whenever. No subscription, no monthly fee, no per-seat pricing.

During beta: $1 per credit. Packs are $20 (20 credits), $30 (30 credits), $50 (50 credits). After beta, pricing moves to $2 per credit.

Fraud Guardian Cross-Check: 3 credits. Maintenance Guardian assessment: 1 credit. Finance Guardian analysis: 1 credit.

At beta pricing: 20-credit pack = 6 full Cross-Checks plus 2 credits left for Maintenance or Finance. 30-credit pack = 10 full Cross-Checks. 50-credit pack = 16 full Cross-Checks plus 2 credits left over.

No. Credits never expire. No deadline, no monthly reset, no "use it or lose it." Buy when it's convenient, use when you need to.

Credits never expire — buy them whenever, use them whenever. And if you ever pick up more than you need, we'll refund the unused ones. No minimum amount. Within 180 days of your purchase it goes back to your original card automatically. After that you pick how you want it back — ACH or straight to your debit card — on a quick form. We cover all the transaction fees, you get back exactly what you paid. Done within 30 days.

Why no hard cutoff? At some point state unclaimed property laws kick in — that's years out for most people — but when it happens we report it and you can recover it from the state directly. Until then the offer stands. We'd rather put that money back in your pocket than watch it disappear into a state fund.

Yes. Free to download and use. You buy credits to run scans. No charge just to have an account.

Yes — 3 free credits when you create an account. That's enough for one full Cross-Check scan. No card required to sign up.

No. You pay only for the credits you buy. Nothing is charged automatically.

Sensitive identifiers — Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, driver's license numbers — are automatically redacted on your device before anything is uploaded. The redaction happens locally, on your phone, before the document leaves it. What reaches our server is the document with those fields already blacked out. Results come back, the document is deleted. Your tenant's most sensitive information never travels to our servers at all.

No. Documents are processed for scanning and deleted immediately when results come back. We don't retain copies.

Almost everything lives on your device. Scan history, ledger entries, property records, asset data — all of it stays on your phone. The only things we store on our end are your account email, your password, and your credit balance — so you can log in and your credits are accurate. That's it. Nothing from your scans ever touches our servers. More on how we protect your data →

We don't want your data and we built the app so nobody else can get it either. We don't sell it, share it, or monetize it in any way — hell, we don't even train our AI model on it. We're completely hands off.

RentalGuards doesn't screen applicants based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, disability, or any other protected class. Fraud Guardian screens documents — not people. Apply your screening criteria consistently to every applicant. If you have questions about your Fair Housing obligations, talk to a real estate attorney.

Tap Support in the app or email support@rentalguards.com. Jeff reads every one. Available Monday–Friday 7am–7pm EST, Saturday 7am–5pm EST.