How to get a lease signed online: e-signatures for landlords and property managers
Turnover season shouldn't mean chasing tenants with a printed lease. Here's how landlords get leases, renewals, and addenda signed online — for $9.99/seat/mo.
A vacant unit is the most expensive thing a landlord owns, and the lease is the last step between that vacancy and a paying tenant. When a good applicant is finally ready to commit, the worst thing you can do is slow them down with a printed lease, a scanner they don't own, and a week of phone tag. Here's how landlords and property managers get leases signed online — the same day the tenant says yes — without an enterprise e-signature bill.
The documents a rental runs on
Managing even a handful of units means a steady stream of the same agreements:
- Leases and rental agreements — the main event, often 10+ pages with initials throughout.
- Renewals — the same lease with new dates and rent, sent every year.
- Addenda — pet, parking, lead-paint disclosure, and house-rules add-ons.
- Move-in / move-out checklists — signed condition reports that head off deposit disputes.
- Notices and consents — application authorizations, co-signer agreements, entry notices.
Every one is a PDF you send, place a few fields on, and route to one or more people — the exact send-and-sign workflow Signed is built around.
Why the paper lease costs you days
A tenant who's ready to sign on Monday can cool off by Thursday. The delay is almost never the lease itself — it's the mechanics:
- Printing a 12-page lease assumes the tenant owns a printer.
- In-person signing means coordinating schedules for something that should take minutes.
- A portal that demands an account adds a hoop at the worst possible moment.
On Signed, the tenant gets an email, taps the link, and signs in their phone's browser — no account, nothing to install. A lease sent at lunch can be signed by dinner, and the unit is effectively off the market.
Route the lease to every tenant, in order
Most units have more than one tenant, and sometimes a co-signer or guarantor. With signing order, you route the lease to each tenant in turn — or let roommates sign in parallel if order doesn't matter — and a co-signer only receives the document once the tenants have signed. Each person is emailed when it's their turn; nobody waits on a link they can't act on yet. The mechanics are in how to send a document for electronic signature.
The fields a lease needs
A lease asks for the same handful of fields, just a lot of them:
- Initials — on nearly every page, and beside key clauses like the pet policy or the late-fee terms. Drag an initials field where each is needed and assign it to the right tenant.
- Signature — each tenant's, plus yours or the property manager's.
- Date signed — fills automatically, so the lease term's start date is unambiguous.
- Text — names, unit number, rent amount, deposit.
- Checkbox — acknowledgments for house rules or disclosures the tenant confirms they've read.
Assign each field to the right signer; the full reference is in Sending & signing. Draft the lease wherever you like, then export it to a PDF — what you upload is exactly what the tenant signs.
Reminders beat calling a tenant who hasn't signed
When a tenant goes quiet mid-signing, automatic reminders send the nudge for you, on a schedule you set — no awkward "did you sign yet?" texts. Set an expiration date if the offer to lease is only good for a few days; a real deadline nudges a hesitating applicant to commit before you move to the next one. Both, plus how to work a stalled document, are covered in how to chase unsigned documents.
Template your lease once, reuse it every turnover
Your lease barely changes between tenants — the names, dates, and rent do; the pages of terms don't. Set it up once as a reusable template with every field placed and roles defined, and each new lease takes thirty seconds: pick the template, type the tenant's details, send. For a property manager turning over units all season, this is where the hours come back — the full workflow is in reusable e-signature templates. It's the same trick agents lean on for their standard forms.
Is an e-signed lease binding?
Yes — in the US, a residential lease signed electronically carries the same legal weight as one signed in ink, under the ESIGN Act and UETA. What makes it hold up in a deposit or eviction dispute is proof the tenant intended to sign, consented to sign electronically, and that the document hasn't changed since. The legal groundwork is in are electronic signatures legally binding?. A few jurisdictions have specific rules for certain housing notices, so check your local landlord-tenant law for anything unusual. (General information, not legal advice — for landlord-tenant specifics, check your local law or a lawyer.)
The record that protects a landlord
Rental disputes surface months later, and "did they agree to the pet policy?" is a question you want answered by evidence, not memory. Every completed lease on Signed ships with a tamper-evident Certificate of Completion — each signer's email, timestamps, and IP for every action, sealed against later edits (what's in it). And if you only need to sign something yourself — a notice, your side of a form — the free self-sign tool handles that without an account.
What it costs
Signed is $9.99 per seat per month — one plan, unlimited documents, month-to-month, no annual lock-in. A seat covers you or your property manager; tenants and co-signers never need an account or a seat. Whether you send two leases this year or thirty next month, the price is the same and nothing is capped — unlike the incumbent's metered plans. See pricing and the side-by-side on the DocuSign comparison page.