Properties are the foundation of your Guardian Landlord account. Guardian Landlord is built for self-managing independent landlords — learn more about how it works. Every tenant invite, maintenance request, and rent record is tied to a specific property. This guide covers adding both single-family homes and multi-unit buildings, how to invite tenants as you go, and how lease dates work.

Adding a single-family home

A single-family home is treated as a single door — one property, one tenant (or household) at a time.

  1. Go to Properties in the dashboard sidebar.

  2. Click Add Property.

  3. Enter the property name (e.g. "123 Oak Street"), address, city, state, and zip.

  4. Leave the property type as Single Family.

  5. Add optional notes — these are internal, visible only to you and Guardian admins. Useful for things like "lockbox code: 4521" or "tenant has a dog".

  6. Click Save Property.

Once saved, the property appears in your Properties list. From the property detail page you can invite a tenant, set appliance preferences, and manage service representatives.

You can add a property without a tenant connected yet — useful if you're setting up in advance of a new lease. The property will show as Vacant until a tenant accepts an invite.

Adding a multi-unit property

For duplexes, triplexes, apartment buildings, or any property with more than one rentable unit, you'll add the building first and then add individual units underneath it.

  1. Go to Properties and click Add Property.

  2. Enter the building name (e.g. "Elm Street Duplex") and address.

  3. Select Multi-Unit as the property type.

  4. Save the property.

  5. From the property detail page, click Add Unit.

  6. Enter the unit identifier — this can be a number ("1", "2", "3"), a letter ("A", "B"), or a descriptor ("Upper", "Lower", "Garden").

  7. Repeat for each unit in the building.

Each unit counts as one door toward your plan limit — not the building itself. A duplex with two units uses two doors. See your current door count in the Billing section of Settings.

Inviting tenants as you go

You don't have to finish setting up a property before inviting tenants — you can invite from the property or unit detail page at any point.

  1. Open the property (or unit for multi-unit buildings).

  2. Click Invite Tenant.

  3. Enter the tenant's email address.

  4. Optionally set lease start and end dates — these populate automatically on the tenant's tenancy record when they accept.

  5. Click Send Invite. The tenant receives a branded email with a link to join.

You can track the status of pending invites from the Tenants page. Invites expire after 7 days but can be resent at any time.

You can also invite tenants directly from the Tenants page in the sidebar — useful when you want to invite multiple tenants to different properties in one session.

Lease dates and date effectivity

When you invite a tenant, you can optionally set a lease start date and lease end date. These dates are informational — they help you track when leases begin and expire across your portfolio, and they appear in the tenant's tenancy record once they accept the invite.

A few things to know about how dates work in Guardian Landlord:

  • Lease dates don't gate access. A tenant can accept an invite and use the portal regardless of whether their lease start date has passed. Dates are for your reference, not for access control.

  • You can edit dates after the fact. Go to the tenant's record on the Tenants page to update lease start or end dates at any time.

  • Rent records are tied to tenancy, not lease dates. The Rent section shows all active tenancies — rent tracking begins when you start recording payments, independent of the lease start date.

  • Lease end doesn't automatically archive. When a lease ends, the tenancy stays active until you manually archive it or the tenant is removed. This prevents accidental loss of request history.

Thinking of lease date effectivity as a full feature — scheduled access changes, automatic archiving, lease renewal reminders — is on our roadmap. For now, dates are informational and available for your records.

Property preferences

Once a property is added, you can configure preferences that help Guardian Landlord make better decisions during Away Mode:

  • Service representatives — your preferred vendors by trade (plumber, electrician, HVAC, etc.). Guardian will contact these vendors first when coordinating repairs.

  • Appliance preferences — for each appliance at the property, set whether you prefer to repair or replace, and optionally a cost threshold. Guardian will use these when advising tenants or coordinating repairs.

Preferences can be set at the property level and will apply to all units within that property. You can also set global defaults that apply across all your properties.

Archiving a property

If you sell a property or it's no longer active, you can archive it from the property detail page. Archived properties are hidden from your main dashboard but all history — tenants, requests, and rent records — is preserved and accessible from the archived view.

Archiving a property removes it from your active door count, which may affect your billing tier. If archiving would drop you below your current plan's threshold, your plan will remain unchanged until your next billing cycle.