Yeah mine does collect automatically if I leave it after clicking the dollar sign, I mean I've played the game a long time and over this period of time I probably own way over 500 buildings, which you can obviously imagine how annoying collecting that many each time I log on, so I'm just suggesting a collect all button you can press once and it collects all the money and xp from all the houses with just one click :-)
But obviously for laziness take a percentage like 10% of the money and xp.
I do t mind collecting the characters manually, it's just I own so many damn houses lol, I'm sure others have this issue too going from a few of my neighbours, as they have large towns and many houses like i do.