Real Estate Investing Software: A Directory

[Benjamin Arritt]

Real estate and rental property investing analysis spreadsheets, tools, formulas, calculators, apps and software.

Here is a list of software I found recommended, I have tried and/or are still investigating. Costs and features were accurate at the time of writing, but might be outdated by the time you read this. If you see a major name I have excluded, please let me know and I am happy to add it:

Analytics & Market Research

House Canary

https://www.housecanary.com/solutions/real-estate-investor/

• Explore and source potential properties with analytics and data pulled directly from MLS. Set your criteria for automated qualified leads. Includes "rental explorer" valuation tool.
• Nothing is on their website about pricing. This site says they change $10 per comparative market analysis (CMA): https://hooquest.com

AirDNA

https://www.airdna.co/vacation-rental-data

• Says it will help you find the best places to invest in vacation rentals (short term rentals), using interactive map and over 25 key performance metrics in over 80,000 cities worldwide. Data-driven dynamic pricing strategies. View pricing trajectories.
• $19.95 – $99.95 mo. depending upon the size of the market you want to research. Assuming you are researching a market with more than 1,000 listing, you will need the $99.95 mo. plan

Vrolio

https://www.vrolio.com/

• Free to join their community, but they only provide regional listings for the 8 cities they represent.
• Vrolio offers a full suite of tools, investment information, and data analytics on short-term rental properties. Our goal is to offer short-term rental investors a single place to buy and sell investment properties.

Real Estate Analysis Software & Calculators

Some of these are great and many are free (or cheap), but most people can use spreadsheets for the same purpose. Of course, these don’t sync with your personal finances, traditional investment portfolio or anything else, so you have no idea where each scenario leaves you financially.

Bigger Pockets

https://www.biggerpockets.com/rental-property-calculator

• Basic, easy to use calculators on this site get most everything. Very little accuracy in creating a long-term maintenance plan, but still easy to use and effective.
• Provides long term projections but with so-so amounts of data detail (if I remember)
• Free, but you can’t save anything. To save the data or export a PDF you need to pay $19 mo. for a Plus Membership (limited to 5 reports) or a Pro Membership $39 mo. so you can have unlimited calculator access.

Deal Check

https://dealcheck.io/

• Structured to analyze deals with the metrics most commonly used for short term rentals, long term rentals, flips & rehab, BRRRR, wholesale, multi-family and commercial buildings: CoC, NOI, Cap Rate, etc.
• This is one of the few (only?) financial calculators that provides some long term planning info so you can see your total cash flow and net worth over time. Goes out 35 years. Obviously not meant to be financial planning software so it doesn’t aggregate this into your personal finances over the long haul, but seems to be good at what it does.
• Workflow includes the ability to:
  • Import property data from public records.
  • Customize precise deal parameters.
  • View detailed financial analysis and projections.
  • Look up recent sales and rental comps.
  • Calculate your highest offer price to seller.
  • Provides standard metrics like
• $7 mo. plan limits 50 saved properties, 15 photos and 10 comps. $15 mo. is unlimited with property owner lookup and custom branding.

Rental Software

https://www.rentalsoftware.com/

• Geared more toward real estate agents that want to sell to real estate investors
• Not designed for short term rentals. Designed for long term rental and flips.
• Creates PDF reports
• Not a monthly fee. $99.95 download for long term rental Cash Flow Analyzer Pro or $129.95 download with IRA module (tax advantage analysis for putting real estate into IRA, Roth & 401K)
• $99.95 for Flipper Cash Flow Analyzer

Valuate

https://valuate.getrefm.com/

• Multi-family core and value-add underwriting model from the rent roll through unit renovations, refi and sale. Seems this might be more for commercial.
• Pricing is free, $19 and $49 mo. depending upon feature set

Real Data

https://www.realdata.com/p/express/

• Detailed and quick analysis for short term rentals. Only a quick analysis for short term rentals.
• Says this is software but requires Microsoft Excel (only exports reports?)
• $85 for 30 days, then $495 for unlimited use.
• Property comparison module is $39

Calculator.net

https://www.calculator.net/rental-property-calculator.html

Free, very down and dirty calculator that lacks a lot of detailed breakdowns, but captures the big picture. You can find out quickly however if something warrants further exploration using metrics such as:

• 50% rule
• 1% rule
• Internal Return Rate
• Capitalization Rate
• Cash on Cash Return

CRE Models

https://www.cremodels.com/

This one seems to be a bit more for commercial investing.

Real Estate Analysis Spreadsheets

Here are a bunch of links to spreadsheets that help assess various property metrics for purchase. We have not tested these, but some of them are pretty popular:

Adventuresincre

https://www.adventuresincre.com/library-real-estate-excel-models/

Real Estate Financial Planner

https://realestatefinancialplanner.com/

TSN Financial Models

https://tsmfinancialmodels.com/

Real Estate Spreadsheets

https://realestatespreadsheets.com/

Vertex 42

https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/rental-cash-flow-analysis.html

Finomad

https://finomad.com/post/2018/4_21-ultimate-spreadsheet/

The Kick *** Entrepreneur

https://www.thekickassentrepreneur.com/real-estate-investment-spreadsheet/

Rental Property Accounting

I have left out general accounting software that is not geared toward property owners specifically like xero and freshbooks. If you know differently, please shoot me a line! Meanwhile, the problem with accounting software is that it is structured to help you track finances to pay taxes, not geared toward multi-scenario long term investment planning.

Stessa

https://www.stessa.com/

• Accounting software that:
  • Supports multiple properties
  • Tracks rental performance
  • Combines all your transactions and then auto-categorizes them for easy reporting and tax prep.
• Free for the above mentioned features. Rent analysis, mortgage financing and market research costs
• Good review here https://retipster.com/stessareview/ mentions the following issues, “One area I found Stessa a bit clumsy was its failure to retroactively assign transaction data to associate with a specific property. Even with only one property saved in the system, and one mortgage account hooked up, it didn’t automatically register the mortgage as being associated with my one property. Even after I assigned the mortgage account to the property, it didn’t go back and associate my previous mortgage payments with that property.”

QuickBooks

https://quickbooks.intuit.com/

• A long time ago I looked at their rental property management version and found it generally unintuitive and cumbersome to use. In fairness, others love QB and swear by it.
• That said, there may be some cash flow and planning integrations I haven’t explored that might make a big difference. Anybody using anything from here?
  • https://quickbooks.intuit.com/app/apps/home/
  • https://quickbooks.intuit.com/za/apps/

Real Estate Business Forecasting

While these don’t seem to integrate into personal finances (that I know of), they do seem provide a longer-term cash flow outlook for properties. I have not tired any of these (yet) but they are next on my list to check out:

Float Saas

https://floatapp.com/us/for-businesses/cash-flow-forecasting-saas/

• Cash Flow 3 year forecast
• What If Scenarios
• Must be used as plugin for QuickBooks or Xero. Boo Hiss.
• $69 mo.

Float Property

https://floatapp.com/us/for-businesses/cash-flow-real-estate-business/

• Cash Flow 3 year forecast
• What If Scenarios
• Must be used as plugin for QuickBooks or Xero. Boo Hiss.
• $69 mo.

CashFlowTool

https://www.cashflowtool.com/pro

• Cash Flow 6 mo. forecast
• What If Scenarios
• Works as standalone and plugin for QuickBooks
• $42 mo.