Tracking Your Properties: What do you use?

Question

I am curious what others are using to track information on their rentals they own? it seems most use Excel....

Personally the last few years i have been extremely hands off on my rentals, i have all my rentals managed professionally and have had so little problems that i can go an entire year without hearing from them and print out my tax info for tax season....

Since im actually studying to invest in real estate better and make better ROI, i am looking to setup tracking on my properties so i can understand my numbers better and predict things in the future...

I was curious if someone would share an example of how they are tracking their properties and expenses so i can format my own correctly from the start.

Currently i use Podio for my CRM as a Realtor, maybe i can setup the tracking in this system so its all connected like i do my clients...

Joe Ort · Answer

@Nancy Roth - I created my own.  Here's the breakdown:

* Properties - has rollups from Income, Expenses and Reserves tables to compare P&L across properties

* Tasks - notes and action items and when things are due. Nothing exciting

* Contacts - people that are in properties and or have been historically

* Leases - term, amount, contact and the signed agreement

* Files - closing docs, appraisals, insurance, etc. grouped by Property

* Income - amount, date, property, attachments, category (rent vs lease option fee, etc)

* Expenses - actual expenses, date, property, attachments (mortgage, capex, maintenance, turn, etc.)

* Reserves - savings from each rent payment for future expenses

If you wanted to use more like a PM, you could set up an online form for tenants to input requests and include attachments and track maintenance through it.

Hope that helps.

PS - I still use Excel for projections/modeling

John Warren · Answer

@William Huston I have personally been using google sheets/excel like you mentioned. I am up to 13 units that I manage locally in the Chicago market, and I am not really having any issues keeping up. I am about to take down a 19 unit that I will manage for a few months before moving it to property management, and as I have researched the software that are out there I can't help but think they are not worth the investment. The average RE investor doesn't have enough doors to make it worthwhile to go crazy with the software. If you do manage to get over 50 doors, you should probably be looking to have the portfolio managed professionally anyways as your time has grown too valuable to keep self managing.

Nancy Roth · Answer

@Joe Ort Thanks for posting. I hadn't heard about Airtable and just looked it up after seeing your post. I'd be interested to hear more about how you use it. Did you create your own template or use one of theirs (maybe digital asset management)?

I'm very fond of Excel, like @John Warren, but only for certain things, like evaluation of acquisitions, calculating cost and benefits of different loan structures, and projecting cashflow. But as I've accumulated more experience and assets, my situation has just become too complex for one spreadsheet. I have held three rentals over the long term that I manage myself. I just acquired 3 occupied duplexes, a total of six units under a new LLC and a new loan, which are all managed by a local firm. Plus I have two rental units that I have sold and retain the paper.

So for the managed ones I don't want to duplicate what my property manager does, getting into the weeds of the repairs, but I do need to track his monthly expense reports for each unit. On the three I self-manage I DO need to get into the weeds of the repairs. On the notes I hold, I need to make sure the cash comes in and the property tax and insurance are paid. This is why Buildium or the other property management systems are not a good fit for me. Also I don't want to have to keep up with several spreadsheets and files, it's become way too time consuming.

So I hold out the hope that I can put all this tracking and data together in one data tracking system! Am I dreaming? Do you think Airtable or any other software would fit the bill?

Joe Ort · Answer

@William Huston - did you finish writing up the income/expenses side of your Podio app?

@John Warren - would love to see how you are tracking things. Would you be able to send a redacted version of your sheet?  PM is fine if you don't want global sharing.

I've been using Airtable (which is excel like but let's me attach receipts to rows).

William Huston · Answer

Thank you for your input, i may try out both Podio and Excel for a bit just to see which one i like, past hour i spent a few minutes creating some simple apps in podio under a new workspace to input properties to do the calculations for me. I dynamically linked them together, so all information associated with the specific property is tagged together. So after inputting the basic information of the property, i then added so i can input the tenants info, which property manager, which mortgage and link them together with relationships. So when i go back to the properties profile i can easily see which tenant is renting out the unit, who the property manager is, and which loan is on that property.....

I currently have 5 rentals, so once i figure out what info i SHOULD be tracking on my units myself then i can keep adding it tell its perfect.. I gotta grab some sleep, but i plan on adding an income and expense app, so i can link income and expenses per property... All of this is still within the free interface of podio, i have been using it for nearly 2 years now with being a realtor and have added over 10,000 contacts to my CRM workspace i created in podio...

One of the main reasons i played with podio lastnight in regards to tracking my rentals over excel, was i dont know how you can add receipts and documents to excel so you can track papers per property....This is a feature i have been using heavily with the podio app on my phone lately, i have been uploading the documents when a client makes an offer to the CRM, which stores them to an organized google drive, as well on my realtor expenses side i have been using it to store all my receipts and random pictures i need to store in regards to my realtor business.. these get tagged with a date and time and i dont have to go searching for them on my google drive.

Tracking Your Properties: What do you use?

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