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Updated over 8 years ago, 08/29/2016
Property Management Software
Hi everyone,
I'm on a quest to find a solid property management product to manage properties I own and those that me and my partner will be managing for investors. Here's a list of the products I'm looking at. Anyone have any good or bad experience with any of these, or can suggest something else?
Buildium RenTec PropertyWare AppFolio Rent Manager LandLord Max Trex Property Manager
Thanks
I tried several options starting in Spring 2013. Here's what I found:
Buildium is too simplistic: it lacks the full functionality that a professional PM company needs.
Rentec doesn't have any way to track tenant prospects: the CSR I spoke with said their clients "usually do that some other way".
Yardi's Point2 (formerly DIYRes): This one almost made it, but it was too difficult to use efficiently.
I started using Propertyware about 6 weeks ago. Very straight forward, highly customizable, and great support. The pricing is not clear, but it gets the job done with the least amount of trouble. My background is bookkeeping, so I like having the administration separate from the finances. No PM SaaS will match the comprehensive functionality of QuickBooks!
Pat,
Take a look at Landlord Max. For a 1 time cost of $165, and you own it, it's a pretty good deal. It is not on the cloud and that's just one reason why I like it. Isn't the IRS/NSA in the cloud? I have been using it for about 7-8 years. My accountant loves my reports. I tried buildiam last year for a couple months and wound up going back to LL Max. (manage 34 units)
Good Luck
@Ryan S. , sorry for the late reply. I lost track of the thread.
Anyway, I am using the PW widget code in an HTML frame on GoDaddy to give access to tenants and owners, but also to show our listings. It is really easy to set up, but what I love about it is that my listings on my site are always current. Once I list a unit available for rent on PW our web site is automatically updated.
And I finally got the Google Sync to work with PW. The problem was a special character in my password. I worked for months in trying to figure it out, and just went back to my tech support days to isolate the problem to an authentication issue. This feature is great! I can create new lead contacts from listing reply emails I get through our shared Gmail account, and then just synch them through PW to get them in there. It's not perfect for categorizing, but it's nice to maintain contacts in synch and our calendar.
It's interesting to hear of all the new products that others are mentioning. While PW is not the simplest learning curve, there are so many advanced features that we use to make it worth the money, especially the mail merge and desktop file synch. The accounting part is the area that I am struggling with, but it's mostly because of the keeping up with the number of bank and CC transactions we go through regularly.
Hi Sergio are the two different websites you posted above still directed to buildum and PW. They look identical. Also did you get quickbooks straightened out. We use quickbooks and want to make sure the management software talks to our accounting software. Buildum says there accounding software is robust but I was looking at xero accounting software because they do automatic bank and credit card downloads. By the way xero does link to two different property management software companies, but both of the were real basic.
Originally posted by @Ray S.:
Hi @Ray S.
Our URL links to our site hosted by Go Daddy, and we just use the PW widgets for the tenant, owner portals and listings. We've abandoned Buildium altogether.
As for accounting, this is still a pain in my a$$. We didn't start using QB because PW only allows you to export data to it, which kind of defeats the purpose IMO. Neither Buildium or PW's accounting aspects are easy to use, as you have to enter or import the data manually. I wish they would catch up with the times and enable the direct import of bank and CC statements. Being that we are only managing our own properties, I have only been tracking rent, utility and some vendor expenses in PW, while tracking the rest of the accounting using You Need a Budget (YNAB), which is great (and cheap) for tracking the rest.
Let me know how you make out.
@Ray S. You can check out my website which is hosted on GoDaddy and then has the Buildium portal in a frame. [REMOVED] It looks pretty seamless, and I get the benefit of not having to use redirects or have visitors see the strange Buildium URL.
Buildium's accounting software is definitely NOT robust. It does most things well related to rent tracking and property expenses, but there are even some major shortcomings with this area that you would expect to be core functionality (terrible business credit card expense tracking, no partial payments, no automatic city tax calculations, just to name a few that I am missing) They have a great forum where current users can suggest and vote on new features, and all of these shortcomings I mentioned have been suggested and have tons of votes. The admins have seen and commented on the suggestions, but Buildium is very slow to roll out major improvements. That all being said, you can't beat it for cost ( $25 per month for up to 25 units I believe)
I use TrueRent.com. The site is really intuitive and it's free if you have under 50 units. It has almost all the features the pay for sites have plus it allows you to track your portfolio performance so you know where you stand financial with your properties which is huge plus for me. The tenant portal is nice too.
IMHO,
David
#2 Mobile Home Park Investing Contributor
- San Antonio, TX
"Rent Manager" is a popular choice among property management companies. Hope that helps!
I use excel for my 60 units. Rent collection, maintenance, expenses, expenditures, etc..
I share a drop box folder with my property manager. Sharing receipts, spreed sheets, notices etc..
It really comes down to what you want in a PM Software package. We wanted to use our IT skills to find a robust product that will allow us to put in the time up front to create processes and then automate the heck out of things. A product like Buildium and many others will let you manage leases and event collect rent online, which is HUGE, but the advanced features of products like PropertyWare and Appfolio can turn you into a company that enables many more things than just the basics. For example, we use mail merges and templates to create leases, produce approval letters, inspection reports, move-out statements, respond to inquiries, etc. I can create a new lease for any given unit (and most other documents) in 30 seconds from my cell phone!
Another component to the decision is where you see yourself down the road. If you expect to manage more and more properties, then you are better off spending the money now to use a product that you can grow with. I personally couldn't imagine managing many units without having a tool that I know organizes every aspect of the business with the least amount of effort.
We almost went with Appfolio. Apparently their accounting software is pretty robust. But their startup fee was so high it put the risk on us. If it turns out their accounting wasn't good enough and we had to stay with quickbooks then it kind of defeats the purpose of running two accounting packages.
Another complaint with them is that when we decided not to take the risk with them, they now call us every couple weeks and nag us. They have called us over 10 times so far. I think a better model is to get rid of aggressive sales staff. Make a low barrier for entry and then blow away your competition with quality of product. They could even qualify their customers, for example people with over a hundred properties arent the kind that play around. This is their avatar, help your potential customers and not put the risk all on them.
@Ray S.I can understand. I remember the upfront costs being too high for Appfolio, but there were some other features we felt were stronger with Property Ware. Who are you using now? Our negotiations with PW were tough and the upfront costs weren't trivial, but using them has been the best decision we've made so far. They also do a nice job with involving customers in their enhancements process. Their technical support has been great too.
BTW, they have QuickBooks integration, but it's only being able to import QB into PW, not the other way around. I may still explore that a bit more, since I understand QB accounting is pretty easy. I'll decide when I get my taxes done for the year. I have some catching up to do. We're on an extension now.
Correction, the PW QB integration let's you export PW into QB, which wouldn't help me make great use of being able to import transactions from banks into QB
@Sergio Altomare: My neighbors - we are in Bucks County. We should connect. PW has the best integration so far and easy to use.
If anyone is looking to download from banking online and enter the details in any software - a word of caution - DO NOT. It may seem easy and a piece of cake for now and save time, but in the long run, you will not get a chance to micro analysis your data.
We have worked with several clients and changed the way they enter transactions in PW. You have to create all the bills and checks for the properties - even the owners checks in PW. As to your company expenses, if the checking account is the same, create a dummy property as Your Company name and enter all the details in PW.
Now all you have to do in QB is reconciliation.
As to creating all the documents - you can use QuickBooks to create them in 30 seconds - but not on ipad or your cell - what a drawback.
Happy Labor Day Weekend!
I use RentPost and have been very pleased with the service. The software is very easy to use, and has an immense amount of features that have allowed my business to run much more smoothly.