New "Portfolio Tracker" tool on BiggerPockets... and it's FREE!

[Brandon Turner]

Hey folks!

We just released another awesome free tool (for everyone - Pro, Plus, and Free members!) to help you stay more organized as you build your real estate portfolio. 

It's called the  Portfolio Tracker and we'd love to have some members test it out and let us know what you think! 

The Basic Idea

We wanted to provide a simple, one-stop-shop page for those with a growing rental portfolio to track their net worth, as well as give users the ability to share a summary of their portfolio with lenders, partners, or others. 

Right now, the tool only tracks Rental Properties. If people find this tool valuable, perhaps we'll add a Flipping and Wholesale component as well. Thoughts?

Give it a try today by visiting  www.BiggerPockets.com/portfolio

How It Works

The portfolio tracker is super simple and intuitive, but here's some basic information on how to use it: 

1.) First, add a property by clicking the "add a new property" button on the bottom right. 

2.) Enter the purchase date, purchase price, current value, loan balance, and monthly cash flow. (The equity field will be calculated automatically.) 

3.) Edit any entry any time by simply clicking on any existing row. This way, you can update your portfolio regularly as the numbers change. 

4.) If so desired, print or share via email a PDF report of your portfolio any time by clicking either of the blue buttons on the upper right corner of the Portfolio Tracker. 

Can We Get Your Help? 

This product is currently in "beta" mode. This means we are still working on it, but need YOUR feedback to make it better! So if you are willing to test it out, play with it, enter your portfolio, etc ... and give us feedback, we'd really appreciate it!

Feel free to leave any comments here in this thread! For example: 

• What do you like about it?
• What don't you like about?
• What needs improvement?
• What is "unclear" about how it works? 
• Any suggestions to make it better?
• Did you notice any "bugs" or "quirks" that should be fixed?

Thank you, everyone! I hope you all enjoy this new tool!

-Brandon 

[Mike H.]

If your intent is that investors would be showing this to a lender, then here is what I would throw out as some possible improvements.

1) Purchase date only goes back to 2010. Should go back further for people with portfolios that started before then.

2) Let me enter purchase date directly as an option. Its far quicker.

3)Instead of monthly cash flow as some number, allow me to enter:
a) Rent. 
b) Mortg payment, 
c) Taxes, 
d) Insurance 

And then calculate the monthly cashflow (i.e Gross monthly profit). Repairs, capex and vacancy are very subjective. Each lender will have their own ideas. Better to leave it blank and let each lender extrapolate their own numbers. But the amounts above are typically what they want to see.

4) Add a column for monthly principal paydown as well that can be entered as well. I think this is a vastly under-appreciated monthly income stream that real estate generates. And most lenders would be surprised at how quickly that adds up in terms of the returns....

5) Add current lender name and/or loan terms. It helps tracking the loans/balloon dates and also lets other lenders see that you're getting loans from other banks and what their terms are. Sometimes they might suggest refinancing existing loans over to them if they see some low hanging fruit......

6) And maybe a field for rehab amount. Some lenders like to see what your all-in price actually was on the house..... But I have only been asked that a couple of times so I don't typically track that on my homegrown schedule of real estate.

What I would say though is that this is really a great idea and I hope you guyscontinue moving forward with it. I'm curious to see what other fields some of the real pros on here also track and present to their lenders.