Curious people's difficulties in managing portfolio

[Elliott Fisher]

Hi BP community, 

I'm Elliott. I live in NYC and remotely manage three SFH properties in TN. I handle all tenant & repairs mgmt, accounting & cash needs of the business. I use over 6 different software tools - ranging from text to automated accounting. It seems like a lot to juggle to manage and even more daunting as I think about scaling.

There has to be a better way. 

I'm curious how others manage their portfolios and to understand what pain points you all experience in running your properties. 

[Nathan Gesner]

Originally posted by @Elliott Fisher:

@Nathan Gesner

I use stessa for accounting, chase for banking, avail for rent and lease collection, texting, gmail, calendar for coordinating repairs & maintenance, google sheets for proforma and budgeting. What do you use?

Just as an example, TenantCloud is a free property management software that allows you to manage up to 75 rentals at no cost. For $10 a month you can set up and accept online payments. This software allows you to track properties, market rentals, accept and process applications, track leases, accept online payments, track maintenance, and run reports. I believe they also include a chat/email feature to communicate with tenants inside the software. That should eliminate the need for Stessa, Avail, a calendar for maintenance tracking, and possibly more.

when searching for software, it pays to spend the time making a list of tasks, then prioritizing which ones take up the most of your time. Try to find software that handles most of your management needs. You'll never find a perfect solution that does everything, but you can certainly find one that handles 80% of your work. Then you can find a couple other tools to handle the rest.

I have very robust management software, but I still use a different platform for marketing, another for inspections, another for office communications, another for spreadsheets, etc.