Best Rental Software for Landlord with less than 10 properties Zilloe? Doorloop?

[Mike Wells]

I only have 6 rental properties with little intention of buying anything else within the next 3 years. I really need to step up my rental game to the 21st century. Literally everything I do is in-person and on paper, i.e. my Application, Lease, Move-in Form, Move-Out Form, etc. In most cases, I bring a printed lease when I exchange keys for payment, have them sign it, go home and make them a copy, and then either mail them their copy or drive it back over. It's extremely inconvenient for both the new tenant and myself. I had 2 properties come up for vacancy recently and posted them on Zillow. The website was super easy to use and the prospective tenants were able to submit an application, which gave me their income, credit, and background information. I was also able to find a new tenant within just a few days in both cases using the $29.99 Premium feature (it's less than half of one days rent income). Those are the only features I have used so far. I still did a paper lease and other forms and the tenant was asking if they could pay online. Most of my tenants just do an ACH payment through their bank. I saw where I can collect rent payments on Zillow, but it didn't say anything about late payment fees, so I'm unsure how that would work. I also saw where I can upload my lease and have them e-sign, which would be amazing. That being said, I read some (old) reviews that said payments had been hung up (withdrawn from the tenant but not deposited into the landlords bank account longer than 10 days) and customer support was ZERO and their 'ticket' program kept automatically closing out the ticket request without resolution. So that's very worrisome, although I will say that was a 3yo comment. I started doing a little research and saw that Doorloop was a highly rated app, and has a ton of features like tenants ability to submit work orders for issues, collect rent with late payments automatically figured in upon payment, talk back and forth with your tenants, send out messages/notices to one or all tenants at once, sync with quickbooks, etc. Btw, right now I'm still using a self-built Excel spreadsheet that works just fine for me. But Doorloop is $49/mo, $600/yr whether you have 1 property or 100. Th just seems like a huge cost for someone like me with only 6 properties, no matter how many features it has. The things I want to do like applications, lease e-sign, and bill payments are available for free on Zillow. I'd love to hear your opinions and feedback and other software you use. Thank You.

[Nathan Gesner]

Quote from @Mike Wells:

Be careful of shiny object syndrome. You should use software to solve a problem. I don't see that you have any problems large enough to justify the cost.

Tenants can set up direct deposit from their bank account to yours and it doesn't require any software. The only negative is that you have to check your bank account to see if the money has arrived. Software will add notifications for rent charges and late charges, but is that really worth $30 a month? You have to decide.

Software is a common question on BiggerPockets. Here are some things to consider:

1. Most investors don't need software until they have 5-10 rentals. All you need is a single place to track tenant information, payment history, maintenance, and a few other things. You can easily do this on a spreadsheet and it will take less time to track than it would to find and learn a new software. If the software is not simplifying your life or making you more accurate, you shouldn't use it.
2. Software does have extremely helpful features like online payments, marketing syndication (click a button and your property is advertised on multiple sites), electronic document review/signing, maintenance tracking, and owner reports. But do you really need that for your one rental?
3. There's no perfect software out there. Every system you try will have flaws or you'll salivate over a feature that shows up in other software.

Some common names you'll see thrown around a lot: Stessa, Apartments.com, RentRedi, TenantCloud, Innago, RentManager, Avail, Rentec Direct, Doorloop, etc.

I recommend you search for each of those apps online and see what they offer, how much they charge, etc. Make a simple spreadsheet or written list with the features of each and see which ones appeal to you most. Try to narrow it down to your top 3-4. Once you have a short list, get an account with each one and run them through the wringer to see how they really function. Do one task at a time in each app so you can compare apples to apples.

• Load a property with pictures and details.
• Market that property.
• See what your marketing looks like from the public's perspective.
• Submit a fake application to see how easy the process is.
• Run a credit/screening report on yourself.
• Enter a maintenance request, assign a vendor, attach a fake invoice.
• Enter charges to the tenant's ledger.
• Enter recurring charges and automatic late fees.
• Sign documents electronically.
• Run owner reports.

After testing a few apps, one of them should stand out for you. Choose that one and use it. No system is perfect, so don't waste your time chasing after the next shiny object. You should only have to change when your current software has a flaw or lacking feature that is causing you to spend too much work on a work-around. Then you can consider researching and finding something that meets your needs better.