Rental property management automation

[Alex S.]

Property management companies are fine, but I just got my first real estate investment property and want to go over all stages of management myself before letting someone else to manage my property. I have also read in a few real estate investors books that property management companies are doing a lousy job and not really motivated to find the best tenants and maintain your property in the best shape.

For my first property I want to do and understand every step of the whole rental property lifecycle and looking for tools which can help me doing that:

- Vacancy ads

- Collect perspective tenants info for future verification

- Schedule property showings

- Background checks

- Lease agreements (online review and signature) and other docs

- Collect payments, late payment fees, payment notifications

- Collect and return deposits

- Repair request

- Repair services lookup and schedule (match with local providers and ability to request them)

I’m looking for an automated online system to help me with every step in this journey and most probably I missed some important steps. I found quite a few but not sure which suits my case the best for a single property (quote from investopedia)

Best Overall: Buildium

Best Free Option: TurboTenant

Best for Advanced Features: AppFolio

Best for Single Family Homes: Propertyware

Best for Few Properties: SimplifyEm

Best for Commercial Property: MRI Software

Best Cloud-Based Software: Yardi Breeze

I also discovered Hemlane (advertised to me), not mentioned on the investment portals but looks suitable and complete against my list of needs.

What kind of automation tools do you use to manage your rental properties without property management companies? Any reccommendation for me to start with a single rental property?