All Forum Posts by: Billy Linn

Hi, I'm Billy Linn. My wife and I have 22 rentals that we own and manage. I work as a software developer while my wife manages our rental business full time. 

One of our pain points is both having access to the same data, and agreeing on how to store and organize it. expenses and bills in Google sheets. Leases, documents, and photos on the computer, Google Drive, and on our individual phones. Tenant, vendor, and contractor's contacts in her phone. Tons of info in her head.

When I needed access to data to help her with something it was painful or impossible for me to access it. Looking at existing software for landlords didn't solve our problem. There are great options for listing, payments, and background checks, but not for storing and organizing a wealth of rental data.

So, typical story, software developer that has rentals writes software to help manage them, adding to a sea of property management software.

But this one really helps us and it might help you too. 

Rental data is relational. Putting move in photos in a folder is tricky because the pictures are related to a person, a lease, a unit, a property, a date, etc. You might want to find those photos when you only remember one of those details. That's where this software really shines. 

GovernRent.com has features from databases, spreadsheets, and online drives. It as a simple but very usable interface that allows you to enter and access your data on desktop and mobile. 

It's not perfect and you'll struggle to understand it at first because it's different than anything else out there (we're working on video walkthoughs), but we're right here on BiggerPockets and you can connect with me directly to get help or suggest new features that will help solve your problems.

If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read this! If any of this sounds interesting to you please connect with me / send me a message and I'll help you get started. 

@Ian W. I don’t like a model that incentivizes repair work to be done. 😬

Nothing wrong with repairing things that need it but if they make more money if more repairs are done or more expensive repairs are done, nope.

@Ken Swearengen They either had to allow me to work remotely or I had to find another position that would. Luckily they valued me and wasn’t afraid to embrace the change. It has worked out well.

@Ken Swearengen that’s exactly what I did. I bought a 4-Plex in a different state and moved into it. I’m a software engineer and now work remotely.

I love working remotely, and I love not having to commute.

@Logan Ellingson I’d suggest using something cloud based, that makes it easy for 2 people to collaborate. Lots of software is free for one unit.

I think it's good to have both property management software and your own records. Most software solutions, mine included, have lots of limits. Maybe you want to track a metric but the software has no place for it, or you want to report on some specific data but the software doesn't know how to generate that. Spreadsheets are great for numbers but not photos and documents. Lots of property management software is great at collecting rent or listing rentals for you, but not good at helping you run your rental business. Most people end up using multiple apps/software for different things. 

We pretty much reinvest it all, either in acquiring more properties or improving the ones we already have. When we're not trying to grow we'll change that strategy. 

Most of our tenants manually deposit their rent into one of our bank accounts. It's instant and can't bounce or be disputed.

Just bought a Diesel with 400k miles on it for $1,500 mostly for dump runs and towing heavier loads. It's come in really handy. We've hauled materials for many years in the back of our SUV, or we'd rent a trailer for things that didn't fit inside. 

There is software that will let you track where the receipt is from, how it was paid, what it was for, a tax category, and the date. Then you can find receipts and look up totals from a variety of different perspectives, e.g. how much did you pay vendor X in 2018, or per month, or by unit, etc.