Some people imagine landlord’s life like an endless vacation with rare breaks for collecting the rental payments. But owning a rental property requires much more efforts than just counting incomes and drinking cocktails.
From the first day, you buy a house or an apartment, it starts a never-ending process of rental property maintenance, especially if you are going to give the property on rent. Rental properties often require more care, support, and services than your own home does. But what if you manage multiple properties simultaneously? Juggling many tasks is overwhelming and might lead to mistakes and even financial losses. But the good news is that you can simplify your life through real estate software.
Property management software: Why you need it?
An ultimate reason why landlords need property management application is because they will eventually get complete control over every aspect of their business. In fact, there are a bunch or ready-made solutions for both individual landlords and residential property managers that aim to simplify routine tasks. Most of app are tailored to property owners needs, but what if you develop an app for both landlords and tenants?
Popular Property Management Systems:
- 9flats
- Abritel
- Avantio
- Beds24
- BookingAutomation
- BookingSync
- GODO
- Guesty
- HostAway
- Kigo
- MyVR
- Orbirental
- SuperControl
- Streamline VRS
- Tokeet
- Vreasy
Renting a house involves two parts: landlord and tenant, so adding two types of users into the property management app seems to be a good idea.
Here are handy features of the house management application, what you need to know before the start of development:
Features available to the owner (landlord):
Rent Collecting can be the most satisfying part of the whole affair. But it can also become the most stressful part if tenants delay payments. One of the most common tip in such situation is refusing to receive money “in cash” and provide the online payments functionality.
Online payments integration can be combined with rent tracking. The app will keep detailed payment history in your pocket and check the due dates, tenant balance, what has been paid and what rent is owed.
Accounting (for agencies or multiple properties). The property management software (PMS) can be used to track the profits, create reports and control the payments out to contractors, property owners and vendors. Tip: use those reports for tax purposes.
Tracking the mandatory payments. Being a landlord means having financial obligations like paying property taxes, insurance, mortgage, etc. All these payments have their due dates, therefore, you can set notifications in order to not miss a single payment. Moreover, the property management app keeps all the expenses organized. This handy feature is adding photos of receipts or adding any other files to track your expenses.
Home maintenance automatization. Such routine maintenance like garbage recycling, cleaning, small repairs, landscaping and other works are usually provided on a regular basis, so you can add notifications or automatic payments to the service providers.
Safety regulation. Adding a piece of IoT will bring the control over the building to the new level. Connect the smart devices like smoke detectors or furnaces with your app to get the real-time notifications if something goes wrong.
Contacting the tenant. Contacting the tenants in case of emergency is not a problem if you have one or two houses for rent. But what if you have multiple properties, and don’t remember the names and contact details of each and every person? In order to quickly find the needed information, keep it in your app so you can reach out your tenants at any moment.
Now let’s pass to the second type of users – the tenant.
Features available to the tenant on the real estate platform:
- Online payments
- Home maintenance
- Direct contact
- House rules
Online payments. Introducing online payments you can add more freedom to both landlords and tenants. They don’t have to plan the monthly meeting anymore and count numerous banknotes. Now it takes only a few taps to get the credit card withdrawn. Not only the rent can be paid online, but also the utility bills. Download the digital receipt into an app, so both parties can see whether all the bills are paid off.
Home maintenance automatization. Keeping your home cozy requires the ongoing maintenance. Every day we have some housework to do. But people now are very busy and it’s difficult to keep in mind all the routine to-dos. Create the customized schedule of your house works directly on your smartphone! Share the tasks and appoint the performer.
Direct contact with the property owner. Online communication with landlord might be very handy. You can share photos, payment receipts or any other files within an app to minimize the live conversations.
House rules. Every property owner has his own rules that are obligatory to follow. To be sure tenants remember all of them, create the special list right in the property management app.
Also we a quite sure that you would not appreciate late-night calls with questions like “How do I turn on the oven?”. Therefore, you can provide the instructions of how different supplies work in the same section as housing rules.
How to build Best App for Landlords?
As you can see, property management apps can eliminate multiple routine tasks both for tenants and landlords providing a secure access management system. Something that they have to do manually every day. On top of that, keeping all rental information in your pocket can bring you total control over the property and make you feel safe. Forget about hundreds of messy spreadsheets and move your business directly to your smartphone!
