The rented real estate management is not the most straightforward job since you need to find a tenant and take payment and many tasks related to real estate maintenance, accounting, etc. The more real estate objects you have for rent, the more active there is a need for software to automate processes and free up time and reduce costs.
By developing custom software, you don’t get a solution here and now. After all, to make a high-quality solution, you need to conduct a discovery phase to study your business processes, your needs and create useful software that can make life easier and more comfortable, automate the processes associated with managing tenant data, payments, and more.
Let’s take a look at a ready-made solution, and then we will give arguments for custom software development to manage rented real estate.
What is Smart Property Systems?
Smart Property Systems is a relatively simple cloud-based real estate management system with a user-friendly interface with a relatively wide range of functions. This digital solution is specially designed for companies that manage real estate. It helps increase efficiency by automating lease accounting and e-lease management. By the way, SPS supports all types of property. Thanks to electronic accounting, companies can receive general reports and reports on a specific object that they own, which allows you to create custom reports for even more in-depth analysis. Inspection scheduling, maintenance management, vendor billing, and job posting tools make life a lot easier for property managers and staff. Tenant reports are sent automatically and include all vital information such as new and current payments and current balances.
Smart Property Systems offers a complete set of tools and features that enable real estate companies to manage transactions from virtually anywhere, using any device with a web browser. What can especially please the owners of small companies is that they do not need to spend money on installing and configuring software locally, which eliminates the costs associated with the purchase of expensive equipment.
It allows you to work with any property, including residential and commercial real estate, owner associations, and others. The system processes all accounting information as tenants enter it, eliminating the need to re-enter or collect data. When working with electronic lease agreements, information security is essential, as they contain the tenant’s personal information. The system allows you to execute contracts online using electronic signatures, ensuring compliance with legal regulations and accurate documentation. Reporting and viewing tools help you create useful and meaningful reports that enable management to make the right decisions at the right time.
SPS also makes it easier to schedule inspections and handle room service requests. A message center provides efficient communication with sellers and tenants, and online rental collection takes over accounting when payment is entered through the system. Checking tenants for credit and reliability is an essential part of any property management business. This software product allows you to view a renter’s credit history and reviews from previous homeowners.
The verification system also verifies the tenant’s identity, felony conviction, social security number, and checks against national security records. SPS allows you to advertise jobs through web flyers that are published on over 24 US sites.
Smart Property Systems Features
Cost of Smart Property Systems
Before choosing rental property management software, it is crucial to understand how pricing is done. Many sellers charge a flat monthly fee that can help landlords and property managers control their expenses. This fee is usually between $ 15 and $ 100 per month. Some vendors charge a unit fee to use their software, which has its advantages and disadvantages. For landlords and property managers with only a few apartments, the advantage of this payment scheme is that using the software can only cost a few dollars a month. Landlords with hundreds of apartments are at a disadvantage as they have to pay more to use the software. Let’s take a look at Smart Property Systems tariff plans.
Pricing for a single unit starts from $15.53/month. Accurate pricing can be obtained using the official online pricing calculator.
Additional costs:
- Tenant screening: $37.50 per screening
- Virtual Assistant: $25.00 per 15 min segment
- Vendor payment processing: $0.85 per payment
- Rental payment processing: $3.00 per EFT transaction, tenant pays 2.8% for CC transactions
- Document e-signing: $5.00 per e-sign document
- Agent/associate portal: $10.00/additional employee/month
Why create a custom property management software
There are two types of property management software – commercial products and customized solutions. The former has fairly comprehensive functionality, but users often face certain limitations. Business-specific solutions will perfectly match your needs and offer tremendous scalability potential. But in comparison with out-of-box software, custom solutions are more expensive.
Property management systems tailored to the needs of a particular business have many benefits, so the development of property management software is gaining momentum.
Here are some reasons why you should consider creating custom property management software:
- simple navigation and control. Ready tables are good, but do you use all the fields there? Some areas are likely missing, and you have to put this information into separate documents that you cannot find today. By reducing the number of third-party tools, you can achieve better management standardization and efficiency.
- unlimited channels for attracting tenants. With a personalized property management system, you can cover all distribution channels for your rental services.
- 24/7 customer support. Built-in chatbots and virtual assistants provide excellent support for your tenants in those moments when you cannot answer them.
- data protection. The property management system is created under high cybersecurity standards, eliminating the risk of data leakage and fraud.
- data analysis. With access to real-time data, you can quickly adapt your strategy to a changing environment. This approach helps your company grow and improve efficiency.
- increasing loyalty. Thanks to a simple and intuitive application and instant notifications and personalized marketing, regular and potential customers will feel your respect and care. A personal account for tenants makes the user interaction more fun.
- scalability. Custom solutions are always designed to be extensible so that missing modules can be added in the future to cover growing needs.
Features of a custom property management system
We hope that the benefits of a personalized digital rental property management solution have become more transparent for you and that you may already know what kind of solution you would like. If so, we would like to help you with useful functions for your future proposal. To do this, we analyzed dozens of solutions to highlight the next options:
#1 Multi-calendar
It is only a must-have for a rental property management system. Multi-calendars display the existing leases and applications for vacant premises in one place, which come from different channels. Usually, it also shows the number of tenants and the terms of their contracts. You can add information about each tenant to have a complete picture of each tenant. Also, you can add waiting lists if your property is busy.
#2 Automated processes
If you are faced with the choice “to automate or not to automate.” It is worth choosing the first action. First, you need to analyze all the processes to highlight those that do not require human observation.
Automated accounting feature
These can include accounting and communication, automatic notifications, autoresponders and payments, and more. You can also create various email templates to deliver more personalized messages and schedule times to send them.
#3 Centralize your business management
Agree that running any business, and even more so in the field of real estate, requires performing routine tasks that can distract from more important tasks. To develop rental management software, you can delegate some of your day-to-day tasks and consider integrating a task management module.
Operations that are repeated from day to day can be automated. As for individual actions, they can be processed manually. Developing a mobile task manager will allow your team to be flexible and complete assigned tasks on the go. Task reports and smart notifications can help you centralize your business even more efficiently.
#4 Payment
Today it isn’t easy to imagine a custom PMS without a built-in payment module. A high-end solution should include the integration of deposit and balance payments, reminders, and email notifications.
Of course, it’s crucial to track payment-related information so that you and customers can view payment information efficiently and seamlessly.
#5 Scalability
It doesn’t matter how big your business is. One day you will want to expand. In this case, your solution must be ready for a new level of development. For example, you decide to add new features, or you have a new apartment building. It is important that scalable software can be extended or integrated with third-party solutions at a minimal cost.
#6 Keyless experience
These days, you can add keyless entry to your app so that the customer doesn’t have to use a key to enter the premises. Thus, you do not need to organize a meeting and waste time.
#7 Safety techniques
Today IoT technologies in real estate are gaining popularity. Adding an IoT connection to your software will enable you to manage your property better. You can connect smart devices such as smoke detectors or stoves to your app. This way, you will receive real-time notifications if something goes wrong.
The cost of custom rental property management software development
The cost of rental property management software is mostly subscription-based. The price ranges from $ 0 to several hundred dollars per month (affecting the number of managed properties through the program). Undeniable – free software looks very attractive to landlords and property managers.
There is only one note that free software usually has a limited number of functions and does not have additional marketing and accounting tools. Also, you will rarely find the ability to access from anywhere in the world and the ability to track the insurance policies of renters. And most importantly, when using a free digital solution, no one guarantees data security, which is a critical point.
As for custom PMS development, we recommend starting a project by building an MVP. Thus, you can get a large investment to get a digital product with a basic set of functions, and as users give you feedback, you can add the necessary features. Especially for this, we calculated how much it would cost you to develop an MVP.
| Role | Hour |
| Product Owner | 660 |
| Design | 445 |
| HTML/CSS | 550 |
| JS Front End | 1656 |
| PHP Back End | 2006 |
| Manual QA | 1348 |
| Admin | 64 |
| Scrum Master | 1004 |
The estimate is approximate since each such software is an individual solution with a specific set of features created for the company’s particular needs.
To conclude
Investing in custom software can seem expensive and daunting compared to turnkey solutions. However, if you count the numbers and consider the risks, you can see that custom control systems can bring tremendous benefits to your project.
In addition to reducing the amount of administrative work, a property management system will increase customer satisfaction, and you can also:
- it’s easier to find good tenants. After all, quality rental property management software has tenant screening tools to help you find tenants with a clear track record and the ability to pay rent on time.
- increase tenant loyalty. Track maintenance requests to ensure the fastest repairs possible, helping you keep tenants paying their rent on time and adhering to rules.
- compliance with legal regulations. Tenant verification, timely maintenance, and repairs reduce the risk of lawsuits and keep occupancy rates as high as possible.
- minimal simple empty spaces. Many software products have built-in marketing tools to help you find tenants faster.
