As a real estate investor, you’re committed to speed and accuracy in your search for and management of properties, along with returns that bring profitability. Today’s business environment demands property platforms and software tools as a way to minimize the hours spent searching and managing your efforts. In this article, we’ll examine some of the attributes of today’s tech that can make all the difference in analyzing, researching and managing your real estate investment business.
Real Estate Investor Platforms
Features within the real estate investment platforms include management assistance with organizing and storage of records, resource and document libraries, and digital asset repositories. Some platforms offer additional features for management and oversight of rental properties, including reports, reminders, and other task-related functions.
The most adaptable real estate investment platforms offer ease of use, including compatibility online, with smartphones and with digital tablets. Users can select types of properties to manage to receive specific tools for chosen categories.
In addition to general management, the premium real estate investor platforms, such as RealPage, DoorLoop and HemLane, are also loaded with accounting systems that offer systemized financial operations to support real estate investments. These features come with the bonus of an accounting system that holds all transaction records while enabling automatic operations. Included are budgeting features; including financial statements, purchases and marketing costs, reports and other task-related documents.
A real estate investing business plan is an essential partner to any platform utilized for performance and returns. Your business plan, dedicated to your mission and objectives, marketing strategies, operations plan, competitor analysis and customer assessments, and financial projections, will allow you to capitalize on funding from lenders or investors, along with deal-making based on your plan. Update your plan regularly and use it continually to ensure you are evaluating properties based on your personal goals and using the models you’ve set up for the success of your business. The return on investment will build as your business plan is used for support of every real estate venture you explore, capture and expand.
Some premium platforms also contain training resources to onboard new employees quickly and efficiently. Most platforms host a variety of apps to further support the management of properties.
Day-to-day tasks, such as managing tenants, creating service tickets, interacting with utility companies and others are also included in premium real estate investor platforms, relieving investors and real estate managers of the most onerous daily tasks while saving a considerable amount of time.
Property Management Software
There are multiple software management systems available that include essential tools for real estate investors. Some offer real estate searches for rental properties, others offer management tools for property assets under contract. Many of the day-to-day tasks can be solved with the software available; including digital content storage, oversight of leasing management, background screening, communication management and other specified tasks.
Real estate investor software can also be utilized to analyze investment properties, including financial performance, risk assessment, return on performance and other financial markers. Research software provides data collection and, in some software, property market trends, to increase return on investment (ROI). Resource libraries include compliance documents, forecasts and calculations, cash flow reports and other fluid formats for self-generated documents that support investments.
Real estate investor software also leverages reporting and analytics, eliminating tasks that are critical, but time-consuming. Billing and invoicing are often included, as are budgeting and forecasting. In addition, software is also provided to support distressed property sales and the transaction requirements that go with those properties.
Several focused real estate investor-specific customer management software (CRM) packages are available, with some detailed in leasing management only and others focused on both leasing and monitoring tools. These include software such as, REsimpli, HubSpot, RealPage and Zoho, among others.
Some of the CRM software is specifically created to help sales teams close deals. Pipedrive is an excellent example of this type of CRM, offering management systems for leads, contacts, tracking, and sales processes. Pipedrive can be customized to create workflow procedures, like many other CRMs, and includes property management from the start of the deal through close of escrow and beyond.
Today’s tech tools for successful real estate investors are a profound improvement over the pencil and paper techniques of many years ago. Investors can now, within seconds, determine eligible properties for investments, calculate return on investments and secure purchases faster than ever before. Real estate investors can also invest in software that takes on the more mundane daily chores, such as rental and lease payments, rental property servicing, documentation libraries, and other tasks.
Finally, today’s tech tools can also drive a sales team toward a successful investment purchase from the initial interest through to deal-making by providing top-notch financials and risk assessments, market trends and valuations, and digitized modeling and templates. If you want to perform exceptionally well as a real estate investor, you’ll want to make a serious investment in today’s tech tools.