Technology can greatly enhance the productivity of any one property manager, let alone a whole team. With technology, you could decide to be a one-man (or woman) property manager and manage as many as 100 homes by yourself… and still have a life.
One of the first technologies a property manager would want to consider acquiring (and mastering) is a full suite property management software that includes accounting, communications, marketing drivers and maintenance. At Ad Astra Realty we use Appfolio for this purpose. In the past we’ve used Buildium, where we started, as well as PropertyWare, a short-lived experiment that I was not very pleased with. But if I were choosing a property management software today I would look at Renvine. In fact, I would love to go with them today, but the timing just isn’t right. We currently manage a little over 800 properties and changing software providers is a HUGE undertaking.
Rentvine – Who I would use if I was just starting today and may use in the very near future. They are privately held and I like the tools available as well as being able to integrate Property Manager Websites since PMW is held by Rentvine.
Appfolio – Excellent accounting but I really, really, really, really dislike that they are a public company. Recently, they seem to be making all their decisions based on what is good for their shareholders rather than what is good for the property managers, the owners and the tenants. They are becoming more and more add-on fee based, which I loathe. Sooner or later, I will drop them for those reasons alone.
Buildium – Was great for us up and until about 400 homes. They’ve been sold since we’ve used them and their reporting wasn’t up to snuff back then. But, and this is a big, their customer service was second to none and always great to us. Our Director of Property Management currently uses this software for his personal holdings, if that tells you something.
To be clear, I neither fully endorse any of these software suites nor receive any kind of compensation for writing this article or providing the links. I’m also sure that many people have affinity to software packages that are not listed here. I’m just giving my thoughts and experiences.
To see a full list of technologies used by Ad Astra Realty, click here. But first you’ll need a password. To get that password, contact me below.
CONTACT CHRIS FOR PASSWORD
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