Let’s be honest. There’s no one-size-fits-all software to help you grow your property management business. It all depends on the current size of your business, in what areas you want to grow, and how quickly you want that growth to happen.
There are so many property management software solutions available, and all of them have their strengths and weaknesses. Before you start shopping, make sure you have a clear growth plan in place and a solid understanding of your business’s current pain points.
Once you have those well in hand, it’s time to start wading through the myriad options.
Or you could start with this list.
We’ve organized this guide to narrow down the best software to grow your property management portfolio. Whether you’re looking to grow your door count, your revenue, your team, or all of them at once, we’ve categorized the highest-rated software by their unique strengths.
Why Should You Invest in Software to Grow Your Property Management Portfolio?
Before we dive in, let’s talk about why you should invest in property management technology in the first place. Here are a few key reasons.
1. Operate More Efficiently
Even the most basic software can help you automate the redundant but important tasks such as rent collection, lease renewals, maintenance requests, and accounting. Instead of putting the burden on your staff—and your business’s bottom line—you can let the software save you resources so you can focus on building your business.
There are three big ways in which the right property management software can help you do that:
Accounting
How much time and money, and how many resources, could you save if you didn’t have to pore over your chart of accounts, reconciling each transaction, filling out 1099s, and looking for unnecessary expenses?
Property management accounting software can automate all of that for you.
And you won’t have to worry about keeping track of rent and fee payments, either. Automated invoices and payments are tracked in your accounting software without you having to enter them manually.
Communication
Communication between tenants and property managers shouldn’t happen only when there’s an emergency—and that goes for communication between owners and property managers, too.
Whether it be a notice of scheduled maintenance, upcoming events, or a simple check-in, property management software can help you facilitate conversations between owners, tenants, and your team to make sure everyone is in the loop.
Lead-to-Lease
Speed and accuracy are integral in the lead-to-lease process. Every day a unit sits vacant, it costs owners money and forgoes management fees. Lead-to-lease automation can help you fill your vacancies more quickly. For example, website builders can help promote your brand while syndication services can list your vacant property to multiple websites at once.
Getting someone to move from applying to the apartment, to running a background check, signing legal documentation, collecting deposits, and handing over the keys is painstakingly long. Software can help streamline the process by keeping all your documents and communication in one simple portal instead of getting lost in convoluted email chains.
2. Data to Help Make Better Decisions
To grow your property management portfolio effectively, you need to measure, test, and optimize your business performance. Accessing key insights such as turnover, revenue, average day-to-lease, repair and maintenance costs, and tenant feedback enables you to make informed decisions instead of relying solely on intuition.
Property management software empowers PMs to provide valuable advice to owners for expanding their business and exploring additional revenue sources.
Best All-in-One Software to Grow Your Property Portfolio
If you’ve got a complicated operation and need help with almost every aspect of your property business, an all-in-one software is a great place to start.
Buildium
Buildium® is one of the industry’s leading all-in-one property management software platforms that provides robust capabilities that empower property businesses of all sizes to expand their management portfolio.
Features
Buildium offers a plethora of features to help you tackle every aspect of your property management business. Here are just a few:
Accounting and Taxes
Accounting data from a system of record is the best way to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your business. Buildium’s Data Insights and Analytics tools help measure your most important KPIs to help you make informed business decisions with confidence.
Buildium can help with your finances, as well. Electronic payments and accounting features, including 1099 eFiling can help you save big on accounting costs and help improve cash flow.
Lead-to-Lease
Buildium also offers a comprehensive set of tools designed to streamline workflows in the lead-to-lease process, such as scheduling showings and collecting rent online. Automating these tasks helps save you time and resources that you can reallocate to building your property business.
Owner Portal
Owner portals enable you to share financial reports, collect payments, exchange important documents, and communicate with owners, managers, and tenants. This centralized hub simplifies and automates the most tedious tasks so you can focus on growing your portfolio.
Website Builder
The website builder and listing syndication service, empowers property managers to market their listings effectively and expand their reach. These tools help ensure your listings are shown to the right people at the right time.
Mobile Apps
Buildium also provides highly rated mobile apps for both team members and tenants. These apps enable intuitive communication, efficient work order management, and easy payment collection, all accessible on the go.
Maintenance Contact Center
The Maintenance Contact Center service operates 24/7/365. This is managed by trained professionals who handle maintenance service calls to deflect and resolve any tenant issues that may arise in a timely manner, providing peace of mind to both property owners and tenants.
Not enough features? Buildium’s Marketplace is an ecosystem of integrations that you can plug in easily.
Pricing
Buildium offers three tiers of pricing. Each of these plans include:
- Accounting
- Resident Communications
- Lead-To-Lease Management
- Maintenance
- Online Portals
- Task Management
The pricing tiers scale with your business, depending on the size of your needs.
Essential: Starts at $58/month and includes Buildium’s core features, including accounting and task management tools.
Growth: Starts at $183/month and includes reduced incoming ACH fees, unlimited eSignatures, and actionable insights in Analytics Hub.
Premium: Starts at $375/month for property managers who want to automate their workflows. It includes everything in Growth, unlimited incoming ACH (fees waived), plus access to Buildium’s Open API and Priority Support.
Propertyware
Propertyware® offers a flexible digital solution designed for single-family property businesses. They offer portfolio-level accounting and customization via an open API that makes integrations easy. Among their wealth of features, Propertyware’s accounting and reporting features shine, helping Property Managers grow their business by streamlining accounting and getting important data insights.
Features
Let’s take a look at some of the many features Propertyware offers.
Accounting
Accurate bookkeeping is a sign of a healthy business. Propertyware takes away the redundancy of accounting with features such as AR, AP, bank reconciliation, ACH payments, and bank reporting.
Website Builder
To help save time with marketing, the website builder makes it easy to build a brand online and drive more qualified traffic. Tenant screening feature helps identify high-quality tenants, eliminates double entries, and mitigates risk.
Maintenance Contact Center
The Maintenance Contact Center connects residents to live agents that help manage every maintenance request, while the Leasing Contact Center helps answer and convert prospect calls around the clock. The maintenance management system allows you to manage the entire maintenance process including payments, photos, requests, and billing.
Pricing
Propertyware has three pricing plans: basic, plus, and premium.
The Basic plan begins at $1 per unit per month, with a $250 minimum, and an implementation fee that is 2x the subscription price.
The Plus plan begins at $1.50 per unit per month, with a $350 minimum plus an implementation fee that is 2x the subscription price.
The Premium plan begins at $2.00 per unit per month, with a $450 monthly minimum plus the implementation fee.
Add-ons
To help your business stand out, you can add professional services to your web-based software subscription. Those include:
- A maintenance contact center for $1.10 per unit per month with a $300 setup fee
- A leasing contact center for $2.85 per unit per month with a $300 setup fee
- A professional website for $99 per month with a minimum setup fee of $500. Asset protection starting at $12 per policy per month
Best Software for Finding New Properties for Your Property Portfolio
If you’re looking for new clients, you’ll need a proactive approach to get in front of property owners looking for your services. All Property Management and LeadSimple are two platforms that can help you do just that.
All Property Management
All Property Management® is an online resource for landlords and property owners to find local property managers with experience and service offerings they’re looking for. As a PM, you can join the network to start getting qualified leads with little effort on your part.
Features
All Property Management includes a search tool with a map that helps you identify property managers near you in four simple steps:
Step 1: Search your property by property type and zip code.
Step 2: Review the list of search results.
Step 3: Compare and contrast property manager quotes.
Step 4: Contact and discuss your management needs.
Pricing
Joining the network is free with no term contacts, no set-up fees, and no monthly fees. Users only pay per lead.
LeadSimple
LeadSimple® combines a powerful sales CRM, communication tools, and process management systems to help you manage more doors with less stress.
Features
LeadSimple’s greatest strength is their customer relationship management software (CRM) specifically designed for property managers. With it, you can track all your prospects, automate your sales and lead nurturing, and use pre-made templates to help close deals faster. CRMs ultimately help you forecast, measure, and hit your targets with a full view of your leads and their individual needs.
LeadSimple also includes a workflow process tool. Their solution helps you systemize all your tasks and projects in one place. All updates, tasks, and deadlines are communicated automatically to your team so that you all stay on the same page and avoid long, drawn-out meetings.
Finally, LeadSimple includes a client communication portal that stores all your emails in one place. Their solution promises that you’ll never struggle to find an email, never forget an important email, and avoid sending duplicate emails.
Pricing
LeadSimple has two pricing tiers Growth/CRM and Operations.
Growth/CRM is for companies focused on streamlining their sales, which begins at $99 per month. This includes:
- Two users ($30 per additional)
- One pipeline ($30 per additional)
- Every additional phone number is $4 per month
- 5 cents per minute for phone calls after the first 250 minutes
- 2.5 cents per text sent
The Operations plan is for larger companies who want to systemize their whole business, both sales and operations, which starts at $1.35 per door per month with a minimum base price of $200 (150 doors included). This plan includes:
- Unlimited users
- Unlimited pipelines
- Unlimited process types
- $4 per month per texting phone number
- 5 cents per call minute after the first 500 minutes
- 2.5 cents per text
- Process management module
- Property management software integrations (integrated with Buildium)
To get started, LeadSimple offers a 14-day free trial.
Best Property Management Software for Marketing Your Business
If you want to win new business, you’ll also need to strengthen your brand presence and make sure the best parts of your business are highlighted when prospective clients search for you. Upkeep Media and Goodjuju are two services that are specifically designed to help property managers up their marketing game and monitor their digital presence over time.
Upkeep Media
Upkeep Media® is a marketing strategy service that works with property management companies in the single-family, multifamily, and vacation rental space. Starting with an introductory call, they can recommend proven approaches to both one-off marketing projects and long-term blueprints for growth.
Features
Working with Upkeep Media means you’ll be able to develop your brand using all the essential tools involved in digital marketing. Their services include:
- Management for Paid Advertising, including Google Ads to help you show up on the front page of Google when prospects search for property managers in your area and Facebook Ads to get in front of new clients where they communicate and spend much of their time online
- Website Design that sets you up with a digital home base that informs visitors of your distinct advantages over competitors and helps drive more leads
- Reputation Development that ensures your best qualities are standing out on search engines and review sites
- Content Marketing Services to help you easily create valuable resources for your businesses that establishes you as trusted experts in the eyes of your prospects, increases website traffic, and improves your ranking in search
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to bump you up to the top of search results in Google and other search engines
Pricing
Since Upkeep Media’s services are tailored for each business they work with, you’ll have to set up a free, 30-minute strategy session with them to get specific pricing information for the type of support you’re looking for.
Goodjuju
Goodjuju® is a cutting-edge marketing agency that builds websites, optimizes your local SEO, manages Google Ads, and handles reputation management. Their website tool is fully customizable and integrates with Buildium. The service is built for property managers looking to grow their business by generating leads on a consistent basis.
Features
Goodjuju’s primary service is building out custom websites that help build your business’s brand and convert more clients. Each website is optimized to convert as many visitors into contacts as possible. Each website is SEO optimized and mobile-responsive, making sure the user experience is top notch.
This sets a good baseline for their other services, including local SEO optimization and Google Ads management. Local SEO optimization means your business listing is showing up for the most competitive local searches, such as “Austin Property Management” or “New York Property Management.”
If you have a bigger advertising budget, they can also manage your Google Ads for you to generate more leads from Google Search. While SEO is a long-term strategy, Google Ads may be the boost you need to start generating the right contacts.
Finally, they provide a reputation management service that helps you generate more leads and close more deals by getting more high-quality reviews. They keep an eye on critical reviews, get your happy clients to leave reviews, and responds to them automatically.
Pricing
The marketing agency provides a wide range of services tailored to your needs. Their pricing depends on the competition in your market and the services you need to succeed. You can get started by receiving a free analysis here.
How to Identify the Most Effective Software Features Using the Impact-Effort Matrix
If you’re still a bit lost on which software (or growth strategies) to go with, consider using an impact matrix to assess your greatest needs. On one axis you have impact and the other you have effort. On the left -hand side, list out all the tasks and projects you manage as a business. Then place each of those tasks in the following boxes:
- Quick wins: high impact, low effort. Do now.
- Fill-ins: low impact, low effort. Find ways to increase impact or deprioritize.
- Big bets: high impact, high effort. Plan and schedule for the future.
- Time wasters: low impact, high effort. Automate or eliminate.
This exercise will give you a specific and prioritized list of your needs, which will determine what software features will make the biggest impact on your business. If you have a lot of big bets that you simply don’t have time to work on, consider a software that can help you automate away your time wasters, facilitate your quick wins, and help plan for your future.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the benefits of using all-in-one software to grow my property management portfolio?
An all-in-one solution streamlines your entire operations by having all features, tools, and capabilities in one place. Instead of jumping from one software to another, all-in-one solutions have streamlined workflows with user experiences that flow through the lead-to-lease process seamlessly. Software features like convenience fees to ePay and tenant screening generate additional revenue.
Can property management software help me find property leads?
Yes. Property management software can help you monitor the performance of your business with analytics tools, giving you evidence of your success that you can point to when reaching out to new owners or expanding your relationship with existing clients. Some software, such as Buildium, even lets you search for specific leads using custom targeting.
On the tenant side of the equation, property management software can help with listing and marketing your property. Whether it’s a website builder, email marketing capabilities, CRMs, or a syndication service, they help make sure your property is seen by the right people.
How much technical expertise is needed to use software to grow my property management portfolio?
In short, little to none. The best property management software will guide you through complex processes that simplify the expert-level technical work you need to run and scale your property management business.
While running paid advertising on Google and Facebook takes more expertise and a hefty budget, using a lead gen service takes that work off your plate. This is also why the best software also provides you with dedicated resources or a support team to help you get the most out of your software.
Take the First Step
Now that we’ve covered all the software available in the market, take the first step and try one for yourself. If you need a flexible all-in-one property management software that grows with you, Buildium is the solution for property managers and tenants alike.
With any software, it’s best to try out the technology for yourself. Buildium offers a free 14-day trial—no credit card required. Get started today!
