How to Build Efficient Property Management Software for Real Estate

Having a pain in the neck while thinking of real estate management? Let the property management software development be a good cure and opportunity to evolve for your business. Automatic reservation, check-out notifications, personalized emails, maintenance of clients, easy billing – what else do you need, being in real estate?

Moreover, the tech industry for the property management platform is growing its ability to combine machine learning with AI, to offer reliable knowledge to consumers to remain one step ahead in the property management sector. So investing in property management software development is the ideal decision you need to take at the moment. Want to know how to build the software and its functionality? Keep reading.

What is Property Management Software?

Firstly, let us clear up the meaning, software for property management is a cloud-based suite that is targeted to the needs of property owners & hospitality companies. These property management systems enable team members to view documents and other related data from any computer like booking, catering, safety, communication, etc.

Though it is not a new concept, trending software development technologies have become more widely available, and the capabilities of real estate management software are advancing like never before.

How Does Property Management Software Work?

Let’s think of a bank. You store your money in a bank with the money of everyone else. Your debits and credits on your declaration are what you get. That’s the same thing cloud-based property management software does.

• It connects property managers and landlords.
• It ensures that sales and expenses are paid for independently by each user.
• It keeps track of rents paid and paid to dates.
• It reminds the landlords and property users of lease expiry and rent review dates.
• A rent manager also makes an expense statement document from the software and distributes it to the buyer.
• For any rent payment received by the property manager as their service fee, a certain negotiated amount of the rent payment would be deducted.

Simple yet effective, right?

5 Reasons to Invest in Property Management Software

We know when we start a new business, we need reasons and practicality. So here we have stated 5 reasons for you to consider why to invest in PMS.

1. Rent Collection

   Finance is robust, so we will start with rent. This aspect can be looked at in two ways: one, online rent collection, and second, management of rent collection. Any online software property management nearly always involves a sort of online rent payments, whether it’s a collaboration with another provider or an in-house product. For your tenants, the flexibility of online purchases from landlords would improve collection and add a layer of professionalism & ease-of-use.

   However, if you use basic management systems providing a manual input where only rent is a jazzed up excel sheet, you need to rethink. Because comprehensive management systems like PMS offer complete integration with financial packages as well for landlords and tenants.

2. Scalability

   Evolving your business? You will need to scale it up as the business progresses. Now, tell us what will you do if your current property management system doesn’t support your future growth? It’s worthless. Such a scenario demands efficient software that supports the growth of the organization as a whole. Therefore, rental property management software is always built with a thought of more growth, which means that in the long run, they can cover all of the growing needs.

   It also makes changes easier, allowing you to respond to the shifting requirements and desires. The implementation of a commercial real estate property management tool allows you to be competitive with your competitors.

3. Document Management

   Getting real-time access to details is a must in any business. And manual handling will never let you get such luxury as PMS solutions can. It gives you access to important property files, lease contracts, or some other record. Cloud-based property management software even makes it faster and simpler to store data and arrange materials.

   The web-based real estate property management software development gives easy access to the necessary documents anywhere and at any moment. And we know, there is a lot of paperwork involved with operating a real estate company, and manual reporting can become rather boring. Investment in good tools for residential property management will give you natural communication, improved management of records, and usability.

4. Track Maintenance

   Property maintenance requests are a big headache, only if you do it wrong. PMS solves all problems from sharing personal information to manage maintenance as it includes some form of a maintenance portal. You can have your eye on the pulse, and your company’s success & progress are trackable and available. In fact, real-time statistics help you to change your approach to the evolving world quickly.

   What’s more, property management software helps you to enjoy all business processes being properly handled. You can achieve greater standardization of maintenance management and improve its performance by reducing third-party instruments.

5. Time & Money Saver

   This is the greatest reason you need integrated applications for accounting and property administration. It meant to save precious time and resources by automating redundant activities such as monitoring repair orders, sending rental properties notices, electronic messages, etc. The outsourcing of these activities implicitly results in the need for fewer workers, saving you a lot on the payroll.

   Not only that but it is designed for property managers to view the allocation of capital that makes transactions much easier, helping them to offer exceptional customer support with revenue management.

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How to Build Property Management Software From Scratch?

To know how to develop property management software for the real estate business, follow the below 5 steps.

1. Identify the Goal & Research

   Defining the key pressure points in the process and formalizing the main things that get in the way of high productivity should be your first priority. Think about the ideal solution you would like to create. Decide whether your solution is going to be accessible to all platforms or not.

   Then, analyze current competitive property management software solutions, determine your potential buyers, investigate their rental property management challenges, and supply your product with options for them. To achieve a strategic advantage, you also need to discover the grey zone. If you have an idea and do not know how to proceed further and need a roadmap, a software development consulting service provider is all you need.

2. List Out Features

   Composing the specifications is your next step. What kind of features do you need to integrate? How many features are enough? See, if you are planning to build a minimum viable product, make sure your feature list includes only essential features that are enough to launch your product. To have more clarity, follow below simple basic steps:

   • Define features
   • Prioritizing each feature set according to consumer needs
   • Categorize them on a high, medium, and low priority basis
   • Define each feature’s scope
   • Build a prototype route and see how they are going to look
   • Finalize a prototype for apartment buildings or office buildings

   Remember, that this stage is quite crucial when it comes to real estate when a lot of functionality, intuition, and usability need to be provided in the long term. So make sure the list of features you decide is enough to satisfy your users.

3. Find Developers

   Have a software idea to build? Ready with the list of features? Find a custom software development company that has its own dedicated software developers who will understand your requirements. With the help of professional developers, you will be able to make a personalized solution to streamline your business processes.

   Taking such steps, you actually lower the risk of your project going off the rails because it’s probably not the first app they’ve made. So make sure you have an experienced tech team on your side.

4. Design & Develop

   Planning through an initial UI/UX design and development is your next task (your developers’ task). Identifying patterns, data processing, and protection of your rental property management software development. This also involves prototyping, wireframing, designing, and employing technologies such as AI, big data, business intelligence & blockchain. Also, you must check the real-estate software development trends as it will help you to make advanced software for your business. Being said that, it won’t be long before the real-estate blockchain becomes a new norm. PMS can well evolve into a blockchain-powered ecosystem that generates and operates entire operations of the real estate industry, so keep such choices in mind.

5. Test & Launch

   Test out applications prior to the official product release to the world. This will help deter mistakes, glitches, errors, and bugs. The quality analyst team will optimize it for different types and sizes of handheld devices as well as various internet browsers. Once everything gets perfect, time to launch it! You can follow a full proof planning campaign to develop a consumer base and achieve brand awareness.

Unique Features of Property Management Software

Before you go, we have listed down web-based rental property management software features that can be divided into two: MVP Features and Advanced Features. Take a look at it.

MVP Features

• Collect Rent: With in-app online payments, it will help you minimize transaction costs and through automated rent payments, it gives improved rental properties comfort. Landlords can display account balances, make online purchases, check cheques, and collect receipts from the app. Property managers can also get immediate alerts on each transaction.
• Accounts Management: With the accounting features, you can manage the general budget, payable accounts, and fees for rents. Also, you can get reconciliation with the bank by producing financial reports. And attach multimedia expenses with images of invoices and receipts.
• Tenant & Lease Tracker: Integrating such features, it can assist you in the lease management process, including tenant screening, supervision of move-in/move-out, and collections of rent and service payments. It mainly includes maintenance tasks like lease tracking for late-payments and automatic alerts.
• Budget Tool & Forecasting: Create detailed operating schedules & reports and predict projected expenses & prices, along with accounting for adjustments in the consumer price index (CPI), inflation, and business rates. So much so in one feature? You must not ignore it.
• Tenant Portal: To pay rent and fees online easily, you can monitor property owners’ details, outstanding costs, lease status, get rental receipts, and submit maintenance requests. You can also provide a channel of contact information in real-time. Applicants can also apply, sign the lease, and renew documents 24/7 digitally on this portal.

Advanced Features

• Inspection Management: An integral aspect of land management is to keep track of the status of real estate assets. The reliability of the workflow and work order systems can be facilitated and augmented by a digital tool. When it’s time to check a house, it can submit automated reminders. Property managers can develop a rental property management system that enables inspection dates and reports to be logged into a database open to the whole staff.
• Multi-Calendar: It’s one of the basics that a property management system can not do without a calendar when it comes to hotels or rental companies. Multi-calendars are designed to show bookings at one venue, room availability, and guest status from various sources. To get a complete picture of each visitor, it lets you add info about each reservation.
• Communication Channels Integration: Integrating communication channels let you automate the sending of email addresses to landlords, ensuring that none goes unnoticed. Add SMS, in-app chat, create community systems, and deliver messages in bulk. Make in-app calls or and deliver a message to all of your users & save time.
• Listing Management: This property management tool helps you to post news & retain listings. Also, handle different consumer & property types, add & change details, manage functionality of assets, payment gateways, and create ad campaigns. This can be a savior sometimes for your real-estate market business.
• Task System: Any business contemplating countless repetitive activities that can divert you from strategic stuff needs a task system. It takes over some of the everyday burdens. Developing a mobile task manager would make it easier for the staff to be agile on the go to complete their tasks.

How Much Does Property Management Software Cost?

Starting a new company comes with the worry – the cost of software development and no one can give you a straight answer for this. As it depends on different variables, software size, and categories. But we can give you a rough estimation, so let’s take a look at the time and the cost needed to create commercial property management system software from the development perspectives.

Remember, the selection of functionality, size, and type of development may be either narrowed down or expanded, in which case, the cost and time to implement a real estate property management system would fluctuate. So plan accordingly.

Conclusion

So how to build PMS? Identify your goals, list out features, search developers, and start developing. That’s how easy it is.

Why develop PMS? Building a custom property management system solution would drive an immense amount of profitability. What else do you need?

Suggestions and tech collaboration? Contact us now. Our proficient company can guide you with custom property management software development.