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Real estate business is considered to be one of the most profitable and challenging, especially when it comes to property management. After all, there are so many processes that should be taken care of – billing, accounting, booking, a lot of administrative tasks, interaction with clients, understanding property valuation, construction project and work dynamics and many more.
You probably know firsthand how much paperwork, effort and attention all those tasks may require and how hard it is to keep everything under control when you run a real estate company. Well, it should not be this hard, especially in 2022 when we have a lot of technologies and property management solutions making real estate business more productive than ever.
When COVID-19 started reshaping our reality, many companies began implementing new solutions to keep working effectively even during the quarantine. For example, some real estate professionals and companies adopted VR and AR to introduce virtual house and room tours. And some companies selected more common smart property systems to streamline their processes.
According to statistics, the global property management software market is expected to grow by $489.03 million through 2024. This means that real estate companies are going to continue ramping up investment into reliable software and so should you. Wondering why? We will provide you with all the specific important reasons.
In this blog post we will speak about property management software, its benefits and opportunities, real business value and of course main development specificities. You will find out what key features can help you optimize property management and achieve truly ambitious business goals.
Benefits and opportunities that property management software brings
To begin with, let’s define property management software (PMS). Basically it is a digital solution implemented by real estate companies to optimize manual and repetitive tasks and reduce property management issues. Such software usually includes a lot of features that help with management of accounting, communication between landlords and tenants, document management, property reporting, ticketing, bookings, reservations, and many more.
The functionality depends on the type of property management solution and the main goals and expectations you place on it. We will speak about all types of property management systems a little bit later. But for now we’d like to point out the main benefits of property management software your real estate business can get:
- Total automation of manual operations;
- Secure storage for all data and documentation;
- Improvement of administrative operations;
- Proper data processing;
- Advanced reporting and analytics;
- Improvement of client service and experience;
- Much better employee performance rate;
- Flexibility and scalability of all business operations;
- New opportunities for real estate development.
It’s all about processes optimization
Speaking about the property management system it is necessary to mention that the main value it can bring to real estate industry is drastic process optimization.
Whatever challenges your real estate business might have experienced in the past, with a custom property management software you can forget about them once and for all. Let’s take a closer look at the improvements that this solution can offer you:
Management of multiple properties
With a custom software every property manager can monitor and manage several properties at the same time and not sacrifice neither accuracy nor efficiency. All information about your property, queries, tenants, reports and crucial numbers will be stored in one place and processed by a holistic software.
Simplified accounting
You can forget about headaches caused by inefficient and complicated bookkeeping and accounting reports. The comprehensive software can do all the job for you, become your best digital property manager, minimize manual numbers input and let you concentrate more on data verification than data entry.
Mobile property inspections
It is always a good idea to get a mobile version of a property management system to help you with the inspections. Check out certificates, insurance, bank information, get all necessary information about building conditions and generate holistic reports literally on the go.
Convenient e-documentation
Paperwork can stop you from achieving more in the real estate business. After all, there is always a possibility of human error that lead to lost data.
With software and e-documentation you will never lose a piece of information ever again and be able to access any document, anywhere, anytime. On top of that, it is easier to edit and alter information if there is any mistake in it.
Management of maintenance requests
It is not an easy task to handle timely and organized properly maintenance requests. And if any request is left unanswered then this is utterly disappointing.
Property management software can help you handle all requests in a few clicks, categorize them, assign responsible parties, deal with scheduling, invoicing and maintenance payments.
Automated lease renewal and rent payment
You will never have to worry about lease renewals since rental property management software can handle it automatically, and also send personalized notifications and reminders to residents.
As to the rent payments, the residents will be able to pay online and receive their invoices. It’s fast, seamless and reliable.
Main types of property management solutions
Now when you are aware of the advantages that a custom property management software can offer you, it is time to cover the main types of PMS. Basically there are solutions for residential apartment management, homeowners associations (HOA) and condo management, commercial property management, hotel and hostel management, and industrial property administration.
Apart from the aforementioned software, there are two main kinds of all PMS – server-based and cloud-based ones. Server-based PMS should be installed on a desktop or a laptop. They require a team of technicians to maintain and implement them, perform quality checks from time to time.
As to the cloud-based software for property managers it is considered to be more convenient and scalable since it requires no installation, can be used from any device or browser, and lets you access all necessary data securely and in a blink of an eye. All your property managers need is a reliable internet connection and a good device to work with cloud based platform.
Mandatory feature set that helps achieve ambitious business goals
As you can see, there is a wide variety of property management software able to satisfy the needs of the most demanding business owners and property managers. You can develop a software that is a perfect fit for your business model and keep improving it with time.
The most important aspect you should consider beforehand is the core feature set of your PMS. Since we have already developed several property management solutions, we want to share with you our own list of really useful features.
Property management software development: Our tips and experience
Now that all benefits and must-haves of a property management system have been discussed, it is time to pay more attention to the important development aspects.
We have collected all information related to development process, all technical specificities, duration, job cost and recommended team composition to help you get prepared for this business venture. So let’s proceed to those valuable tips right away.
Key development aspects to consider
Before you actually proceed with the development of your property management software, we’d highly recommend you to spend some time and budget on the Discovery stage. It will help you eliminate all uncertainties, validate your app idea and get proper technical documentation that will help you with further development process.
Project vision document, specifications, functional and non-functional requirements – all this documentation allows to prioritize all the features and minimize the risks that can occur during the development stages.
The next important step is to choose the right software architecture. For property management systems it is essential to be scalable.
For example, our team has highly skilled software architects that can turn your app idea into a well thought-out three-tier architecture. They also select necessary libraries, integrations and databases to create a solid ground of your future property management app.
Another important development aspect is security and our specialists take good care of it. They use encryption, select only reliable databases and libraries, and implement secure authentication. We have already shared our best security practices, so in case you want to get additional information just read this post.
In case you would like your property management app to be able to work with huge loads of data, make sure you implement all necessary technologies for this. It can be AI, Big Data, or maybe some additional business intelligence tools.
Wrapping up, we’d like to point out some crucial aspects you should not forget about. First of all, don’t make your software too complicated. A property management app should not be overloaded with lots of options or have too much design mixing.
Second of all, make sure that the solution you are going to build will be compatible with your existing systems and tools. Otherwise you will end up having a bunch of software that makes the work of employees only harder. And last but not least, take care of sensitive and personal information upfront to avoid even the slightest possibility of data breach.
Team composition
As you can see, the development of property management software can be tricky. So it is always better to hire a cohesive and experienced team like ours to minimize development risks and get a great software. It doesn’t really matter whether you invest in custom real estate development software or modernize you existing PMS, in any case you need a team that includes the following specialists:
- Business Analyst who will suggest to you the most suitable feature set and tech stack for your future solution.
- Designer able to create wireframes and provide you with an overall design concept of your property management software.
- Developers who will be responsible for front-end and back-end coding, integrations, and implementation of property management software.
- QA specialists responsible for manual and automated testing and all kinds of security, quality and performance checks.
- Scrum Master who will control all processes, provide you with all necessary progress reports and updates, and make sure that the deadlines are met and the budget is not exceeded.
Our team can also offer the services of DevOps specialists and software architects in case your projects are complex and require people with a solid technical background. Speaking about the cooperation model, we would recommend you to choose the dedicated team approach if you do not have any in-house specialists, or a team extension in case you have an in-house team but lack extra hands or some specific experience.
Development cost
And now let’s talk about the development costs. Of course it is hard to provide you with a perfectly accurate quotation since the final cost and number of development hours depends on PMS type, complexity and requirements. However, based on our experience, we can say that an average monthly check for the development services would be about $50,000.
The real estate software development timeframes can vary, starting at 3 months and extending all the way to 6 or even 7 months for the longest projects. The first few weeks will probably be spent on the Discovery stage and writing of all technical documentation. And then after that all of the development stages will follow.
Choose our skilled team to build your own rental property management software
We can become your technical partner and help you with the development, implementation and maintenance of your rental property management software or any other kind of proptech solution. We have already mentioned that we have a cohesive team full of specialists of different seniority levels. They can work with you according to your preferred cooperation model and deliver a top-notch application at great price\quality ratio.
Many of our developers have already been involved in the development of property management software. So let the case studies speak for us. At the moment we are working on a new software for property managers, owners and tenants.
The main goal of that rental property management software is to help establish cooperation between the three aforementioned parties and let tenants book houses via a mobile app. At the same time property managers will be able to monitor properties from the advanced admin panel.
Apart from these main features, the solution will work with electronic documentation, accept online payments, send invites and notifications to tenants, manage rentals, have listings of property owners and many more.
And earlier this year we released a solution called Highrise (soon it will be available for viewing in our portfolio of solutions). Highrise is a property management software that parses the data from the public boards of building violations and helps to optimize the time of the fee payment processing.
It is a holistic system built using PHP and (namely Yii 2 framework). We have also integrated Stripe to make online payments easier and faster. As to the feature set, Highrise has:
- Advanced admin dashboard;
- Data synchronization option;
- Holistic properties list;
- Notifications;
- Payments for services and many more.
While working on these and many other projects, we have gained incredible experience, adopted best practices and found effective ways to overcome technical challenges. All our expertise, skills and knowledge can be used to build your project and refine it.
FAQ
Conclusions
Having software for property management is the key to success for your real estate business. The power of custom solutions is undeniable. By implementing them you can forget about worrying about human mistakes, ineffective data use, major or minor productivity issues, and everyday hustle and bustle.
A custom PMS lets you focus on your main goals and use the technologies to achieve them. Real estate development can be challenging and yet it is really worth it. By hiring an experienced team of developers like ours you can be sure that you will get exactly what you need.
Your custom property management system will be feature-rich, user-friendly and built using the latest technologies and following the latest design trends. This software will last you for years and become your major digital helper in all working areas.