Best property management tool for commercial and residential properties

[Nicole He]

Hi! We have 150 plus units and we would like to know what's the best property management platform we should use to collect rent, get maintenance requests, and screening tenants.  We both owe and manage commercial and residential properties. Please help. Thank you.

[Nathan Miller]

150 units is a pretty substantial portfolio, congratulations!  A software designed for property management is going to be a huge upgrade to your operation and your tenants are going to love the features you give them with a tenant portal/app.

Some of the most useful items BiggerPockets members have identified are features that save time so they can spend time working on their next property. These are features like online renter payments, tenant portal (for payments and work orders), help keeping track of work orders, tax reporting features, built in tenant screening, and accounting functionality. One of the most important steps you can take as either a startup landlord or seasoned one is to use a platform specific to property management as it will elevate your operation and save you tons of time.

The good news is that most software designed for landlords includes these features. The differences between most software is subtle and may be how they bill for their service, support their product, or the process to use those features.

Here's some software options that you commonly see recommended on BiggerPockets.

The more mature software platforms that are designed for landlords & PMs include Rentec Direct, Buildium, Appfolio, Propertyware, and Rent Manager. These platforms typically have billing policies where you pay a per unit fee per month to the software and you get regular updates and support each month.

There are also a number of newer low-cost platforms available that are able to offer you a lower price by passing along some or all of the costs to your tenants (payment processing fees, applications, tenant screening, etc). These platforms include RentRedi, Stessa, Avail, Innago, Apartments(dot)com (formerly Cozy), and TenantCloud. There's even more new ones that have popped up over the last few years too with various billing models.

Which solution is best, boils down to which platform's processes, pricing, and support works best for you - since most of them have a similar feature set. The more mature platforms are going to be more complete and often be the best solution for a larger portfolio like yours; however, not everybody needs every feature. The best way for you to figure this out is visit the platforms and explore their free trial (if offered). Run through some of the features you will need like setting up a property, moving in a tenant, receiving rent payments, and publishing online applications.

Pay attention to which platform feels the best to you as you perform these functions. Each platform does it a bit different and you are going to like some more than others. While trying it out, call their customer service and see how they treat you and how knowledgeable they are on their product. Ask their customer service to walk you through the above options if needed.

It shouldn't take more than a couple hours of research to try out the top platforms and identify which feels the best for you. Those couple hours of research will save you hundreds of hours of time down the line, so it's well worth the effort.