All Forum Posts by: Nicole He

My properties are in Pittsburgh and I have found that Zillow and Apartments.com to be decent tenant lead generators.  Both are free, you just need to refresh or deactivate/reactive your listing for a few minutes each day to keep your listing on top. 

As for the residential lease, once you have a prospective tenant and you prescreened them, use Apartments.com for taking in online rental applications and use it as your property management platform - it's free and it helps you generate leases once you approve an application - you can also generate lease renewal and collect rent on there.  

I know this is going to sound generic anc cliche, but truly is going to be difficult for every one of your particular properties.  I come from decades of working gor the large national and statewide management organizations, where I manage the 300 / 500 unit apartment communities.  Here, we track our marketing and advertising efforts by asking every prospect (phone or in person) "how did you hear about us"?   From there, we compile weekly and monthly reports to track where our advertising dollars are being best spent, and where we possibly need to cut back on.   Now with that said, if your property is, for example, on a busy highway or street... you should be putting the vast majority of your marketing dollars on "curb appeal and signage", as opposed t a full page advertisement or fancy website .   So, it's best to track you advertising efforts with each prospect at each property separately and determine that property's best marketing plan.  

Can't speak for renting garages but I've had success using Zillow to rent residential units whether they are SFH, apartments or condos. If you have good photos and the unit is priced correctly you will get quality leads.

@Brenda Ast I'm with you here, been using Excel spreadsheets since 2017 and no software has had everything I wanted, which never felt like much. Tried QuickBooks and didn't like the Customer/Vendor aspect for properties and tenants. I use Buildium for tracking rent, fees, leases, and collecting online payments, but I don't use their reports for much, as I end up copying my online banking each year into spreadsheets.

I've been using Rental Hero for the last hour and already impressed with it. I'm currently adding all of my numbers for a 20-unit apartment building in for a test, and then I'll bring my other 90+ units. It's not just the taxes, but being able to at-a-glance look at expenses by the month and year, profit and loss calculating automatically, and even cash flow by property and total portfolio by month and year.

Thanks for suggesting it! For late 2024, it seems to be just what I needed. FYI, it has a free 30-day trial that has all features and doesn't require a payment or card to start using.

https://www.rentalhero.io/