RentalsGuy

As of September 1st, my company has begun to provide monthly residential property management services in Minneapolis and St Paul.  As part of getting prepared to handle the business, I needed to decide what kind of software platform to use for managing my clients’ properties.  It’s easy enough to use something simple like Quickbooks to do the basic accounting for rental property…but I wanted to provide a fuller set of services to customers including collecting rent online, providing 24/7 access to account information and other unique services.

Residential Property Management Software

After looking at the heavyweights in the market…each with substantial up-front costs, I decided to use an online software platform called Propertyware.  Unlike those other heavyweights, Propertyware is inexpensive to get started (in fact if you include the free trial period and the pro-rated 1st month of usage, my 1st month was just under $17!) and it’s featured packed.

Snapshot of the Propertyware Home Page

I’m still in newbie learning mode so I can’t assess the complete capabilities of the software, but I can say that I am THRILLED with what I see so far.  I can think of very few features or services that I’d like to offer that can’t be done through the Propertyware platform.

In the coming weeks I will attempt to find some time to highlight some of the features I’m using and how they can radically affect the bottom line.  Software is simply a tool — ultimately my job is about customer service.  So my perspective will most likely focus more on the results I can provide to property owners and investors rather than the process itself.  But if anyone has specific questions please feel free to e-mail me or add a comment below.

I’ve flat out ignored this blog for the past month (okay, month PLUS). Since my last post, I left Rentals.com and have started my own venture as a property management and leasing company here in the Twin Cities. I’m working with 2 other people - Barbara Wickstrand and Matt Jerome…both very capable leasing agents. It’s been my job to set up our web presence - including a Joomla-based web site that we just converted to Wordpress as well as a couple of different blogs about the industry.

Now that the bulk of getting those sites online and optimized has started to roll to completion, I should be able to find more time to write at this blog.

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