New York, the most loved city by more than half of the world’s population is to be specific “Millennials’ Dream City”. Once upon a time, a girl who worked as a software engineer in a mobile app development company in Silicon Valley city, Lara K., migrates to Battery Park City in NYC. Where she meets Peter Downey.

Peter is a landlord and owns a dozen apartments in Battery Park City in NYC and provides those apartments on rent. So, Lara meets him to arrange her stay in the Battery as she got a transfer from her company to the NYC branch. She observes that Peter is having a hard time handling the responsibilities as a landlord.

She analyzes the pain points of Peter as a landlord which includes the below managerial responsibilities:

Keeping a checklist of property delivery to tenants and their move-in and move-out processes

Maintaining Details of tenants such as a workplace, contact numbers, hometown, etc.

Tracking and reconciling rent payments and setting up price

Keeping up with property maintenance

Maintaining utility bills paid by tenants

Property vacancy Management

Being update and solving tenant issues and complaints

Lara waits until Peter finds a key to a vacant apartment to hand over her. Once he hands over the key, Lara asks Peter how his job as a landlord is going. And to this, he replies it is so hard to cope up with all these responsibilities.

She then suggests Peter to have rental property management software to track and keep every data in one place. Peter asks him what is that? Is there such a software that can solve landlord problems?

Lara gives him an example with a couple of cloud-based property management software that is widely used by landlords and property managers.

Examples:

AppFolio:

One of the efficient property management apps, AppFolio, provides an all-in-one property management solution to the landlords. The app is the best solution for commercial, residential, student housing, and community association property management.

You can log in from anywhere, anytime and can get full access to your property data. Marketing, leasing, maintenance, accounting, and reporting are very useful features that help a manager to modernize, automate, and grow their property business.

It also helps to list vacancies, tenant screening, collect rent, schedule reminders, schedule maintenance, or to run marketing campaigns for the property. The dashboard feature allows you to analyze and manage the vacancies in real-time.

The easily accessible rental property management software-Appfolio costs a minimum of $250 monthly. And for the Appfolio Plus version with additional features and a large-scale property portfolio, it requires a monthly $1500 minimum fee.

Landlord Studio:

To track tenants, rent payments, expenses, invoices, and keep a record of appliance maintenance, and financial reports, Landlord Studio is a highly used app. It lets the landlord access the software from any device including mobile phone and desktop, at any time 24/7 hours.

Landlord Studio is widely adopted by the residential and commercial landlords. They say the app saves a lot of time and helps to be an organized landlord. The app has handy features and functionality to save lots of time from tiring tasks.

Unique and handy features of Landlord Studio include- Upload and secure documents to your storage vault including Tenancy agreements, expense receipts, agency invoices. Full payment history, an overview of cash flow, rent due with a quick view of tenancies. Send email or SMS tenants with one click, and many more.

This rental property management app lets you have a free 30 days trial. After the trial pack, you will be charged $1 per unit/month. There are other subscription plans from basic to a pro version of the app to choose as per your convenience.

Peter is astonished after knowing about these rental property management apps and asks Lara how she knows about these apps. Lara answers him that she is a software engineer and works in an on-demand app development company in Silicon Valley.

And as an engineer, she knows how to Develop a Rental Property Management App like AppFolio, and similar software. She had developed several for her company’s clients, including real estate brokers and landlords as well. Peter hears her out and asks what if he wants to make an app like AppFolio.

You can hire mobile app developers for a rental property management app development- says Lara. Peter replies, okay but you have to understand me first how to build an app like Landlord Studio or AppFolio.

Lara asks him to give her time to let her set up the apartment, and she will be back for the same. A few hours later, she shows up to Peter and tells him to ask what questions he has about an On-demand Rental Property Management application development.

Let’s see which questions Peter asks and how does Lara answers:

Why should I develop a rental property management app when there are apps already available?

Yes, there are various apps like AppFolio, Landlord Studio, or Buildium, providing good services. But there are some reasons why you should develop a custom rental property management app for your business.

Control inefficient cost

Some of the top property management apps are too costly and take time to integrate your business. Hidden fees, maintenance charges, integration costs, or regular payment requirements can reduce your net income.

If you are building your own property or rental property management app for iOS or Android, you fix a specific budget limit that you could not surpass. And considering the budget, you can get every essential feature for a great property management app without spending too much money.

Do not have to pay for unnecessary features

It is a hard nut to crack to find an app that matches your needs 100%. A complete contrary situation will control if you develop your own app for your rental property business. Moreover, you can customize the app features as per your business needs and don't have to pay extra.

Scalable solution

You cannot scale up the service or functionality of the app if you are using any of these apps. But your custom app development solution can add new features and scale up by your business growth.

Inefficient Native Support

You might have to face problems with language and currency support while using available app solutions. Using an app without local language, or currencies support is defective for any property business.

Platform Support

You can develop the app that supports the platform that you and your tenants are using. You can develop for all the platforms, or it may be Android or iOS.

Independence

You can add suitable third-party APIs in your custom rental property management app that suits your needs.

After knowing the valid reasons to develop the custom property management app, Peter asks another question to Lara.

What are the features that I should keep in my rental property management application?

In our software development company, we basically break features into two categories: Must-have features to make your app functional, and additional or advanced features that add value to your app.

Let’s look into each type of features one-by-one:

Must-have or Key Features:

Portfolio Management

Vacancy Management

In-app communication

Activity Dashboard

Task Management

Geographic Map

Customer History

Tenant/Lease Tracking

Rent Comparison

Tenant Portal

Commercial / Residential Properties

Tenant Management

Calendar for Schedule visit

Rent Tracking

Document Storage

Real-time Data

Data Import/Export

Maintenance Reports

Marketing Campaigns

Landlord Portal

In-detail essential features:

For Tenant Portal

Application Form

Online Rent Payment

Utility Bills track

Set Payment Reminder

Email/SMS Notification

Expense Tracking

Real-time Flexible Reporting

For Landlord Portal

Screen Tenant Application

Track Payment Status

Billing & Invoicing

Check Due Payment

Send Notification to Tenant

Revenue Management

Maintain Deposits

Additional or Advanced Features:

IoT enabled home devices connected to the app that lets tenants take care of home appliances such as lights, locks, water tanks, etc.

Scan and upload documents feature to allow new tenants to upload required documents on the tenant portal and update time-to-time.

Automatic Rent Reminders that remind tenants to pay the rent 2 or 3 days before the due date.

Edit and update, add a new or remove existing property in the Landlord portal.

You can integrate Virtual view of property using Augmented Reality technology to let users have a virtual view of your property right from their mobile phones.

Multiple payment gateways to facilitate tenants pay using a convenient way, namely PayPal, Credit Card, or Debit Card, etc.

On the whole, you can add anything you want to in your rental property management app for your tenants.

Okay, it was impressive, says Peter, and raises a new question to Lara, emphasizing that this would be the last question.

How much does it cost to develop a Rental Property Management App?

Lara answers him that the cost of the software development process is hard to calculate without the essential details of project needs. However, it depends on three variables: i- time to develop, ii- features and functionality, and iii- Platform to deploy the App

Software Development companies charge hourly, and the rate varies depending on the location of the development company or developers. For example, X company in the USA charges around $100 to $250 hourly if you outsource the project from their company. Wherein Asia Y company costs you around $20 to $99/hour for the same services.

Features and functionalities that you want to keep in the app decide the development time. Besides, app platforms that are iOS or Android or both, or other, play a great role in the backend and frontend development of the app, and ultimately on the development cost and time.

Lara offers Peter that if he wants, he can get a free estimate of a Rental Property Management App Development Cost from her company by inquiring on the website. And she hopes this information will help Peter to get started developing his own rental property management app.

Peter thanks Lara to give him a way out to make his job as a Landlord a lot easier. Thus, their conversation ends for the day.

Bottom Line:

At the end of the story, it clears that developing its own rental property management app is fruitful for the property management business. You can manage your properties and tenants from anywhere and can focus on growing your property business.

At some points, it is also a cost-effective solution than the other top property management apps.

Well, if you are running a business like Peter or have an idea worth the market, we are here to assist you with our out-of-the-box development solutions for managing a property on the go.

For a free estimate of a property management app Let's Talk!