Property Management Software Development for Real Estate

Real estate is one of the fastest-growing verticals across the world. And, as part of the mix, property owners manage the massive volume of records, including property listing – for current and forthcoming ones, buyer information, and more. An all-encompassing real estate property management system helps them to get a 360° view of the business. It allows managing leads, accounts, contacts, lease contracts, and all other aspects of real estate operations in the best possible way.

Real estate management software simplifies complex processes, attracts more customers, and aligns existing ones with those you already have. If you want to build a next-generation custom property management software or are someone who wants to enhance their existing platform, you’re at the right place.

This article aims to cover the essentials that you may want to consider while building a feature-rich and high-quality platform.

Table Of Contents:

• What is Property Management Software?
• Benefits of Property Management Software
• Types of Property Management System (PMS)
• Essentials of An Online Property Management System
• How to Create a Property Management System?
• How Much Does Property Management Software Cost?

It enables property managers, owners and operators to manage the day-to-day business operations seamlessly. The system helps automate and simplify processes in managing properties. It replaces time-consuming error-prone spreadsheets and manual processes – booking reservations, guest check-in/out, KPI reporting, accommodation rates, billing & more.

Residential PMS

This management system will suit all your needs if you own apartment buildings, houses, duplexes, or triplexes. It helps keep all the tenant agreements under control, irrespective of long-term and short-term renting. The residential property management software allows you to:

• Digitally sign a lease agreement
• Track multiple occupancies in real-time
• Receive rent payments online
• Schedule maintenance and organize inspections

Commercial PMS

If you’re an owner of office buildings and retail sites, you will need commercial PMS. Let’s look at the most common functions:

• Manage property maintenance
• Gather data from various renters
• Schedule payments
• Supports online payments
• Automate standard processes
• Customized reports for easy analysis

Homeowners Associations (HOA) and Condo PMS

HOA management systems are designed to manage multiple condos. This system is appropriate for common housing types such as co-ops, townhouses, and condos to efficiently manage multiple tasks. For example:

• Managing residents’ databases
• Create daily/weekly/monthly reports
• Schedule and receive e-payments
• Manage accounting

Hotel PMS

As the name suggests, it helps hoteliers streamline and infact even automate some managerial tasks to deliver extraordinary guest experiences. The essential functionalities include:

• Enhanced check-in/check-out process
• Track room status
• Room bookings
• Collection of e-payments
• Room inventory and allocation management

Industrial PMS

It is designed for owners of logistic facilities, warehouses and industrial properties. The essential functions include;

• Facility maintenance management
• Leasing and accounting management
• Billing and invoicing
• Property reporting and analytics
• Manage vacant/occupied spaces

Rishabh Software has proficiency in developing interactive, industry-leading real estate management systems. We focus on supporting the property managers to offer a superior experience by streamlining their front office and automating their back-office business operations.

Our technology stalwarts provide diverse solutions targeted to every residential and commercial property business needs. It includes powerful mobile applications, online property booking portals, tenant management systems and more.

We focus on two core profiles as part of our development focus:

1) Admin Profile
2) User Profile

Towards that, let’s look at the core property management software features.

You, as an admin, get full access to the system. You can manage the entire property lifecycle from this panel.

• Multi-calendars: It is one of the essential features of PMS. They are designed to provide a complete view of all the reservations from different channels, like website forms, chatbots, social media and more in one place. It enables you to add details about every reservation to create transparency and know about the potential needs of the guests.
• Property Management: It deals with the data on the real estate asset, including location, value, facilities, and owner details. As part of it, the admin user can execute a myriad of operations like add new projects, manage multiple properties, add location pictures, send notifications to users, modify payment options, and more.
• Dynamic Pricing: Leveraging ML and Analytics, property managers can compare existing market trends and their property prices. It helps you manage your property rates and optimize revenue. The market insights help with better forecasts to formulate better strategies for the future. Rishabh has the experience of bringing data-driven transformation to help optimize pricing, forecast demand, surface products in an intelligent way.
• Channel Manager: One of the essential features of property management system is channel manager. It automatically broadcasts your property inventory to multiple channels to access or push information as needed. When a reservation is made at one channel, it gets reflected on all the other channels to avoid duplication. This helps prevent overbookings.
• User Management: Admin users can add & manage the information about the customers, property owners, and managers from here. Besides, with role-based access, the customers can quickly contact the property owner directly within the system.
• Document Management: Our online property management system provides a unified view in a paperless environment. Here, security-based permissions enable users to upload documents for contracts and agreements, track versions, and use intelligent search functionality.
• CRM: From lead generation to deal closure, one can manage every aspect of the customer relationship management. Lead management, deal management, e-marketing, and social media integration, and more are some of the core features of this module.
• Account Management: It allows tracking the financial performance for the business and different users as well as commission management for the managers. Further, it helps calculate gross vs. net profits on a project-by-project basis for tax preparation.
• Reporting: A smart analytics module of our property management portal and application enables the users to generate multi-dimensional reports and get a holistic view of their real estate business.

The user-side interface allows authorized clients, owners, and managers to search, buy, sell, rent, and manage the different properties.

• My Profile: Developing a custom real estate property management system helps different users to manage data across fields, like contact information, units owned by the specific buyer, property-related documents, and more.
• Maintenance: The module allows users to raise online requests for various maintenance needs and tracking progress. Users can add photos and videos from their mobile devices directly along with other details. Further, they can even attach documents and assign tasks for action to relevant service providers.
• Payment & Invoicing: Users can choose from a variety of options to pay for commercial or residential property and other facilities. It can turn into a game-changer for your business as it covers facets such as bulk tenant charges, debt collections, hold deposits, automated late-fees counter, and more with flexible, real-time reporting.
• Lease Contracts: An online real estate property management system offers automated tracking functionality to monitor the lease start and end dates. Further, users can analyze increment and decrement policies, contract renewal & termination rules, and communications throughout the module.

Apart from this, we integrate other modules as per the business requirements, including:

1. Automated Utility Management
2. Transaction Workflow Management
3. E-Signature
4. Stakeholder Management
5. Campaign Monitor

When it comes to property management system development, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. So, it is necessary to tailor the solution as per the business needs. Here are a few considerations for building a custom PMS.

• Concept and Strategy
  We at Rishabh Software start with business analysis by carefully assessing and analyzing the end-goals, target audience, technical and non-technical business requirements.
• Wireframing and Prototyping
  As part of this focus, we help define user journeys and flowcharts to better map the target audience’s requirements. The design deliverables as part of the prototype phase include high-fidelity wireframes, low-fidelity prototypes and visual presentation of the defined concept.
• Front-end and Back-end Development
  Here, our specialists make your dream come to life. We develop scalable solutions to enable the option of adding features as per the business needs. The development stage is paired with continuous testing run by our QA engineers for enhanced performance.
• Post-launch Support
  Our cohesive post-launch product maintenance and support plan includes troubleshooting for updates, patches, and fixes with security updates, gauging web traffic behavior and more

The average cost of custom PMS varies depending on various factors. It includes software size, categories, development complexity, functionalities, features and most importantly, your budget.

Another aspect of development cost depends on building it in-house or hiring a software development company to make it for you. However, most real estate businesses don’t have an on-staff team with the required tech expertise to develop an application from scratch.

Let’s have a look at various cost models of engagement with an experienced software development company:

• Billing Per User: The software provider will base their cost on the number of users registered on the platform. The more property managers you have, the higher it would cost.
• Billing Per Unit: The pay-per-unit model allows flexibility for property managers to grow their businesses. You can select the unit package based on the business needs.
• Flat Monthly Rates: Some software providers charge a flat monthly payment for their licensing fee.
• Billing Cycle Frequency: Some property management platforms allow flexibility in billing – month-on-month, quarterly or annual installments. However, yearly billing offers a good discount for purchase.

A custom real estate software solution automates the daily process, manages sales, automates payments and transactions, and streamlines leasing from a single platform. Once you identify your goals, features and functionalities, it’s time to look for the right software development company to help you put it all together in one place.

The real estate sector is passing through a digital transformation. Therefore, a fast turn-around with a cost-efficient solution has a necessity for businesses in this domain. As a custom real estate software development company, Rishabh Software builds modern property management solutions with advanced features, tools, and functions. Through that, we enable real estate businesses to provide top-class services to address different types of user needs.