Real estate property management software is a broad category covering everything from a spreadsheet replacement for a landlord with four doors to a platform running thousands of units for institutional owners. The products are not comparable and the reviews rarely say which end they are written from. This page is three questions that place you in the category before you look at anyone's feature list.
What are you actually keeping
Some operators need the record of the let: properties, units, leases, rent charged and received, arrears, documents. Others need accounting first, with the tenancy as a sub-ledger. Others need maintenance dispatch above everything, because the work orders are the operational load. Products are built around one of those three and bolt the others on. Deciding which one is your spine narrows the field faster than any comparison table.
Who touches it, and from where
One person at a desk, a small office sharing a login they should not be sharing, field staff on phones, or owners who need their own read-only view. Every one of those is a different licensing and permissions conversation, and seat-based pricing punishes the third case hard. Count the people who will genuinely need an account before you price anything, because the count is what the quote turns on.
What does leaving cost
Ask, before you buy, how you get your data out and in what shape. A product that exports a usable file of properties, leases, ledgers and documents is one you can leave; a product that exports a PDF report is one you cannot. This is the single question that most changes the risk of a decision you are making for several years, and it is the one least likely to be on a feature comparison.
Where this hub sits
Lettza is the record of the let for a landlord or a small management company: properties and units, leases with their dates and rent, what was charged and what arrived, arrears, work orders and the documents filed against each tenancy. The worksheets that render those documents are free and need no account. It is not an accounting package and it is not a multifamily platform procured by tender.
Questions people ask about real estate property management software
Is there a size below which software is not worth it?
Below about five units most people manage on a spreadsheet and a folder, and it works until a tenancy ends badly and the record has to be reconstructed. The threshold is less about unit count than about whether anyone else needs to read your records.
Should accounting and property management be one product?
They can be, and the trade is depth against integration. A single product avoids reconciliation; two good products usually beat one that does both adequately, provided the export between them is clean.
How much should this cost?
Per-unit pricing with a monthly minimum is the common shape, so the effective cost per unit falls as you grow and the minimum bites hardest on the smallest portfolios. Work it against your own unit count rather than the headline rate.