Best real estate management software

Decide which question you are buying for

Operational products hold tenancies, rent, maintenance and documents, and report on them. Asset products hold valuations, debt, covenants, cash flow projections and scenarios. A few products do both and most claim to. Write down the three questions you most want answered on a Monday morning. If they are about arrears and work orders you need the first; if they are about yield, refinancing and hold-or-sell you need the second.

Check where the numbers come from

An asset view is only as good as the operational data underneath it. A product that models cash flow from typed assumptions is a spreadsheet with a nicer interface. One that projects from actual leases, actual rents and actual arrears is doing something a spreadsheet cannot. Ask specifically whether the projection reads the rent roll or is entered, because that single answer sorts the category.

Test one awkward ownership structure

Most portfolios are not one owner and one property. There are joint ventures, entities holding several assets, assets held across entities, and debt secured at different levels. Enter your most awkward structure during evaluation. Products built for single-owner residential collapse here, and the collapse is invisible in a demo built on a clean structure.

Price it against what it replaces

If the software replaces a spreadsheet model that one person maintains, the saving is that person's time plus the risk of the model being wrong. If it replaces nothing because nobody was producing the analysis, the cost is real and the benefit is a decision you were not making before. Both can justify the purchase; they justify very different prices.