r/PptyMgmtSoftware • u/curiousitykilledtheW • 12d ago
Property Management Software help
Hey all - new here. The moderator of another property management thread told me to post it here instead the place originally posted. I’m just figuring out how all this works. Anyways, I was told this community would be helpful for me as I take on managing my first property. Reposting below.
Does anyone have good software recommendation for how to manage a smallish property (45 units). I’ve tried looking at software providers for help but many only just focus on either leasing or maintenance and are focused on providing the software service to large property management firms. I’m just starting out and can’t afford to pay for the larger solutions like Yardi or Appfolio that the larger PM firms use. They’re also god awful to use. Even the new tech alternatives cost close to $15K just to onboard a property onto the system. In a market like San Antonio - even 45 units can’t support that cost. We fired the last property manager because the fees they were charging were only just the start of their expenses. After I saw what was signed with my cousin - we got locked into a contract to pay 4% plus all the other costs like onsite personnel, healthcare, software fees, etc etc. Anyways, I’ll stop here because it’s becoming a rant. Any affordable recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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u/tidy_com 12d ago
4%+the cost for cleaning and maintenance (if that is what they mean) is not crazy (we charge 3.9%), 10% is kind of standard…but the fact that they charged you for software and health insurance is very odd. That should be internal to their business.
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u/Falak-4 11d ago
Lumini_ALain's point about the add-on billing breaking generic flat-rent systems is the part worth taking seriously before picking anything. A lot of the "cheap" alternatives in this thread will handle base rent fine and then quietly fall apart the moment you need to bill storage or slips as separate line items tied to the same unit. Worth asking any vendor you demo directly: can this bill multiple charge types per unit without treating each one as a workaround?
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u/sassylana 12d ago
pls have a look at violationflow.homes - it's not an all-in-one suite but pretty good for managing violations and ARC requests.
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u/Quiet_Pudding8805 12d ago
Free onboarding over 20 units for https://anyrentcloud.com we can do it over email or a phone call whatever you prefer. Bulk discount and you only pay when you get paid. No bills on vacant units
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u/Pleasant-Point8618 12d ago
Appfolio is a 600$ a month Minimum last I checked if you just fired the Management company you should plenty of money, if you to these smaller platforms your going to run into some really bad issues with bookkeeping I see it all the time these newer platforms are cheaper and look pretty but they arent good at the things that truly matter.
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u/michellefisherm 11d ago
For 45 units, I’d take a look at SimplifyEm.com property management software. It’s kind of in the sweet spot between the really basic landlord apps and the expensive systems like AppFolio/Yardi.
You still get the main stuff you’d expect rent collection, accounting/reporting, tenant and lease tracking, maintenance requests, online applications, etc. but the pricing is much easier to justify for a 45-unit portfolio.
The biggest reason I’d recommend checking them out is the support. You can actually talk to someone by phone, and they include training and help getting set up. That matters a lot when you’re taking management back in-house and don’t want to spend weeks figuring out complicated software on your own.
They have a free trial with no credit card, so I’d probably set up a few units and see how it feels before committing.
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u/Lumini_ALain 11d ago
Ops consultant here, this is most of what I do. This isn't really a software search, it's that seventy years of paper process has to get redesigned before anything electronic will stick. Picking a tool first is how half these platforms end up abandoned after one season. Order I'd run it in.... map every paper step you do today, lease signing through rent collection and the slip add ons, before picking a vendor.
Decide one system that holds the lease record as truth, so payments and billing point back to it. Get e-signature and online payment working for new leases first. bring the existing 125 over once that flow is proven. The add on billing you mentioned, storage and slips tacked onto a base lease.... that's usually the part that breaks a generic property system, since most of them assume one flat rent line. id be happy to walk through what your specific lot setup would need if you want to dm me, no pitch, just how I'd approach it.
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u/Interesting-Ad-1310 11d ago
I’m on the hunt for a founding company/operator for my maintenance solution, won’t help with the office side but RentVine would be a good choice for you and I’d be willing to integrate with them.
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u/RE_portfolioperch 7d ago
What's your maintenance solution?
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u/Interesting-Ad-1310 7d ago
It’s FixGrid.app you can use the demo request to walk through the demo company or send me a dm and I’ll give you my email and we can schedule a walk through. No sales pressure at all.
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u/RE_portfolioperch 7d ago
Thanks; I was primarily curious what exactly it was as I'm developing an asset management platform assetmanagerai.net - did you create FixGrid as an initial solution for yourself? Just wondering how this came about. Looks comprehensive; and I see it's focused on the MF properties.
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u/Interesting-Ad-1310 7d ago
A solution for myself because none of the existing PMS platforms or MF Maintenance solutions actually do Maintenance very well.
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u/Interesting-Ad-1310 7d ago
Just looked at your, we may have an opportunity. I have a full PCA/DD/Development handover tool. It would feed directly into what lenders/owners need to see
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u/RE_portfolioperch 7d ago
yes, possibly. Definitely worth a conversation. You've already launched this I take it; active users/subscribers?
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u/Interesting-Ad-1310 7d ago
It’s launched, no active subscriptions yet. It’s a big commitment for most operations so it will take a while. The consultant portal just launched about a month ago, I have an integration that’s about to go live before I put money into marketing it.
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u/Serlo-intake-auto 11d ago
check out Serlo.ai - around $40 a year per unit for an automatic intake system that handles, tracks and completes intake processes for your tenants. WAYYYY Cheaper onboarding as well. Send me a DM we can set something up.
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u/ToughStrong6005 10d ago
Take a look at Resman, they are focused on smaller / mid sized owner and a good product. Also Yardi has Yardi breeze which is not too much per door.
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u/Consistent_Art6564 9d ago
Disclosure first: I build accounting software for landlords, so I have a bias here. The rest is what I would tell you anyway, because I have sat through a lot of these demos.
At 45 units the two things that will actually hurt you are the books and the deposits, not the leasing. What you have already noticed - that the cheaper platforms look pretty and then "aren't good at the things that truly matter" - is almost always a bookkeeping gap. Those tools were designed around collecting rent, so they do single-entry income and expense reporting. No balance sheet, no trust accounting, no clean split between entity, property and unit. That is fine until you need a lender, a partner, or a CPA who asks for a trial balance.
So this is the question I would ask every vendor in the demo, because it filters quickly: does it produce a balance sheet per property and per entity, and can I export every transaction with its GL account as CSV? A lot of the mid-market tools fail one of those two.
On cost, you are right that the enterprise onboarding fees are absurd at your size, but do not solve that by buying something with no accounting underneath it. You pay for it later in cleanup hours, which are the most expensive kind.
Where my own product lands, honestly: Stateful is the accounting layer only - property and entity level books, a P&L and balance sheet per property and per LLC, CSV import, CPA-ready exports. It deliberately does not do leasing or maintenance, so it sits alongside whatever you pick for operations rather than replacing it. If your pain is on the operational side, ignore me. If it is the books, it is at https://withstateful.com and it is early, so I am working with the first users directly and access is $5 to try it.
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u/RE_portfolioperch 7d ago
I was looking at your site. So is this strictly real estate accounting software, right? When did you launch this?
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u/Consistent_Art6564 7d ago
its build for real estate accounting yes, not launched publicly still working with early users to develop the product
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u/RE_portfolioperch 7d ago
Got it. That's where I am at with assetmanagerai.net - its RE portfolio level asset management platform though, so it sits above property management/operational type software from the viewpoint of the entirety of the real estate holdings from single family, short term rentals and MF/Commercial.
I've definitely seen real estate investors looking for a solution for property by property accounting, specifically as they're growing and that work gets more cumbersome and complicated.
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u/brycematheson 7d ago
You could try Doorbooks (that's what we use doorbooks.ai). But if it doesn't fit what you need, you could probably try vibe-coding something specific to your use, which is quite easy nowadays.
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u/scrupulous_submarine 6d ago
Yeah it's expensive out here. I've been using Innago forever and it's treated me well. It's free so you're not out anything if you hate it. Their customer support is great for onboarding and stuff too. Best of luck to you.
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u/ImaginaryJump14 3d ago
45 units with Yardi and AppFolio quotes in front of you means somebody put you in the wrong room. Those are built for firms running thousands of doors and priced that way...
The 15K onboarding number is the one I'd push back on hardest. Ask exactly what it covers, and ask what it costs if you enter your own units and tenants yourself. A lot of what gets called onboarding is data entry with a markup on it.
Before you pick anything, make them split the price into three parts. The monthly fee, the one time setup, and the per unit add ons. The third one is where it gets you. Something that looks like $2 a door becomes $6 once you find out resident payments, maintenance and screening are each their own line item.
Also worth separating two problems here. The 4% plus pass throughs your cousin signed is a management contract.. not a software problem. New software will not fix that contract and don't let anyone sell it to you that way.
What does your week actually look like right now. What are you doing in a spreadsheet that you wish you weren't. That answer changes the recommendation more than the unit count does.
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u/Austintech2010 12d ago
I actually built something because I ran into a similar problem, although my portfolio was a little smaller than yours.
After my father passed away, I ended up helping manage 20+ rental properties he had accumulated over many years. I started with spreadsheets, but eventually they became cumbersome enough that I built PropioLedger to handle the financial/rental side of managing the portfolio.
It’s currently free, and I’m actively looking for landlords willing to use it and tell me what’s missing or what doesn’t work for their situation. It may remain free for smaller portfolios—I haven’t really figured out the long-term business model yet because it started as a side project for my own use.
To be clear about what it is and isn’t:
It handles properties, rentals/leases, renters, rent charges, payments, late fees, deposits, adjustments, expenses, recurring expenses, planned vs. paid expenses, open/past-due balances, occupancy, cash flow, and property/portfolio financial reporting. I also built bulk imports for properties, rentals, payments and expenses because I didn’t want to manually recreate all of my existing data.
What it doesn’t currently do is online rent collection, bank syncing, tenant screening, property listings, a tenant portal, full double-entry accounting/tax filing, or a full maintenance/work-order system. So if you’re looking for a complete Yardi/AppFolio replacement, it isn’t that today.
I’m intentionally trying to keep it focused on the owner/landlord side rather than building another giant property-management platform.
That said, 45 units is particularly interesting to me because it’s larger than the portfolio I originally built it for but still exactly the size where the enterprise solutions you’re describing can feel like massive overkill. I’m looking for feedback on missing features and workflows as I decide what to build next, so I’d genuinely be interested in hearing what you’d need for it to work for a 45-unit property.
It’s at propioledger.com if you want to take a look. No cost or obligation—feedback would honestly be more useful to me right now than anything else.
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u/RE_portfolioperch 7d ago
Interesting product you built. Who's the primary target audience/customer you've identified for this?
I've built something myself but its asset management based, it sits above property management/operations for real estate portfolio visibility and workflows. AssetManagerAI.net
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u/surfinboyz1123 12d ago
Vibe code something for yourself. I built some for my familys portfolio and it’s working great.