Technology has transformed how the best property management companies do business. While the tasks and responsibilities still entail providing clients and tenants with the best experience possible, technology has made this end-to-end service more convenient for everyone involved.
However, the number of available solutions can make it overwhelming to build a tech stack that works for your specific needs. This article helps you narrow down your choices as you create a proptech stack that works for your property management business.
Proptech Categories
As technology continues to permeate all business areas, the lines between general business tech and proptech have blurred. With that said, most property management operations include the following tech stack categories:
- Marketing and sales: This broad area can include solutions such as Airbnb, Zillow, and other listing platforms.
- Operations: This area has seen the evolution of products into comprehensive management systems like AppFolio and Yardi Breeze.
- Communication: This can be any of the various solutions that make interacting and sharing information with owners, residents, and staff easier.
- Accounting: Solutions like Buildium and Quickbooks come to mind.
The continued evolution of these solutions has made some of their functions overlap, making it even trickier to have just the right amount of tech in your stack. For example, this concierge software from movinghub.com mainly serves as a marketplace for utilities for people on the move. On top of that, it allows for application programming interface (API) integrations, enabling property managers to leverage it as a marketing tool.
Tips for Building a Proptech Stack
As you can see, while technology is essential to property management success, it can be tricky to build a proptech stack that optimizes your operations and customer experience without overcomplicating things. Below are some tips to help you see through the haze.
- Understand Your Needs
Property management involves a myriad of day-to-day tasks. When building a proptech stack, you want tools that make your job easier, not more complicated. Taking the time to analyze your daily functions allows you to identify tedious tasks that tech tools can easily take off your plate. These tools open up time for more business-critical tasks like cultivating relationships with potential clients and tenants.
For example, tools like Movinghub can facilitate rent collection and finding utility providers. Mobile solutions also make it convenient for tenants to submit maintenance requests while making it easier for you to address them.
- Know The Available Solutions
Of course, to build the optimal proptech stack for your operations, you need to be aware of the tech on the market. While its growth has slowed since 2020, there’s still a healthy amount of software as a service (SaaS) available, each offering distinct benefits. As mentioned above, there’s a solution for virtually every aspect of property management, so you need to take the time to study what your options are.
- Determine Your Preferred Proptech Structure
Your primary options when it comes to your proptech stack approach include the following:
- All-In-One
This approach is ideal for smaller enterprises as it does away with managing multiple tools and platforms while allowing you to figure out which solutions your business really needs.
- Best-In-Class
This is a suitable approach for more established property management companies as it entails adopting the best available solution for each specific area of operations.
- Proprietary Software
This option should be limited to organizations with a massive portfolio as it entails hiring your team of developers to build your tools that are ultra-specific to your business needs. Of course, this would come at much higher costs than third-party proptech solutions.
- Find Tools That Are Flexible And Easily Integrated
If you need more than an all-in-one solution, it’s best to lean toward technology with open APIs, as they allow you to connect workflows and easily share data across platforms. Having flexible tools in your stack will enable you to be agile as industry shakeups, fluctuations, and customer demands evolve.
Additionally, it’s best to have a system where you can feed information from different data sources. This allows you to have a single data center where you can visualize your data and perform analytics that can turn into actionable insights. This gives you a holistic view of your operations and client needs, enabling you to provide better experiences.
- Consult Your Peers
If you have connections in the industry with more experience in the world of proptech, you can get valuable information on the pros and cons of available offerings. This will save you energy and resources and give you firsthand insights into what works and doesn’t.
Final Words
The proptech industry has revolutionized property management even in its relatively nascent stage. As technologies like augmented reality and artificial intelligence play a more significant role in proptech solutions, proptech promises to disrupt the industry the way fintech shook up banking.
