I’m a rehab and retail investor who just stepped up to a 50+ space park. Any suggestions on property management software.
There are some good and involved programs out there. But I concluded they were overkill for 40 -50 units. I just started using Quickbooks Simple Start. Great so far. I send rent bills in double window envelopes fast and easy. Quick to see who has paid and who owes. The key thing is you can design the invoice to fit your needs i.e. drop in Lot number, due date etc.
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I have to agree with AndyR as I have Rent Manager and it is way too much for what I need. I use Edison Micro Utilities for my billing of rent, water/sewer and any loan payments plus I do not wait to evict people if they fall behind. Hence no big balances carried forward every month. Edison keeps me current on the status of all the above. For my expenses, I simply use Excel and record them in the appropriate category. This may sound crude but I only have 42 spaces and it is simple and it works for me. I regret very much spending the money on Rent Manager and a laptop PC on which to run it.
I do plan to get a program for managing my loans. I think the one people on this forum recommend is Note Manager or Maker.
Rolf
rolf, the program to manage the notes, where do you get it at? we are starting to accumulate quite a few lonnie deals and that would be worth purchasing.
matt
Matt,
Am 90% sure the product was called NoteSmith.
Rolf
NoteSmith is very detailed and complex in my opinion. It is really geared toward the big dogs with hundreds of notes. T- Value is more user friendly. I have both.
Ignore my last post if anyone got it. They only make a Windows version. The evil empire triumphs again:-(
Rolf
Post Edited (01-03-08 04:37)
i found this web site with a bunch of stuff for keeping track of notes
http://www.notetools.com/tvalue.html?gad=CLfWw-8BEghBzxlj2zeAghjPq8j-AyDTq4MP
matt
Post Edited (04-14-11 22:00)
I have Mike Butler’s package. It too is serious overkill. It requires Quickbooks and is enhanced specifically for real estate investments like rentals, flips, paper, etc . It consists of 2 parts: Investor Books, which is
the accounting & numbers stuff, and Tenant Tracking, which is just what it says, maintenance, all the tenant paperwork, etc.
I bought the package for 2 reasons. First I already ran Quickbooks & it was painful for real estate. So Mike’s package makes the real estate investments much easier to account for, but it still has a serious learning curve. It probably works great if you use it every day & if you have a big operation & staff like Mike does (100+ rentals + lots of other things like notes). The second reason I bought it is that I live in KY like Mike, so I could use all his forms & leases without any changes.
All in all, I agree with the other folks that Excel is fine unless your operation is very big & has lots of things going on.
I also bought Notesmith without doing my research. I thought it was like TValue, i.e., just buy it & run. Wrong! You need to upgrade it every year to conform to all the laws about servicing loans, etc. Like someone said above, it is for big players. Way too expensive for little guys. TValue will
service notes but you need to dig through the user manual to discover it.
Dennis
Dennis,
So do you recommend T-Value for people who have just a few notes? Is it difficult to learn the program?
Rolf
I believe that Lonnie Scruggs used T Value or at least he mentioned it when he spoke at Carls park last year in FL.
I just wanted to throw this out for the group.
I’m a full time Lonnie Dealer, and a huge Notesmith fan. I’ve used it for about eight years now, ever since I created my very first note. You don’t have to renew every year if you don’t want to. I renew and upgrade every year partly to get payor 1098 forms for the current year, but mostly because I just want to have the latest version. But you can buy it once and run with it for years, just like Excel or TValue, or any software for that matter.
Notesmith is designed to help you service your notes and collect your money. The tools and reports are invaluable to helping me run my note business. I’m glad I started using it from the very beginning, instead of trying to switch over to it with a bunch of existing notes (like I’m seeing several investor friends trying to do right now).
If you only plan on having one or two notes ever, then Excel is probably best. If you think you’ll put more and more notes together over time (like many of us hope to do!), I recommend buying Notesmith now (or TValue if you prefer), and make use of it as your business grows. Might as well put a professional face on the note servicing side of your business from the start.
There, that was my Notesmith plug. Just didn’t want this thread to end with everyone reading that Notesmith sucks, because it doesn’t. I don’t know how it compares to TValue, since I’ve only seen their online demo. TValue is about half the price of Notesmith. Notesmith appears to have more features.
Karl Kleiner
There are some good and involved programs out there.