Tools You Need as a Real Estate Investor
Just as carpenters utilize resources and tools for them to build whatever it is they build, real estate investors use resources and tools to build their business. The tools you’ll read about here today were recommended for their potential to be useful.
Evernote
This, at its core, is a tool for productivity that can simplify your way of managing or hunting for property investment. It allows you to store and capture items such as invoices, to-do-lists, audio recordings, photos, and more into notes that can then be easily filtered and searched from any device and anywhere. It even features a document scanner. This makes it easy to have everything you need right at your fingertips.
If you happen to be flipping a house, you can use Evernote to keep track of your expenses, any designs, audio notes from your walkthroughs, and more. It’s free to use if you only need a small amount of storage, but the premium service is only $5 per month and this will allow up to a GB to be uploaded each month.
Buildium
This is property management software that landlords find extremely useful. It will also manage the process of running credit checks. Say you get an online application from someone wanting to rent your property. After your initial screening, simply press the button to send the applicant a credit check request. The applicant will then pay the fee for the application and you’ll get any eviction, criminal, and credit information that’s available right on your dashboard. You can also save a variety of third-party documents, such as references from previous landlords, pay stubs, and much more.
Personal Capital
This online software is free and it will assist you with tracking and organizing your net worth as well as all your financial accounts. If you don’t have Personal Capital, you might struggle with keeping track of your various accounts due to them being spread out between things like brokerage accounts, real estate investments, banks, and 401(k)s and IRAs. Spreadsheets might help, but they can be difficult to keep current. With this software, you’ll have everything automatically current and presented in reports and charts that are easy to understand.
Cozy
Cozy is sort of like Buildium, but this one is free. For quite a few landlords, especially those with only a limited amount of properties, it’ll give you everything you need for you to be able to manage your properties online. It can be used to advertise, receive rent, screen potential tenants, and more. Also, its developers are constantly adding features that make it even more useful.
Zillow
This is a free site that allows you to share your property listings with thousands of people or even to other websites where properties are listed. Most of your property marketing can be done through this site. It allows potential renters or buyers to see all of the relevant information about your property, along with any pictures you want to upload, as well as giving them a portal they can use to ask questions or schedule times to view the property. You can also use it to find rent and sold compatibles when you’re researching a possible purchase or investment. There’s even a map function that you can use to locate properties in the area of a property you own or are considering buying.
Real Estate investing isn’t the easiest thing in the world. However, there are plenty of tools out there that can help you with every step of your journey. This is just a small sample of some of the ones that can give you the most help.
