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Many of the most popular property management programs these days keep raising their prices. If you look at the big ones like Appfolio, Buildium or several others, you will see they can run up to several hundred dollars per month. Even small portfolios can cost over $50/month.
The more you grow your rental business, the more these software programs cost. Hopefully as you are growing, you’re making more money and you can afford the higher prices.
But – do you have to?
One-Price-Fits-(Nearly)-All Property Management
What most people would really want (besides free software) is one price. No matter how big your rental business becomes, you want to pay the same amount.
That’s what the folks at Pendo offer. Okay, maybe they are offering two prices: Free and $10/month. But it’s still pretty simple (and cheap). The free plan is for just one property, so you can try them out. If you want just one property for the rest of your life, you will never have to pay for software to manage it.
I don’t know a lot of folks who are satisfied with just one though. Plus, you can probably manage one property on a spreadsheet yourself.
The $10 plan seems more suited to the 99.9% of real estate investors who have been doing this for a while. $10 is what you will pay, whether you manage 2 properties or 2,000.
Simple, Yet Elegant
Pendo has a lot more features than you think you would receive for $10/month. It is a complete property management package, including:
Many markets are pretty hot right now for rental properties. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a good way to advertise. Pendo makes it easy. They start with your own website, which they help you create.
It’s just a matter of a few clicks more and you can put an ad on Craigslist, Zillow, Facebook and other sites where potential renters hang out.
As the leads come in, Pendo helps you organize them, and allows them to fill out an online application. No more keeping track of paper applications and ensuring social security numbers are secure.
The rental application has 4 sections:
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Basic information
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Address history
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Employment information
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References
Pretty standard. You can then do your background checks and determine the applicant’s suitability. You rate the applicant and Pendo keeps track of your rating, privately, of course.
Pendo has a lot of easy to follow directions in their support area.
Once you have selected a tenant, it’s time to fill out the paperwork. There are many universal and local requirements associated with renting to a tenant. Pendo provides you with basic documents such as a lease. You can then customize them to keep yourself legal.
Or you can just upload your own documents to Pendo.
A nice advantage of the Pendo documents is your tenant can sign them digitally. Once again, no messing with paper documents and shuffling them back and forth.
Managing the tenants and the property is elegant in Pendo as well. The software really helps you automate most of the day-to-day tracking of the business. Pendo provides a nice dashboard to keep you updated on overdue rent, upcoming vacancies, financial performance and expiring leases.
Are you dreading manually entering the data in by hand? Not so much with Pendo.
Pendo offers the ability to download transactions from over 15,000 bank and credit card companies. The data can just flow into Pendo, saving you lots of time.
When tax time comes around, Pendo is ready. Actually, Pendo is ready any time with all sorts of financial reports and filters to drill down to exactly what you need.
The reports can easily be exported to Excel, if your accountant prefers that format. Either way, it will make your accountant’s life much easier – and your tax prep bill much lower.
Rentals of the Landlords, For the Landlords, By the Landlords
Pendo was created by landlords to help other landlords improve. The company is constantly working to upgrade its offerings. They provide articles in their support section to help run the software and are available for support through an email form or Live Chat once you’re using the service.
Pendo also has a blog on the site with tips and techniques to become a better landlord. Because Pendo is a Canadian-based company, many of the blog posts dealing with taxes are for Canadian laws. But that doesn’t mean the non-tax related tips can’t help American landlords.
It’s hard to beat all the features Pendo offers for the price. If you are looking for a pretty robust property management program, but don’t want to pay more than a movie ticket a month for it, Pendo may be what you’re after.
Speak Up
Is Pendo a ‘do’ for your business? (See what I just did there?) Talk to me about it in the comments section below.
Create Systems – Don’t try to do everything yourself. You won’t make much money in the long run. Put systems in place that run your business for you.
Learn from Others – Check out the lessons on Real Estate Mogul, ask questions in the forum and read other blogs. You never know where you will find your next great idea.
Review Your Progress – Take some time to create reports and analyze how you’re doing. Then make adjustments as needed to improve.
JP Moses
is a real estate investor in Memphis, TN, with experience ranging from land lording to note buying, rehabbing, and wholesaling. However, wholesaling is the area that he enjoys most and where he bring the most experience and expertise to his students.