Property management software (PMS) changes the game when it comes to the scheduled maintenance of residential, commercial, and hotel assets. Reservation Management, Front Desk, Billing, and Invoicing are some of the core PMS functions. However, this software type might face a number of challenges, such as a high learning curve for employees and scalability. Hence, we’re going to discuss how to build a property management platform, resolving the presented problems.
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PMS is a tool that aims to assist property managers and owners in controlling and automating the processes of rent collection, invoicing, and handling maintenance requests.
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PMS can ensure the safety of the clients’ information due to data encryption, secure authentication, and compliance with regulations (GDPR, CCPA).
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Choosing between native and cross-platform app development might be central for the final product based on the benefits they produce.
According to research by Fortune Business Insights, the property management software market is expected to grow from USD 24.18 billion in 2024 to USD 52.21 billion by 2032. CAGR is anticipated to raise about 10.1% during the presented period.
Do You Need Property Management Software?
The primary aspect of property management software development you have to think about is the actual benefits it will bring to the different types of property types. To be more specific, we’re going to focus on:
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Hotel (HoReCa).
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Commercial Associations.
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Residential Property Type.
Although PMS provides similar advantages to the above-mentioned property types, there are some differences associated with the overall purpose and target audience. We’ll clarify them below.
PMS for Hotel (HoReCa)
What defines hospitality real estate? Actually, that is its purpose. Unlike residential property and commercial associations, hotel-relevant real estate focuses on catering service delivery designed to create a memorable customer experience of relaxation and pleasure.
Improved Operational Efficiency
Hotels benefit from reservation management due to which the hotel administration can manage reservations and direct bookings, which improves hotel operational efficiency. The system enables the hotel manager to directly track and review the booking status of both hotel rooms and conference halls. PMS prevents hotel management from double-booking and prevents issues like reservations of the same room for the same date.
Reduced Time for Invoicing & Billing
PMS can serve as a revenue management system by economizing the hotel managers' time considerably when creating invoices. The system enables managers to set automatic billing rules, which will automatically create an invoice based on the predefined conditions. When the client checks out, PMS will send them the invoice act.
Commercial Associations
Commercial associations change the vector of service provision. This category aims to cover the needs of the business sector, like providing business representatives with property for commercial use. Managers can rent business offices where PMS can present the following range of benefits:
Improved Marketing
PMS provides commercial associations with centralized data to store and process clients’ data, property details, and current marketing trends. A property management system alleviates audience segmentation based on demographics, potential income, and preferences to provide business representatives with personalized property.
Centralized Amenities-Based Expenditures
As a centralized system, PMS helps commercial associations get control and provide timely payment for the amenities. These include notifications of deadlines for payment for utility bills (electricity & water), parking fees, Internet, and waste management, including trash disposal and recycling programs.
Residential Property
In contrast to the aforementioned property types, the focus of residential real estate is to cover tenants’ needs in the place of living, covering short-term renting and purchasing an asset. Let’s highlight 3 benefits of PMS for residential property.
Tenant Management
PMS helps property managers store data on tenants' profiles, lease agreements, and payment histories. These elements benefit residential property as the managers and owners can track lease status, renewal, tenants’ move-ins, and move-outs to keep correct document processing and promote personalized reminders on lease renewal or end dates.
Maintenance Management
Residential property managers can benefit from PMS in managing maintenance functions as the software lets tenants place their requests online. Additionally, the system helps managers check the real-time status of the repairs, inspections, and preventive maintenance assignments.
Key Features of a Property Management System
Property management software development will require you to consider the basic elements the overall system has in order to ensure real-time data processing, tracking payments, and providing in-time response to the tenants’/clients’ needs. Let’s define the key characteristics of the property management system.
1. Property Listing Management
Property listing management represents a set of tools that assist property managers and owners in creating, organizing, and handling property listings for potential rate or sale. The purpose of the identified feature is to attract the target audience via advertising properties through photos, videos, detailed descriptions, pricing, etc. Property listing management includes:
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Centralized Database
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Listing Creation
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Tracking Availability
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Analytics and Performance Tracking
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Automated Updates
2. Tenant Management
Tenant management includes a set of tools to handle data and information relevant to tenant relationships and lease operations. This PMS feature optimizes the processes of managing tenant information (contacts, names, payment method preferences), lease agreements, etc. Let’s enumerate the elements of tenant management:
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Tenant Database
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Lease Management
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Communication Tools
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Move-In and Move-Out Management
3. Payment Tracking
Payment tracking is a PMS feature that consists of the elements that help real estate property managers, commercial associations, or hotel administrators track, record, and manage financial transactions. These can include checking rent and utility payments, late fees, etc. Payment tracking includes the following elements:
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Rent Collection
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Automated Payment Reminders
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Late Payment Management
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Utility & Additional Fee Tracking
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Invoices & Receipts
4. Reporting Features
PMS reporting tools are a collection of features that property owners and managers use to analyze, understand, and gain insight into their property, financial, and tenant data. Such features generate comprehensive reports to induce advanced decision-making and increase operational efficiency. Below is a non-exhaustive list of some reporting features that can help make the financial/client-relevant data more visible:
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Financial Reports
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Tenant Reports
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Maintenance Reports
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Performance Dashboards
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Historical & Trend Analysis
5. Integrated CRM
The involvement of customer relationship management tools can optimize the interactions with the tenants and potential leads. When integrated directly into the PMS, the CRM system can streamline residents and target audience management by enriching the centralized database with real-world data to optimize communication and data management. Customer relationship management tools include:
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Lead Management
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Contact Management
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Tenant & Prospect Segmentation
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Communication Tools
Steps to Develop Property Management Software
The abundance of details about the property management software elements and characteristics might provoke perplexity in comprehension of how to build a property management system. That’s why we are actually writing this article - to shed light on its development process.
1. Define Your Purpose & Business Goals
Conducting a marketing analysis would benefit your PMS development, as you can analyze your potential competitors by defining their strengths and weaknesses. We’d like to recommend you conduct SWOT analysis as it can craft insights on the rivals’ market strengths, weaknesses, potential threats, and opportunities. From this point, you can ponder over your initial goals and revise them if you prioritize gaining the different software to preserve competitive advantage.
Finally, you should think about the features your PMS should comprise to align with your business purpose and goals. These can include, but are not limited to, tenant screening, maintenance management, rent collection, and virtual tours. We encourage you to think about a cost-benefit analysis, as it can help you prioritize functionalities and support reasonable budget allocation.
2. Build an MVP
Crafting an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is an optional stage, which, however, can bring to the table advantages like concept validation and gathering feedback from the early users. MVP comprises the core functionalities that aim to address the basic needs of the property managers and tenants.
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Property Listings Management
This feature incorporates basic tools to add and edit the property details, as well as display the essential information, including descriptions, geolocation, photos, and prices.
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Tenant Management
MVP enables the preservation of clients’ contact data, payment preferences, and lease agreements, which can help you keep all information centralized, alleviating the track of deadlines regarding lease renewal.
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Rent Collection
In MVP, rent collection is beneficial for integrating and checking the basic payment functionality, comprising online payment variants, like credit cards and report generation.
Minimum Viable Product validates the concept and gives you insights into the practical clients’ preferences, enabling ongoing iterative improvements for a faster time-to-market launch.
3. UX/UI Design Implementation
You should pay attention to the UX/UI design as it directly influences the effectiveness of tenants’, owners’, and property managers’ interaction with the software. Let’s discuss what elements you should consider in your PMS.
UX Design
UX design focuses on providing clients with a seamless experience as they are the core actors interacting with the product.
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Information Architecture
You should consider organizing navigation and content the way they align with user priorities, including dashboards for property managers and payment portals for tenants. For this purpose, you can use clear hierarchies for features.
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Performance Optimization
PMS should ensure speed and responsiveness to manage large datasets, preventing and handling operational slowdowns. This will enhance client satisfaction and brand recognition.
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Multi-Platform Support
Don’t forget about multi-platform support, as when you focus on crafting an iOS/Android application, you have to ensure functional consistency between the mobile software and the product Web version. You can consider using responsive design to grant optimal display in different screen sizes.
UI Design
UI design represents visual and interactive elements of your PMS to make the in-app actions visually appealing by remaining consistent and functional.
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Visual Hierarchy
You can use different fonts, sizes, and spacing to underline critical information, such as payment deadlines, overdue payments, etc. This will provide tenants with visibility of prioritized information and increase action responsiveness.
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Intuitive Navigation
Visually attractive and easy navigation enhances client satisfaction and can keep their retention. A fixed and clear menu structure with easily accessible sections like ‘Dashboards,’ ‘Properties,’ ‘Payments,’ ‘Tenants,’ etc., will make your app attractive and memorable.
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Corporate Branding
Colors, fonts, symbols, and brand logo integrations can help users memorize and differentiate your PMS from the competitors. Alignment with modern design trends, like a dark theme, can ensure the interface looks elegant by stimulating the clients to use it.
Take a look at contemporary trends in UX/UI design to get inspiration for your PMS.
4. Product Development
The product development phase refers to the practical elaboration of the final version of your PMS. This includes front-end and back-end development, as well as implementation of security measures. But to develop a property management software, you need to choose the right tech stack. Our company can help you select the right technology stack that will align with your specific project needs and correlate to the pace, quality, and price.
5. Testing
The penultimate phase of building a property management platform is conducting a spectrum of testing procedures to ensure the app operates as intended and aligns with your business objectives.
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Apply functional testing to check whether the features work in a correct and cohesive manner. This can include checking rent collection or automated invoice generation.
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Perform usability testing as it aims to check the software’s ease of use.
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Conduct performance testing to test how the application works under heavy loads, to check and eliminate the potential operational slowdowns.
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Perform security testing as it is a must to check whether PMS can ensure data protection, safe storage, and whether it aligns with the legal requirements, like GDPR.
6. Market Launch & Maintenance
The final stage of PMS development is its launch to the market with ongoing maintenance. You should collect client feedback on the app’s use, efficiency, as well as listen to recommendations to provide better client-centric product updates.
Challenges You May Encounter While Developing Your PMS
When asking a question of how to build your own property management system, you need to keep in mind not only the development process, features, but challenges that might occur on your way. Let's begin by discussing two possible challenges and their solutions to put your mind at ease.
High Learning Curve for Employees
This challenge may occur when you decide to launch PMS into your daily routine, which can cause employees’ resistance to change. Staff can be unfamiliar with the implemented workflows and might experience complexities in adapting to the new processes, which might provoke errors.
Solution:
Promote a gradual training process, presenting employees with features from those of minor complexities to the toughest, so that they can get a systematic understanding of the integrated features’ functionalities.
Scalability
A PMS manages multiple portfolios, which continue to grow with the influx of client data, particularly in hotel property management, leading to scalability challenges.
Solution:
You can use cloud-based infrastructure to ensure a dynamic scalability of resources. Additionally, implementing caching mechanisms can boost performance.
Consider Agilie, Your Trusted Partner
When thinking about crafting a PMS from scratch, you might ponder over the development options available on the market. Why not hire outsourcing developers? Its models of cooperation can reduce financial input and produce fast and qualified product development.
Learn more about outsourcing and its type in our article.
Agilie is an IT outsourcing company that, for over 14+ years, had been elaborating on from scratch and optimized digital solutions that function for the domains of real estate, fintech, healthcare, logistics, etc. Our company offers services, including fintech, mobile banking, payment solutions, and blockchain software, via three outsourcing models of collaboration: dedicated team, staff augmentation, and project-based cooperation.
Conclusion
The article discusses how to create a property management system by analyzing its overall benefits for multiple property types. When thinking about whether you need one, you have to focus specifically on the goals of your business and keep in mind the potential challenges so that you can either prevent or overcome them. Hiring an IT outsourcing team can ensure both your property management system's best quality and cost-efficiency.
