Real Estate Management Software is Different From Property Management Software

Real estate management software is for real estate businesses that sell residential and commercial properties and plots. Property management software is for landlords and property managers managing a portfolio of rental properties. The requirements of the two businesses are different and the software also different. Real estate management also involves development of real estate. However, this aspect of real estate is similar to construction management, which we do not discuss in this article. We discuss pure real estate - property sales - management software in this article. Rental property management software is discussed in a separate article.

Property Sales Have Gone Online

With the spread of Internet, property buyers typically search the Web for properties matching their requirements regarding location, facilities and price. Real estate dealers have also begun to use the Web extensively for selling properties. The term real estate management software these days means software that helps you list your properties online. This kind of real estate management software typically comes with Web-hosting service. This means that the software seller will arrange to provide you a domain to distinguish your business on the Web, and Web server space to put up your property details. The software itself focuses on helping you put up details of your properties at the Web domain thus made available. Let us look at the typical facilities you get from the software.

• LIST A PROPERTY: A particular property is distinguished by its location, construction (number of bedrooms, bathrooms, garages, plinth area and other construction features), selling price, availability of schools, age of the property and contact details of the seller. The software will allow you to describe the property and include all the above details. No of bedrooms etc is a key search criterion and so these are included in a searchable manner. So is another highly desired characteristic, whether the property is a waterfront property or not.
• PUT UP A PICTURE: Buyers invariably want to see how the property looks and the software will allow you to upload one or more images of the property - typically a thumbnail and a larger picture. The upload can be done from your computer or from a Web source.

The above are the basic details you put up about properties at your Web domain. All properties have certain standard characteristics, and it is easier to specify these characteristics by selecting them from a pre-populated selection list (dropdown box). The real estate management software typically provides facilities to populate such selection lists.

• TYPE OF PROPERTY: Populated with such selections as Residential property, Commercial property and Vacant lot
• REAL ESTATE ZONING: The real estate dealer might create different zones each of which accommodate a number of properties. When listing the property, this zone or area is included. The zone selection list can be populated with standard names like East, South, North and West or unique names like Burlington
• SCHOOL DISTRICT: The school district under which a property falls is an important information for buyers. The software will allow you to create a list of all school districts under which your properties fall.

Real estate management software typically allows you to select the number of properties to be listed on each page. The software will then use this number and display only that many properties on each page of your Web domain.

User registration is useful to make the users (prospective buyers) to come back again and again. The seller is also a user, but a user with administrative powers of creating and editing the domain. The seller might authorize others with administrative powers to upload and edit details.

To accommodate both kinds of users, a common facility is provided that accepts a unique user name and password to log into the site. Non-administrative users can only view the properties and not add properties or edit details.

Once uploaded, property details and images are automatically displayed at the sales domain. However, the seller might prefer to de-list some properties for one reason or other. The software accommodates this by allowing the administrative user to mark a property as active or inactive. Inactive properties are not displayed to the public. Yet another facility is a search facility that allows users to specify criteria such as location, number of bedrooms, price etc and view properties meeting those criteria.

All the above facilities are simple in their nature. However, they make the exercise of listing all your properties a matter of minutes. The alternative is to create a Web domain from scratch and lay out all the property details and pictures in a pleasing manner. This is far from easy, and even after days of effort, you are likely to find that the result is not professional and pleasing.

Therein lies the value of real estate management software with the kinds of facilities we described above.