Best Residential Property Management Software in 2024

It’s the black sheep of residential real estate. The red-headed stepchild.

It’s not sexy, but property management is what keeps the lights on in many modern brokerages.

In the world of seasonal commissions, the occasional Great Recession, and market disruption by institutional players and AI, property management is a survivor. Rent checks come in every month. And Silicon Valley can’t conduct quarterly inspections or show up for eviction court, yet. It’s a boots-on-the-ground business.

It’s also a tough business with slim margins. That’s why keeping your business lean and efficient is paramount. Online property management software can help you do that.

These tools are designed for single-family, multi-family, and commercial real estate, but I’ve focused on single-family solutions.

There are a few basic elements to a quality property management system. You want it to have:

• Online rent payment
• Online maintenance requests
• Rental marketing tools
• Bookkeeping

Many of the best services have additional add-ons and upsells like native tenant screening and background checks, renters insurance, and a website.

Read below about some of the best rental property management solutions!

The Contenders

BEST FOR DIY LANDLORDS

GO TO SITE

LEARN MORE

TenantCloud

$17+. TenantCloud is a cloud-based property management software with a free introductory price. It is targeted to DIY landlords and has an impressive suite of features for doing that, including rent tracking, managing applications, listing syndication, e-signature, and more.

BEST FOR SMALL TO MID-SIZE MANAGERS

GO TO SITE

LEARN MORE

Buildium

$55+/mo. Buildium is a complete property management platform that includes a resident portal, website, accounting tools, tenant screening, renters insurance, maintenance support requests, and more. Buildium’s pricing makes it an interesting solution for anyone with only a few properties to manage if just starting out.

BEST FOR LARGE MANAGEMENT COMPANIES

GO TO SITE

LEARN MORE

Appfolio

$1.49+/unit per month (min $298/mo). AppFolio is an all-in-one property management platform for residential, commercial, student housing, and HOAs. The tools include maintenance tracking, tenant portals, online payments, and more. Their software offers additional integrated services like renters insurance, landlord insurance, paid lead generation, and a website for your company.

OTHERS

GO TO SITE

LEARN MORE

Apartments.com

FREE. Apartments.com is a major rental portal that includes a rental manager system. The tool includes listing to all Apartments.com website properties, tenant screening, leases, and payment collection. These are simple tools designed for DIY landlords or small property management firms.

GO TO SITE

LEARN MORE

Avail

FREE+. Avail is a small landlord property management software. It includes listing syndication, credit reports, lease signatures, rent payment, and more. Its target customer is a landlord with fewer than 10 properties.

GO TO SITE

LEARN MORE

Propertyware

$1/unit per month (min $250/mo). Propertyware is a popular residential property management software solution from RealPage. It includes a tenant, owners, and vendors portal, work order and leasing management, collect rent online, renters insurance options, and a website add-on. At an additional cost, you can outsource your maintenance requests and leasing inquiries to their live answering service, taking that disruptive workload off your and your staff’s shoulders.

GO TO SITE

LEARN MORE

Yardi Breeze

$1/unit per month (min $100/mo). Yardi offers two different residential property management tools: Yardi Breeze and Yardi Voyager. Breeze is designed for small to mid-sized property managers, while Voyager is designed for larger portfolios and commercial property management. Yardi’s full range of PM services expands to numerous different commercial applications, including military housing, public housing, or even parks and airports.

GO TO SITE

LEARN MORE

Zillow Rental Manager

$9.99/week. Zillow Rental Manager is a property management tool from Zillow that allows DIY landlords to submit and manage their properties within the Zillow ecosystem. It includes tenant screening, lease signing, and rent collection.

More Property Management Software Options

Some other real estate transaction management software options include:

• Arthur
• Lead Simple
• RRD
• Rent Manager
• Rental Beast
• Rentec Direct

Landlord vs Professional Manager

Some of these tools target DIY landlords:

• Apartments.com
• Tenant Cloud
• Avail
• Zillow Rental Manager

Others are for professional property managers.

• Propertyware
• Appfolio
• Buildium
• Yardi

The line can be blurry at times. Professional management software will include more owner facing tools like owner portals, accounting, and reporting.

Where to Advertise Your Rental?

Rentals aren’t often advertised on the MLS. So they don’t rely on the MLS’s syndication tools.

Some property management tools have syndication programs. Yardi has RentCafe, for example.

Rently is a popular choice for institutional landlords. It has self-showing capabilities, but also is an easy way to syndicate a rental to dozens of sites. But it is not a practical solution for most third-party property managers.

Zillow is the most visited real estate site in America. If you could only advertise in one place, that would probably be where you would want to start.

I recommend NOT advertising on Facebook or Craigslist. These tend to be populated by scammers. In my experience, reputable property managers are eschewing these advertising destinations.

To MLS or not to MLS

Whether you put your home on the MLS depends on your local market and services.

If chaperoned tours is a prominent feature you offer your owners, charging more to add the home to the MLS may be worthwhile.

Or, if leasing agents are prominent in your area, it may be wise to offer leasing commissions.

For example, most property managers put Austin, TX rentals on the MLS with a 25-50% leasing agent fee offered, but just 30 minutes away in Killeen, TX less than 5% of rentals make it to the MLS and leasing agents are effectively non-existent. Property managers instead rely on simply posting rentals to Zillow, Trulia, or even just their own website.

So, where you need to market your rental may depend on what is most common in your market.

Conclusion

There are strong web-based rental property management software solutions available for real estate business owners of any size. I recommend taking several for a test drive and which suits you and your style best!

Shop Property Management Software