Being a real estate investor is not a walk in the park; making money in real estate takes a lot of dedication and hard work. Most real estate investors have a habit of wanting to do everything, be everywhere, and handle as many tasks as possible. However, this is just a quick way of getting burnt out, especially for people who own multiple rental properties. A successful real estate investor should have real estate systems in place to make their work much easier. Everything from closing real estate deals to finding property leads should have a system. This will ensure that you get results regardless of who is handling the task at hand.
So, What Are Real Estate Systems?
Real estate systems are mechanisms for executing or solving rental property business tasks or problems that arise repeatedly in an effortless, streamlined fashion. Emerging technologies such as cloud-based solutions and dynamic real estate software have made it quite easy for any business owner to implement business processes and automated real estate systems. Here are some of the benefits of implementing real estate investing systems:
- Reduce rental property costs
- Save time for rental property management
- Improve productivity
- Minimize errors
- Boost your bottom line
- Deliver consistent results
- Grow your business
Here are 5 must-have real estate systems for investors:
1. Property Search
Residential real estate investing has become increasingly competitive in the past few years. To stay ahead of the competition, investors should learn how to find investment property before anyone else does. This is why every investor must have real estate systems for finding housing market data on investment property.
The good news is that you can use real estate investment tools such as Mashvisor’s property finder tool to locate the best investment properties in any city you are interested in. Using your target budget and investment goals, the tool’s AI will scan the area you are interested in and produce property suggestions (cards). Each card will come with property data such as a physical address, estimated value, listing price, as well as traditional and Airbnb analytics including the cash on cash return of each rental strategy. The property finder uses filters such as miles and cities, budget and rental strategy, as well as bedrooms and bathrooms.
Related: Property Search: 4 Must Have Real Estate Investing Tools
Incorporating this tool into your property search system will ensure that you know where to go to quickly and easily find investment properties. You won’t have to waste any time on this process and you can easily do it over and over again to keep growing your portfolio with profitable properties.
2. Property Evaluation
If you don’t have proper real estate systems for property evaluation, you are likely to miss some details that are very important. A well-developed property evaluation system will help you carry out your own inspection before the actual one is done. You can begin by writing a list of things that need to be evaluated. Foundation, flooring, plumbing, and mechanical systems should be the first items on your checklist.
Once you check out the physical aspects of the property, you need another system in place to help you perform investment property analysis. For example, you need a quick and reliable way to find real estate comps. You also need a way to factor in your budget to ensure a high return on investment. While some real estate investors set up spreadsheets and equations, a much simpler system would incorporate online investment calculators.
After looking at the investment property itself, take note of the neighborhood qualities and street traffic. You also need to be able to determine how the neighborhood real estate market will perform. To find predictive analytics more easily for the location, use Mashvisor’s heatmap analysis tool. This tool allows you to conduct real estate market analysis based on factors such as price, rental income, occupancy rate, cap rate, and return on investment.
To learn more about how Mashvisor can help you find profitable investment properties, schedule a demo.
3. Marketing and Lead Generation
Every real estate investor is either looking for property buyers, sellers or tenants. Therefore, effective marketing is very important for success in real estate. A good marketing system should generate seller, buyer, and even tenant leads for your business while you sleep.
One of the most important elements of a real estate system for marketing is a professional and well-designed website. Besides being visually aesthetic, the website should offer prospects valuable information on a regular basis. The site should also have landing pages where potential leads will submit their contact details in return for something valuable. This could be a free downloadable guide or free access to a podcast. You can use a CRM (customer relationship management) system to store the leads that have been captured.
A lead generation system will help you carry out tasks such as managing contact details of your leads in one place, automating your custom mailings, and receiving voicemail messages. It would be advisable to find a software tool that doubles as a campaign mailing system and a CRM system at the same time. Such systems allow users to design, create, and store multiple mailing templates.
Learn how Mashboard can help you find and contact off-market leads.
Besides the website, your marketing and lead generation system should also incorporate social media campaigns and networking with other real estate professionals.
Related: How to Market Rental Property All the Way
4. Follow-Up Systems
A system for following up with leads is very important for converting leads into buyers or sellers. Such real estate systems should help investors assign categories and tags to specific real estate leads. As a result, you will be able to keep track of when you last contacted someone, whether they responded or not, and what they said. Using such a system will prevent you from reaching out to one specific lead too often, and thus putting them off. Similarly, the follow-up system will help you keep track of all your leads to ensure that no one is forgotten.
5. Accounting Systems
Investors should know how money flows in and out of their real estate business. If you are sloppy and forget to pay your contractor, they might not want to work with you in the future. If you don’t have a system for collecting rent, late payments could become the norm. Accounting systems will help in allocating your funds, purchasing supplies, collecting payments, and paying bills. Transactions usually involve invoices, bank and credit card systems, and purchase receipts. There are numerous scanning applications out there that you can use to digitize your paper receipts. In addition, you can use long term rental and Airbnb accounting software systems like QuickBooks Pro to manage and store transaction records. This will make things easier for you during tax season.
Related: Owning Multiple Properties?: Top Accounting, Budgeting, and Tax Software to Stay Organised
Conclusion
Effective real estate systems should be created and implemented with an awareness of the activities that drain your time and energy. The priority of every real estate investor should be to focus on activities that boost the bottom line. Therefore, be sure to take advantage of the user-friendly and dynamic software systems that allow you to delegate, streamline, and automate your processes.