A Guide To Property Investment Software

In this fast paced and competitive property investment market, who wouldn’t want a head start when looking for properties and analysing data?  While reading the news each day and keeping an eye on the markets might provide you with a helpful general overview, when it comes to buying an investment property and building a successful property portfolio, you need tools that let you look at specific property data and how it can be of benefit to you.  Property investment software programs can be very useful for analysing your options and helping you make investment decisions based on sound evidence.

Types Of Property Investment Software

Property investment software programs can fall into a number of categories, including:

• Calculators – these can be used for a variety of reasons including working out basic investment loan repayments, negative gearing, capital gains tax, lender’s mortgage insurance or stamp duty estimation, or the costs associated with buying a property.
• Property analysis software – some software programs let you monitor local market conditions by giving you a run down of data such as recent sales and rental returns.  This can mean you can analyse a number of potential areas for investment, and keep an eye on information such as the median price for suburbs you are interested in.  It also means you can rate properties based on your own set of criteria such as location, budget and number of bedrooms.
• Financial spreadsheets and investment bookkeeping – these can be used for keeping track of your cash flow, your net and taxable income, depreciation and your return on investment. Keeping track of all of the transactions relating to your property portfolio can also be easy using software on the market.
• Property management tools – being able to manage all aspects of your properties in one single application is a fantastic way to have all the information at your fingertips, including details on tenants and leasing arrangements, property managers and event logs.  You could also keep records about property maintenance schedules and contact details for the key personnel associated with your property.

While in the past the majority of software programs had to be downloaded as files to be run on either windows or macs, these days most are available either as web applications (meaning that they run in a browser such as Chrome or Internet Explorer and you can simply visit a website to use them), or as downloads for mobile, PC or mac use.

While some investment property programs are free, you can find that some of the more complex software on the market that combines calculators with the more powerful analytical or management tools can be expensive.  Look for programs that are professionally produced, made for the investment property market in Australia, with up to date data and user-friendly – you don’t want to have to be a real estate professional to be able to understand it, and especially first time investors will need simple, jargon free information and analysis.  With most software there is usually an option to “try before you buy”, and this is recommended for people who are interested in property investment or just want to keep all of the information about their properties in one place.