
Show HN: Rentolize – Become your own property manager - mwharrison
http://www.rentolize.com/
======
callmeed
So, I just bought 3 rental properties and laid out my "landlord stack" in a
recent comment here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10727238](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10727238)

I'm not sure this tool is compelling enough to get me to switch away from my
existing tools. My biggest issue is that you don't have any big screenshots or
a demo account to play with. I would suggest you fix that RIGHT NOW.

Beyond that, some other thoughts:

\- "Watch your properties get paid off" sounds like watching paint dry. Even
though I paid cash for my properties, I can't imagine a several years process
like this being something people would check in on. That's not to say there
aren't many valuable analytics you could provide.

\- 7 day support turnaround for a paid plan? You might as well say "We're
going to treat you the same way Comcast does" I'd remove this right away and
raise the price of that $10 plan.

Overall, it's hard to see the value-add beyond trying to replace my accounting
tools and address book. There definitely are some needs I see as a landlord,
but I can't tell if you offer them. Feel free to email me if you want more
feedback.

~~~
AjithAntony
> my "landlord stack"

How are you liking xero? Did you have any accounting software experience
before that? I'm still using desktop Quickbooks, and I'm afraid that the
online QB or xero may be missing features. Haven't made the time to eval them
yet.

Are you paying Rocket Lawyer in perpetuity? Once you get your single lease and
your initial questions asked what else do you need? Do they give you a
discount on the evictions?

Cozy looks interesting, I'll have to check it out.

~~~
mwharrison
Cozy was much different when I started this project, so I just checked it out
again - the issue for me (and no one solution will fit all of course), is your
tenant must pay through their site to track payments. That's what put me off
it.

------
pla3rhat3r
Some feedback:

1) I think the pricing is too low. If someone has more than 1 property chances
are they can afford much more than $10 or even $50 a month. If you're offering
such a robust platform, charge what it's worth, not what you think will help
you gain traction.

2) You might want to reach out to the folks at NoAppFee.com
([https://www.noappfee.com/](https://www.noappfee.com/)). I see both companies
being able to benefit from some sort of collaboration. If you need an intro
let me know.

3) Make this mobile/tablet friendly. Most property managers are out in the
field managing their properties and would likely appreciate the flexibility of
managing things on the go.

Great idea. Love the added value of the reporting. You may also want to think
of adding some sort of scoring system for the renters based on their history
so Property Managers can see quickly how much of a risk someone is. Seems like
this would be pretty simple to do if you are already grabbing the data.

Happy building! :)

~~~
mwharrison
Thank you! Checking out NoAppFee.com and thinking of how I can incorporate
this into the platform. The site should be mobile/tablet friendly, was it not
working for you?

~~~
pla3rhat3r
I'm talking about native apps. Not just a responsive site.

~~~
mwharrison
Ah, okay. That is next on my list. Thanks. :-)

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ShakataGaNai
Pricing isn't bad. Typical management companies come in around 5% per month
around here.

That being said I echo the calls for more information about the product. I
know it does lease stuff, "reporting" and some expense tracking. But otherwise
what does it do?

My management company may be annoying sometimes because it feels like I'm
losing money I shouldn't have to, but on the flip side I don't have to do
anything. Tenant has an issue? Calls the mgmt company and they dispatch
someone to take a look and/or call the professionals. Tenant late on payment?
Mgmt company harasses them until they pay up.

Also, I realize you're probably one guy but the support SLA of 7 days for the
first level of paid account is... useless. If my tenant can't pay rent because
the system is broke, 7 days is not going to be kosher with me ... just to get
an answer (let alone a fix). To me, that's the sort of thing you look at and
decide you need to raise your prices. Maybe its just me but I wouldn't
consider anything less than the $50/mo edition and I have exactly one place to
rent out.

~~~
mwharrison
I'm not sure this would replace a management company entirely, but this was
born from necessity. Mainly because taxes were such a pain at the end of the
year, and wanting to know if I was profitable or not. You're right it's
inexpensive, but that's because it's new, and I'm still figuring out what
needs to be there for $50/month. Thanks for the feedback!

~~~
AjithAntony
In terms of taxes and accounting... You are going to have a hard time. If your
solution isn't complete, then users will end up having to maintain their
alternative solutions. And if they do that, then they will just stop bothering
to enter that data in your app. Maybe there is some balance where a person
with a property management role could enter daily expenses and another user
with a bookkeeping role could export or link that data into the actual
accounting program?

Things that a first time casual landlord may not have dealt with yet:

    
    
      - Depreciation schedules
      - handling bounced payments
      - recording capital improvements
      - asset accounts in general
      - splits for expenses
      - bank and credit card reconciliations
      - handling other charges(pet fees, utilities)
      - security deposit accounts 
      - billing expenses back to tenants
    
    

Or maybe focus on the CRM stuff instead of the accounting stuff. Like I
mentioned, I use sugarcrm, but it is way more than a casual landlord needs.
And by default it is tuned to a sales organization. However, keeping all my
tenants, prospective tenants, and properties as "accounts" and being able to
log calls, meetings, create cases etc are invaluable.

~~~
mwharrison
Nice observation! While I was trying to make this easy enough for my
Grandmother to use, I tried to keep some of these items to a minimum, of
course I am ready to expand the platform to meet the needs of users. Great
feedback, thank you.

------
drglitch
It would be great to see some screenshots of the product (or better yet, a
demo account) without having to sign up.

PS: You may want to set debug=False on a production facing site

~~~
mwharrison
:-) Thank you

~~~
dominotw
Those animations on the homepage are jarring. Sometimes they show jumbled text
too. Get rid of it.

------
AjithAntony
I guess I'll check it out. Not having expense tracking in the demo account is
a bummer. That's the kind of thing that a buyer would care about. Actually,
without expense tracking, its hard to imagine what the product does.
Contacts/Calendar? google apps. Document storage? Dropbox/google drive. CRM?
SugarCRM(This was state of the art 10 yrs ago, I'm not hip to what people use
today) Bookkeeping? Quickbooks (again it was state of art at the time, but
maybe today there are better ones)

I understand that $10 is a pretty cheap to test out the features, but whenever
I need to put real payments into something, it changes from "sign up right
away and kick the tires" to "put it on the list of tools to eval becuase now I
need to schedule time to review this"

~~~
mwharrison
Perfectly acceptable - and great advise. You're actually making me think I
should open up more to the free users so I can get more feedback.

~~~
AjithAntony
15min review signed up to the free plan

Even if I only had one property, the free plan would be useless. If all I can
do is record my tenant's contact details, and the name of my property, then I
could have a better experience with a post-it note. No tasks and no expenses,
and no payment records. Why would ever visit this site again?

The lease feature. I actually expected this would be some kind of lease
template feature. Why would I bother uploading my externally prepared lease
here? I need to keep dozens of documents for my tenants. Rental applications,
credit reports, ID, pay stubs. If all this lease does is record the amount and
dates, then I'll prefer the post-it.

Security. No way any serious user would give money to a site that is not using
SSL. I hear certs are free now with LetsEncrypt. No excuse for plaintext
authentication.

~~~
AjithAntony
Whoa.. leaking other users' data? Does not inspire confidence

[http://i.imgur.com/at2JKyq.png](http://i.imgur.com/at2JKyq.png)

And exception when exceeding the free account limits?

[http://i.imgur.com/Isbf4qR.png](http://i.imgur.com/Isbf4qR.png)

~~~
mwharrison
Pushing fix for exception message now! (I should be paying you for exceeding
what my user testing didn't uncover!)

------
lancefisher
I think you should do one month free on all plans - you don't need a free
plan. One month would give a potential customer the chance to use it for one
month's rent.

I'd like to try it without having to enter a credit card, but the choice is
yours to require it upfront or ask for it after the trial period.

As mentioned elsewhere, you really need to put the site under SSL. Stripe
checkout is not secure without it.

I'd like to see more info before signing up. I was really hoping tenants could
pay online, but that doesn't look like a feature.

A cool feature would be helping to make a craigslist add from the property
info and photos. Even it's a cut/paste this code deal.

Good luck!

~~~
mwharrison
SSL has just been added, I think it's slowly being propagated out.

------
terrble
> Specifically designed with small residential property owners in mind.

I think this is a mistake. As a small residential property owner, a property
management company is so cheap I feel using one is totally worth it.

I suspect it might be wiser to target small property management companies. Or
even better, uber for property management.

~~~
AjithAntony
> property management company is so cheap

5-10% of gross scheduled rents is cheap? Maybe if your market allows you to
collect a huge amount of surplus, then that could be true. I would expect a
large portion of small property owners became accidental landlords when they
ended up with an extra house, and are just hoping to break even on the cash
flow, and banking on equity accumulation and capital appreciation to make the
whole enterprise worthwhile. Paying a property manager puts that at risk.

------
tylercubell
What's your unfair competitive advantage? I also built a product in the real
estate space and one of my biggest mistakes was making a me-too product in a
hyper-competitive niche. Right now I don't see how you can answer that
question and I'd hate to see you make the same mistake I made.

~~~
mwharrison
Can I ask what you mean by "me-too product"?

~~~
AjithAntony
It just means making a product that is very similar to existing products.
Typically there would be a dominant player already and a new entrant may think
they could be successful by capturing just a small piece of the action.

Like dropbox for file sync. Google drive, amazon cloud drive, and microsoft
onedrive could be the me-too's. They are mostly differentiating on prices and
platforms, but fundamentally the same.

Or taken to a further extreme, opening a gas station at the same intersection
as an existing gas station. The only differentiation is which side of the
street you are on. Of course this does happen, and they must be profitable
enough to continue operating, but can never be wildly profitable.

Not impossible to make a business out of a "me too", but harder. Catering to a
niche could work. Competing only on price typically doesn't work. Better
quality and better user experience are good opportunities, but take a lot of
work to reach and demonstrate.

------
saurik
An existing player I know in this space is AppFolio. How would you say this
product compares?

~~~
mwharrison
I think the biggest difference is the $200 minimum with AppFolio. I wanted
this to be easy and affordable.

------
fiatjaf
If you don't have a justice system capable of kicking out people who don't pay
there's no point in renting properties.

------
alexcp_
Cool project, the prices seems a bit too low.

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alttab
I'm about to rent my first property. Does it make sense for just one?

~~~
mwharrison
It's perfect for just one! That's why I built it! Try the Free plan out.

