Smart Real Estate Investing Requires High Octane Software

To be successful in real estate investing you need to have the right tools. Thankfully, there are now a number of powerful software tools on the market specifically designed for real estate investors.

Let’s take a look at three of the most popular real estate investment tools on the market right now.

RealProspect

RealProspect is a tool designed to help the single real estate investor or real estate business manage their prospects. RealProspect’s scalable system is capable of storing and organizing thousands of prospects simultaneously, allowing the investor to efficiently manage and follow up the most promising leads.

One of RealProspect’s strengths is its marketing capabilities. It allows users to create and systemize automatic marketing campaigns, and to easily merge prospects’ info into letters and e-mails. Unlike some other real estate software solutions, RealProspect data is stored on a user’s personal database, rather than online.

RealProspect offers a number of powerful tools to organize lists of potential buyers by what they’re looking for in a house. Then, whenever a suitable property comes up, you can, with a few clicks, contact all relevant buyers in your database. It also lets you quicky and easily track and follow up with potential sellers.

Like most software tools of its kind, RealProspect offers an activity calendar, customizable templates and a powerful search function.

RealProspect is not Mac compatible. They offer free support, via a support email and knowledge base.

The bottom line: RealProspect starts at $347, but users can try it for 30 days for $1.

Open Road

Open Road advertises itself as the only software solution that incorporates lead generation, paperless office, and collaboration solutions. An online based solution, Open Road’s lead generation software, Leadflow, offers users a steady stream of leads for investors to follow up on.

It also offers powerful customer relationship management tools that allow investors to sort buyers and sellers by type, and to quickly and easily match potential buyers and sellers. One of Open Road’s key selling points is the ongoing real estate education it offers, and its deal filter, which offers scripts for sellers and profit analysis tools.

Like RealProspect, Open Road offers a range of powerful marketing solutions, including a Leadflow website and marketing library. Through Open Road, businesses can automate their front office, track expenses and generate estimates for upcoming renovation projects; they can also network and collaborate with others in the real estate industry.

Open Road, though an online solution, is only supported on Windows. (However, their site says some users have been able to run the system on Macs.) Open Road offers a lot of solutions, and a higher price tag to match, which would make it suitable for larger real estate investments business.

The bottom line: Open Road offers three monthly priced plans, which all carry the same $10 setup fee (reduced from $997 in previous versions): Basic, for $47 per month, Plus, for $97 per month, and Premium, for $197 per month.

NouveauSoft

NouveauSoft advertises itself as a software solution that takes the work out of real estate investing. Using NouveauSoft, users just need to click on a property record. From there, NouveauSoft will research the property, furnishing the user with key information such as a property’s details and value, its owner’s contact details, and its estimated rental returns. From there, users can make use of the software’s analysis features, which suggest investment strategies and project likely returns.

NouveauSoft’s Deal Magnet tool allows users to quickly and accurately match buyers to sellers based on either a buyer’s desired housing criteria or the details of a seller’s property. With its Profit Prophet tool, users have at their disposal a range of solutions to predict likely future returns on their investments.

NouveauSoft’s offers all the features standard to software of this type — calendar/scheduler, document manager, marketing solutions — while also offering extras, like the ability to auto-generate contracts, access to an interactive foreclosure database service, a property analysis tool (useful for calculating potential repair costs) and a strategy coach, who offers ongoing real estate education.

Though native to Windows, NouveauSoft will work for Mac users who install a Windows virtualization application. NouveauSoft’s high price tag reflects the fact that its charges are mostly upfront, rather than monthly, as with many of its competitors.

The bottom line: NouveauSoft offers three plans: the Basic, for $1197, the Xtreme, for $2997, and the Xtreme Plus, for $4997. On top of that they offer optional extras with each package, such as software instructional webinars and foreclosure data access. (Full prices here.)

Which should you choose?

Each of the three suites has its advantages and drawbacks. The usefulness of each piece of software for your real estate investment business depends largely upon the size and scale of your investment operation, the capital you have to begin with, and how far you’re looking to take your business.

Still, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a real estate novice or a seasoned investor: to take your real estate investment business to the next level, you’re going to need the help of a powerful, tailored software solution. Do your research, take a trial, and find the one that works best for you. You won’t look back!