Real estate investment can be a lucrative venture if you choose properties carefully, and then equally carefully track your investments. If your intention is simply to buy a property, improve it, and then sell it on for a profit, you can easily manage the finances of this transaction with a simple project budget. However, if you're planning on purchasing properties and hold onto them for a long period of time, you'll likely find that a specialized piece of real estate investment software is required. These applications allow you to take into account all the variables of your rental property portfolio, maximize your rental income, and help you decide when to hold and when to sell.
Luckily, you have a lot of options from which to choose. You can use anything from a simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to a more complex software specifically developed with the more sophisticated real estate investor in mind. Either way, you will want to assure yourself that the software you use allows you to ascertain whether your investment is a gold mine or little more than a money sink. You?ll also want to know what sort of rent you should charge, and you might want the ability to look at multiple properties in order to compare and contrast them against each other. By being able to do this, you?re sure to find the one that can mint you the most cash.
Investment software is invaluable in helping you figure out what sort of rent to charge. It does this by helping you calculate your internal rate of return (?IRR?) and your modified internal rate of return (?MIRR?), and then comparing them to see if the numbers add up.
Additionally, real estate investment software can help you calculate the rental fees for a given property. This calculation of the appropriate rent for your properties then allows you to determine if your internal rate of return (IRR) and modified internal rate of return (MIRR) make your investment work out financially.
Investment property software can also be utilized with your residential properties to determine when scheduled maintenance and repair is to occur. Utilizing such a program will enable you to determine which appliances or systems will require service or attention, when the service will need to occur, and the anticipated cost of the service. Of course, using your software in this manner will assist you in budgeting these expenses, and will ensure that your properties receive timely and appropriate service.
One of the best features of real estate investment software is the ability to forecast when it would be most profitable to sell a given property in your portfolio. The software is able to alert you when a property begins to generate fewer profits, enabling you to sell it and purchase another, more profitable property.
For investors with multiple properties, investment property software is a virtual necessity. The software accounts for the multiple mortgages, taxes, and insurance costs that accompany each property, and makes it much more likely that the investor will meet his obligations in a timely manner. In addition, the software can be useful in helping an investor opt to refinance a loan when it is advantageous, from a rate perspective, for him to do so. While it is possible to use a pen and paper to manage certain investments, software is a far better solution in most cases. Using investment software can help the investor maximize profits and divest himself of properties that are underperforming.
Author Resource:
Layla Vanderbilt is the content coordinator for a leading property management solution review website which connects people with the leading property management tools.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")