Australian Investment Property Software Options – Complete List

For most Australian investors finding investment property software that is easy to use and doesn’t break the bank is actually really difficult.

Most investment property software solutions cost upwards of $200 and many are cumbersome and outdated.

Here is my complete list of all the software options available to Australian property investors. I found more software related specifically to real estate agencies, but not to your everyday investor like you and me.

If you have a software solution that you would like featured on this page please email me [email protected]

Investment Property Analysis Software

Everyday Property Pack

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Kaz from Everyday Property Investing run an awesome podcast and has put together this set of excel spreadsheets. I love Kaz and her podcast is super valuable. These spreadsheets are also valuable.

This pack contains 15 different checklists. Predominately these are for analysing potential property purchases but there are some to help you with property management as well.

Pros

  • Fairly easy to use
  • Multiple spreadsheets (15 in total)
  • Comes from a great company

Cons

  • Expensive! – $247
  • Excel is UGLY and can be cumbersome to use
  • Can’t use on mobile phone

Real Estate Investar (affiliate link)

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Real Estate Investar is a premium property search and management tool. It is by far the most advanced property tool out there.

It allows you to search for properties using keyword phrasing so you can easily find positive cash flow properties or discounted properties etc.

Their property analysis tool is web based (which I love) and very powerful. Automatically giving you figures like stamp duty and predicting the ROI of your property years into the future.

Pros

  • Integration across research, analysis and porfolio tracking
  • Hands down the most complete solution
  • Automatically calculates important figures like stamp duty
  • You can save data for later inspection

Cons

  • REALLY expensive ($250/month or around $2,000 per year)

View the free webinar for Real Estate Investar (discount offered at end of webinar)

PIA (Property Investment Analysis Software)

[couldn’t find a video sorry]

PIA has been somewhat of an industry standard for quite some time. This is mainly because there are little to no competing products on the market.

It is a very complete solution allowing you to do a myriad of calculations to assess the potential return of an investment property.

Pros

  • Been around forever (tried and tested)
  • Very complete solution allowing you to do a lot of calculations
  • Analysis is very detailed

Cons

  • Only works on Windows PCs
  • Extremely complicated to use (145 page instruction manual needed)
  • Data is shown in difficult to read tables (too much information I think)
  • UGLY as a butt face (actually it’s uglier)
  • Expensive $245 (Personal Use) and $495 (Professional Use)

Advanced Property Calculator (my product)

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I hesitated including my own product on this page because it does ruin some integrity of the page. But with so few options available I felt this wouldn’t be a complete list without including it!

The Advanced Property Calculator is a web based tool which is available with all On Property Plus memberships.

My goal was to make my calculator SUPER SIMPLE to use and have it web based so it would work on all devices. I did that by allowing you to get a cash flow estimation in just 3 steps and in under 10 seconds.

Pros

  • Web based so able to be used on any device
  • Mobile and Desktop version available
  • Simple 3 step process to get quick cash flow analysis
  • Low entry point – $19.95/month

Cons

  • Cannot save data or properties for future reference
  • No automatic calculators (eg. Stamp Duty, Depreciation)
  • Cannot predict more than the first year
  • Only processes interest only, does not do principle and interest

Property Portfolio Tracking Software

Property Investment Calculator

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Property Investment Calculator is a program that works on both Mac and PC and allows you to analyse potential properties and also store data about properties so you can manage them after your purchase.

This is the most affordable portfolio tracking solution and apart from the Advanced Property Calculator is is also an affordable solution for analysing potential properties.

Pros

  • Not too expensive ($99)
  • Demo version available
  • Works on Mac and PC
  • Inbuilt Stamp Duty and other expense trackers
  • Predict growth over a 10 years period
  • Create different scenarios for different properties

Cons

  • A bit cumbersome to use
  • Cannot use on your mobile device
  • Gives you a lot of data which can be difficult for some people to interpret.

See more videos

Real Estate Investar (affiliate link)

Real Estate Investar is great because it allows you to take a property quickly from a listing you found all the way through analysis and then into your own management database.

It pre-populates some information for you and is overall a great tool for finding and managing property. It is web based which I love but doesn’t really lend itself to use on a mobile device.

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Pros

  • Integration across research, analysis and porfolio tracking
  • Hands down the most complete solution
  • Take a property all the way from a listing to your management database with ease
  • Change figures really easily.

Cons

  • REALLY expensive ($250/month or around $2,000 per year)

POSH (Property Owners System)

Truthfully I don’t have any experience with this system and I was instantly put off by the outdated nature of the websites in which it is listed. No videos, limited description and overall very difficult to find out much information about how the product works.

Luckily there are forums threads like this one. The overall consensus seems to be like it isn’t the complete solution people want and it is overpriced for what it does.

Pros

  • Helpful for tax time
  • Couldn’t find any others (sorry)

Cons

  • Only works on Windows PCs
  • Complicated to use
  • Old school user interface
  • Expensive $245 (Personal Use) and $405 (Professional Use)

Rental Management Software

Finding software to help you manage your properties yourself (rather than have an agent do it) was actually quite difficult. Most solutions out there are tailored to agencies or companies with large portfolios to manage. But here are 3 good software solutions to help you manage your investment property.

Property Tree

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Pros

  • Cloud based
  • Easy to use
  • Allows you to email receipts or generate statements
  • Create work orders
  • Manage transactions to help you keep track
  • Comes with instructional videos

Cons

  • Probably too expensive for the average investor – $129/month
  • More appropriate to real estate agencies

Rent Book

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Pros

  • You can start for free – 1 property with 1 lease
  • Affordable after that – Starts from $9.95 per month
  • Seems to be fairly simple to use
  • Can manage your expenses in the tool ready for tax time
  • Web based

Cons

  • Doesn’t really lend to use on a mobile device

Rent Master

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Originally built for the New Zealand market it also works in for Australians.

Pros

  • Simple to use software
  • Pretty complete solution for rental managers

Cons

  • Quite expensive $135
  • Only gives you a license to use on one computer (even if you pay $449.00 for the corporate software)

In Summary

In summary you can see that while there are limited options available for property investors there are some very good investment property software solutions out there.

In most cases you are going to be limited to using that product on your computer as even the web based products aren’t mobile responsive (except the Advanced Property Calculator).

I feel that a lot of these products are just too expensive for the functionality that they have and I would be inclined to try the cheaper products or free trials first before investing hundreds of dollars into property software that may prove too cumbersome to use.

Property investment software needs to be simple to use otherwise you simply won’t use it. I think this is a market that could use some innovation and improvement to make it more user friendly.