So, I just bought 3 rental properties and laid out my "landlord stack" in a recent comment here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10727238" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10727238</a><p>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.<p>Beyond that, some other thoughts:<p>- "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.<p>- 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.<p>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.
Some feedback:<p>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.<p>2) You might want to reach out to the folks at NoAppFee.com (<a href="https://www.noappfee.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.noappfee.com/</a>). I see both companies being able to benefit from some sort of collaboration. If you need an intro let me know.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Happy building! :)
Pricing isn't bad. Typical management companies come in around 5% per month around here.<p>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?<p>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.<p>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.
It would be great to see some screenshots of the product (or better yet, a demo account) without having to sign up.<p>PS: You may want to set debug=False on a production facing site
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)<p>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"
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.<p>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.<p>As mentioned elsewhere, you really need to put the site under SSL. Stripe checkout is not secure without it.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Good luck!
> Specifically designed with small residential property owners in mind.<p>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.<p>I suspect it might be wiser to target small property management companies. Or even better, uber for property management.
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.