Investing in real estate can be one of the best decisions you’ll ever make. But if you can’t compare and evaluate properties to determine the best course of action, you won’t turn a profit. Therefore, you need real estate investment software to create forecasts and project your income.
To facilitate your research, we organized a list of the top 13 real estate investment software with the pros and cons of each software.
Top 13 Real Estate Investment Software
- Real Data REIA – Best Comprehensive Real Estate Investment Software
- Theanalyst Pro – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Analyzing Location
- Realnex – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Brokerage Firms
- Roofstock Cloudhouse – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Research
- Stessa – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Accounting
- Appfolio – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Property Management
- ARGUS Estate Master – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Property Development
- Property Metrics – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Proformas
- ProAPOD – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Long-term Forecasts
- CREModel – Best Excel Tool for Commercial Real Estate Investment
- Deal Machine – Best Free Real Estate Investment Software
- Valuate by REFM – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Property Screening
- Rehab Valuator – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Flippers
1. Real Data REIA – Best Comprehensive Real Estate Investment Software
Pricing: Unlimited License: $595
Operating in a single Excel workbook, REIA by Real Data is the perfect tool for users looking to make quick, data-driven decisions. For example, you can input assumptions related to cashflows, financing, and taxes to make forecasts before you purchase. REIA is adapted to an international audience as it has functionality for both American tax regulations and Canadian loan amortization. Once you dive into this tool, you’ll realize you can make just about any calculation you need with its renovation, construction, partnership modules, and more.
| Pros | Cons |
| Feature-rich, International | Difficult to keep track of every feature |
| Make data-driven decisions | |
| Simple and Excel-based | |
| Flexible, for multiple use-cases |
2. Theanalyst Pro – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Analyzing Location
Pricing: $600/year
Location is one of the most important factors in your real estate investment decisions. Therefore, you should consider investment modeling software like Theanalyst Pro, which specializes in assessing location risk. Furthermore, you can design sophisticated branded reports that include every visual element you need, like infographics. With 100% uptime on secure servers, this software is extremely reliable and therefore appropriate for investors, brokers, and agents alike.
| Pros | Cons |
| Usable for many professionals | Tries to do too much |
| Includes marketing tools | |
| Quick, detailed reports |
3. Realnex – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Brokerage Firms
Pricing: Billed Annually: $149/month
Realnex goes beyond financial analysis to help brokers build client relationships. Aside from standard investment and lease analysis tools, this software also helps you build your brand. Impress your customers with professional presentations and manage your relationships with their CRM tool. The leasing agent tools will also help you stay in touch with landlords and clients. Access these features from anywhere as this software operates on any device.
| Pros | Cons |
| Query the database for leads | Complicated dashboard |
| Versatile tools | Poor customer service |
4. Roofstock Cloudhouse – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Research
Pricing: Free
Forget about playing guessing games with property values, estimate them accurately with Roofstock Cloudhouse. This software is best if you want to research specific properties beforehand. The search engine will help you find the current owners of a property and even pre-screen potentially high-yielding properties for you. While this tool is limited to American properties, it has an extremely rich collection of data, and it’s all free.
| Pros | Cons |
| Lots of data | Not for beginners |
| Research your current property | Only for the USA |
| Free tools | |
| Many calculators |
5. Stessa – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Accounting
Pricing: Free
As an investor, it’s important to maximize your profits. Real estate accounting can help you manage your money intelligently – Stessa is one of the best tools for this purpose. Automate your income and expense tracking and build custom alerts so you keep track of what’s necessary. Prepare yourself for tax season by creating rules to automatically categorize your transactions. This tool is perfect for newcomers as it recommends strategies to you to help bolster your dividends.
| Pros | Cons |
| Good to grow your portfolio with | Single-entry accounting method |
| Easy to use | Unsophisticated |
| Enhances ROI everywhere |
6. Appfolio – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Property Management
Pricing: Depends on property type, ranges from $0.80-$3/unit/month
Designed by property managers, Appfolio is a cloud-based property management solution designed for ease of use. The flexible tools allow property managers to streamline their workflows using Appfolio’s AI insights. Alongside traditional accounting and maintenance functionality, Appfolio helps you train and manage your staff. This app is perfect for small investors looking to manage their residential properties themselves.
| Pros | Cons |
| Increase your efficiency | Poor layout |
| Better for small businesses | Sometimes misses inventory |
| Easy and flexible usage |
7. ARGUS Estate Master – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Property Development
Pricing: Free Trial, Contact Sales
For the most committed investors, property development can be a great way to obtain the highest returns. First, you’ll need a tool like ARGUS Estate Master, which helps you appraise properties and manage the feasibility of your property development. Teams across Asia Pacific use this tool to manage and track their development projects from start to finish. The software offers detailed project forecasts such as s-curves in addition to projections of rental income and funding costs.
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy to import and export data | Only for experienced users |
| Helps you set up the software | Expensive to set up |
8. Property Metrics – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Proformas
Pricing: Proformas & Publishing Tools: Free Trial, contact sales, Courses: Multiple prices
Property Metrics offers you a variety of tools to help you with your real estate investment projects. An alternative to ARGUS, their commercial real estate tools help you devise proformas and publish your reports online. These tools are more streamlined than standard excel-based tools, so you can deliver insights with confidence and speed. They also offer real-estate education courses to help you brush up on your skills.
| Pros | Cons |
| 100% web-based | Missing functionality |
| All-in-one tool | Hard to extract data |
| Easy to use | |
| Quick proformas |
9. ProAPOD – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Long-term Forecasts
Pricing: Agent 6: $149.95 one-time payment, Executive 10: $279.95 one-time payment
ProAPOD offers two different tools for two different use cases: Agent 6 is best for multifamily properties while Executive 10 is best for general financial analysis. Agent 6 creates reports and presentations for you while also helping with tricky subjects like Canadian loan amortization. Meanwhile, Executive 10 covers taxes as well as important financial calculations such as NPV, IRR, cap rate, and many more. Executive 10 also includes tools for property acquisitions.
| Pros | Cons |
| Unlimited units | Unprofessional website |
| Executive 10 offers detailed tools | Might need features from both solutions |
| Excellent customer support with each plan |
10. CREModel – Best Excel Tool for Commercial Real Estate Investment
Pricing: Free Trial, $89 one-time payment
If you’re looking for an Excel tool that suits your commercial real estate business, CREModel might be the right fit. Analyze several different types of properties, ranging from shopping centers to industrial complexes with their built-in financial modeling tools. While some find Excel to be messy and cumbersome, you can stay organized with CREModel’s intuitive modular designs and templates. Of course, they account for many important benchmarks such as LTV and DCR.
| Pros | Cons |
| All based on Excel | Updates are questionable |
| Helps you scale | |
| Highly flexible | |
| No technical skill required |
11. Deal Machine – Best Free Real Estate Investment Software
Pricing: Free Trial, Free Plan, Elite: $30/month, Corporate: $50/month
Deal Machine is a great tool to help you quickly track down owners of distressed properties. While the free plan lets you run unlimited analyses, as well as save and share data, you must pay for property listings and alerts. All plans include membership benefits to help you resolve issues and grow your network. You can get a sample of what Deal Machine offers by testing the real estate calculators available on their website.
| Pros | Cons |
| Free Pro Membership | Try to rope you in with free plans |
| Membership benefits | Very rudimentary tools offered |
12. Valuate by REFM – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Property Screening
Pricing: Free plan, Mid-rise: $199/year, High-rise: $499/year, Enterprise: Contact Sales
To properly screen properties ahead of purchase, Valuate by REFM will provide you with the required capabilities. These include multi-family core and value add underwriting to help you manage risk. Their acquisition analysis tools extend over multiple periods to give you flexibility. Please note that the free and mid-rise plans are not suited for those who have many properties to manage.
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy-to-use browser tutorial | Few properties stored |
| Upload images with each property | Basic analysis |
13. Rehab Valuator – Best Real Estate Investment Software for Flippers
Pricing: Free for 1 user, Premium: $49/month, Pro: $99/mo
For property flippers, Rehab Valuator evaluates properties for their potential as flips, rentals, and investments. Rehab Valuator’s flipping metrics are sophisticated, allowing you to calculate the after-repair value, and calculate and analyze offers. As this tool bases its insights on a large amount of data, you can confidently create, visualize, and compare hypothetical scenarios from your flips to your rentals.
| Pros | Cons |
| Detailed flipping tools on pro plan | A limited number of users (up to 6) |
| Consider many flipping scenarios | Basic functionality outside flipping |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is real estate investment software?
Real estate investment software incorporates a wide range of tools and abilities. In general, it helps you make decisions about your current and future property investments. Use real estate investment software to analyze potential deals and evaluate the returns of your current properties. Most analysis will relate to your properties’ cashflows, though advanced tools will go further by considering aspects like location risk. If you manage several properties, you will also appreciate the features this type of software offers to help you make portfolio decisions and scale further.
How do I analyze a real estate investment?
Real estate investment analysis is a complex topic, you don’t want to base your decisions exclusively on intuition. The simplest way to think of real estate investment analysis is by regarding it as a comparison between expected cash flows and expenses. These are forecasted based on a reservoir of underlying data. It’s better to get a sense of real estate investing with real numbers to help you thoroughly understand the process.
What is the best real estate investment software?
There are many different types of real estate investment software that serve different purposes. Let’s look at the best software for the following categories of real estate investment.
What is the best accounting software for real estate investing?
Stessa is a great accounting tool that helps real estate investors with bookkeeping. You can prepare for the tax season by creating automated rules to classify transactions. Beginners like that it uses the single-entry bookkeeping method to keep things simple, though more experienced users might find this questionable.
What is the best real estate investment software for residential properties?
While most real estate investment software can be applied to residential properties, Theanalyst Pro focuses specifically on location. Given that location is one of the most important factors that determine the viability of your residential property investment, you’ll want to assess location risk with Theanalyst Pro before you buy.
What is the best real estate investment software for house flipping?
Rehab Valuator is the real estate investment software suited to house flippers. While it comes with all the standard financial metrics relevant to investors, they also track the most important measures for flippers such as after-repair value.
What is the best real estate investment software for small landlords?
For landlords, AppFolio is a helpful property management tool that helps you manage properties and sort out your accounting necessities at once. Developed by property managers, you can be confident that it covers all the details you need to run your properties smoothly, regardless of how many units you own.