The first impression you make is crucial when the competition is fierce. 92% of property management companies plan to expand their portfolios over the next two years alone. With more competition, how do you stay ahead of the game?
Investing in the right tools to build a property management website is key for landlords to advertise, organize, and grow their businesses. In this article, we’ll take a look at why a professional website is crucial and how to choose the right software to help you make one.
Why You Should Have a Property Management Website
Most likely, prospective tenants and owners are going to discover your company and your listings online, which is why having an optimized property management website sets you up to attract more high-quality applicants and owners.
Websites house PM’s listings, portals, and communication tools. It’s the best way for property managers to display their expertise through blogs, educational content, reviews, and contact information.
A website helps build an online presence that validates the quality of your business, and, when built correctly, makes you stand out from your competitors and appear above them in search results.
Where to Find Property Management Website Templates
The perfect property management website starts with the right layout for your brand and the information you’d like to communicate. Instead of designing one from scratch, use a template that will allow you to:
- Customize your brand themes and colors
- Create new pages and add content as needed
- Design a landing page that converts visitors into applicants
- Optimize your website for all devices and screen sizes
- Meet ADA compliance guidelines
A word of caution: Most website-building software includes a selection of templates. Some even boast that they offer hundreds of templates that cover every kind of business you can think of. But, when you dig beneath the surface, many of these templates can come across as generic or basic. As a property management company looking to stand out and highlight your distinct advantages, generic is the last thing you want to be.
That’s why, when choosing the right website-building software, make sure they focus specifically on property managers and owner-investors. These platforms not only have specialized services to meet tasks that are unique to the industry (as we’ll see later), but they also include templates with all the elements that a property management website needs to succeed.
What to Look For in a Property Management Website Builder
Website builders make it easy to build websites in minutes without writing a line of code, but they can be a dime a dozen. That’s why it’s important to be able to distinguish which builders are the best for your property business. Let’s break down the functionalities and features to look for when choosing a property management website builder.
Specialized, Customizable Templates
We mentioned this already, but it’s worth repeating. Every property management company has its own brand and identity. Being able to extend them to your property management website through templates sets the right first impression, aids in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), builds trust with your audience, and creates consistency. With customizable templates, anyone on your team can edit website assets and content to fit their needs with no prior web development experience.
Marketing Services Specifically Designed for Property Managers
Entrusting your property management business growth goals with others can seem intimidating. That’s why it’s important to work with those who not only understand, but specialize in property management websites and marketing strategies.
The best website-building services are more than just platforms. They’re partners that can support your marketing efforts beyond building a website, offering SEO, reputation management, and ad placement strategies, all tailored to your business model. Working together, you can gain more leads, grow your company, and see results more quickly.
Measure and Analyze Your Website’s Performance
A good property management website builder will help you create a site that’s not only customizable, but also high-converting. To measure those conversions and any other marketing KPIs you have for your business (think traffic and engagement numbers), you’ll need to tap into tools that let you analyze your website’s performance.
The best website-building services can help you do that, and marketing tools that are packaged with comprehensive property management software can even help you look beyond your website and measure the performance of all your properties and your business as a whole.
Professional Design and SupportÂ
Even after you’ve built your property management website, the design work is still not done. As your company grows, you’ll want to add new pages, edit in unique content, or offer new features to clients. You might even want to change fundamental aspects of your site or fine tune other parts of your marketing strategy.
With time being a precious resource for most property managers, it helps to choose a service that has professional marketing and design specialists ready to do the heavy lifting. They can aid you in editing and building out your dream site that’s ADA compliant, SEO optimized, and user friendly.
Our Picks for the Best Tools to Build Property Management Websites
#1: Buildium: Comprehensive Software to Build Property Management Websites
Buildium® is a simple-to-use, unified property management platform that offers a wide range of capabilities, from business operations and leasing to marketing and business performance. This purpose-built software empowers all customers, with any type of real estate portfolio, to attract more tenants and drive more revenue.
Buildium’s Marketplace partners such as Goodjuju® and Upkeep Media® are high-quality website-building and marketing services in their own right, and enable property managers to grow their companies with custom marketing campaigns, high-quality websites, and SEO services beyond the comprehensive features Buildium already has to offer. Both platforms integrate seamlessly with Buildium.
Features
Buildium’s property management website-building features include:
- Website templates specifically designed for property managers
- The ability for your website to host important documents such as tenant handbooks and sales sheets
- A built-in web accessibility solution to address ADA compliance and enhance the web experience for visitors with disabilities
- The ability to list all your units quickly and syndicate them across the top listing sites in just a few clicks
- The ability for prospective tenants to apply—and your team to accept—an application, all on your site
- Seamless integration with Buildium’s Resident Center and Owner Portal, so your site can act as a communication hub
- Mobile integration to ensure your website operates effectively, delivers an engaging experience, and gets you more leads no matter the device prospects find you on
These are all on top of Buildium’s other features, that cover your business end to end:
- Online rent collection for faster payment through the payment platform
- Tenant screening that makes it faster and easier to fill vacancies with qualified tenant leads
- An Analytics Hub to monitor your the health of your business and properties, keep your owners in the know, and plan your growth strategy
- Communication channels through the Resident Center and Owner Portal to disclose information to all tenants from one place
- Access to Buildium Marketplace, an ever-expanding ecosystem of technology partners—including Upkeep Media and Goodjuju—dedicated to the property management space, all integrated seamlessly with Buildium’s platform
- And many other features such as maintenance management, property accounting, and lead-to-lease tools
Pricing
Buildium offers a 14-day free trial version of the full software and offers three pricing plans: Essential, Growth, and Premium. Key features such as online portals, maintenance, tasks, accounting, and more are accessible in each pricing plan, while additional features are available for purchase.
The Basic plan starts at $55 per month, the Growth plan starts at $174 per month, and the Premium plan starts at $375 per month. There is also an extra 15% annual discount in the Premium plan when residents use select services.
#2: Propertyware: Customizable Software to Build Property Management Websites
Propertyware® is an open-platform property management solution that enables managers to oversee properties holistically and regionally.
Its reporting, dashboards, and open API allow managers to streamline their businesses and analyze their processes effectively. Its flexible nature also enables unique workflows and automatic processes.
Features
Propertyware’s website-building tools include:
- Customizable website templates with various themes and designs to attract the right audience
- Mobile responsive feature maximizes visibility to prospective clients
- Online portals for both tenants and owners to access their account information, payment options, and communication methods
- Online applications where tenants can fill out forms and pay fees
Pricing
Propertyware offers a free demo with a sales representative as well as various pricing models. Pricing is per unit with a monthly minimum cost and implementation fee. The Basic price is $1 per unit, per month with a $250 monthly cost. Plus pricing, the most popular option, is $1.50 per unit with a $350 monthly cost. Premium is $2 per unit with a $450 monthly minimum.
#3: Goodjuju: Great Full-Service Property Management Marketing
Goodjuju® offers specialized services in website-building, SEO results, and reputation management for property managers. With their boutique-level service, Goodjuju offers property management companies personalized strategies and tactics to grow their businesses.
Build a website easily with Goodjuju’s designs to set yourself apart from competitors and convert more property owners into new clients. Their websites are responsive, secure, and tailor-made to fit your needs.
Goodjuju’s websites are also fully integrated with Buildium’s rental listing, rental application, tenant portal, and owner portal.
Features
- Website design on a customizable platform with templates, brand integration, and lead generation built in
- Local SEO helps property managers increase online exposure with effective search engine optimization and marketing ideas
- Reputation improvement through review monitoring, proactive tactics, and automated review processes
- Google Ads to gain search traffic, quick results, and targeted property management leads
Pricing
Pricing plans are not available on Goodjuju’s website, but you can sign up to gain access to pricing options and a free in-depth analysis. Let the Goodjuju team know what you need help with and how many units you manage, and their team will analyze your online presence and gaps, and send you a personalized video of a suggested game plan and pricing.
#4: Upkeep Media: Property Management Marketing Services for Different Portfolio Types
Upkeep Media® offers property management online marketing services ranging from website development and content marketing to SEO and paid ad support. Whatever your business goals are, Upkeep Media creates custom tailored digital marketing campaigns fit for your needs.
Already using Buildium? Find Upkeep in Buildium’s Marketplace and integrate it with your Buildium account.
Features
- Google® Ads to drive more leads and see immediate results
- Website design to create user-friendly sites, drive web traffic, advertise available listings, and capture data
- SEO to rank higher on Google and get more eyes onto your site
- Reputation management to receive more tenant applications, boost SEO, and improve customer relationships
Pricing
Property management companies interested in Upkeep Media’s services can opt for a free 30-minute strategy session call by signing up on their website. The call will cover a customized blueprint of increasing traffic and leads, traffic analysis, and competitor breakdown.
#5: Property Manager Websites: Software with Basic Website Builder Features
Property Manager Websites® has a team composed of designers and engineers to allow users to create a customized website for property management. Their websites are mobile responsive, ADA compliant, and built to generate leads.
Work with their design team to fully customize your site, run your website efficiently with centralized processes, and improve your website with their additional marketing strategies.
Features
- Automated rental analysis sent to prospective clients through the Advanced Marketing Platform with branded emails
- Advanced properties plugin and marketing allows you to add your rental properties directly to your website
- Online chat to nurture customer service live and boost lead conversion
- RentScreener Rental Applications to collect rental applications and screen tenants online securely and efficiently
Pricing
Property Management Websites has pricing for both website setups and monthly packages. Website build pricing includes three packages: The Smartsite for $1795, The Advantage for $3895, and The Enterprise for $12495. A set number of site pages are available in each package, while features such as custom pages and assigned website designers are available in the two latter packages.
The monthly package pricing includes the Essentials package for $195/month and three upgraded marketing packages: Grow for $695/month, Accelerate for $1295/month, and Market Leader for $2995/month. All of the upgraded marketing packages include The Essentials package with additional features.
#6: Lodgify: Website-Building Software for Vacation Rentals
Lodgify® is a rental management software designed specifically for vacation rental professionals. Whether you manage 1 to 5 properties or 6+ locations, Lodgify allows managers to automate their business.
Property managers can manage bookings, rates, and payments, sync calendars with partner sites, and take credit card payments.
With Lodgify’s website builder, you can create a personalized vacation rental website that has a booking system, over 30 language choices, and template options for all business types—no prior technical skills required.
Features
Lodgify’s features include:
- A website builder is user-friendly so that anyone can create a stunning site whether or not they have prior design or technical skills. Get a personalized website domain with the annual plan, edit content, and modify new pages as your business grows.
- SEO-friendly templates offer on-page tools to increase visibility to prospective guests.
- An online booking system accepts reservations right away and takes credit card payments.
- Mobile-friendly websites are 100% optimized for mobile use and Google’s design criteria.
Pricing
Lodgify’s pricing is set up on a sliding scale based on the number of rentals, up to 100 rentals. For one rental property, the starter plan begins at $13 per month plus a 1.9% booking fee. The Professional plan is $38 per month and the Ultimate plan is $59 per month. Both the Professional and Ultimate plans have a 0% booking fee.
If you’re looking for a plan with 100+ rentals, Lodgify offers custom plans, which you’ll have to contact them to get. They also offer a seven-day free trial.
#7: Market Apartments: Property Management Websites for Apartments
Market Apartments® offers management companies marketing strategies to help grow their businesses. The platform provides you with the tools and ongoing marketing support to create a cohesive website, build a brand, and maximize traffic.
Features
Market Apartments’ list of features and services includes:
- Websites with custom color themes, SEO optimization, responsive design, and website hosting
- Digital content, online marketing, and mobile platforms with the latest marketing insights and tools
- Branding that includes a logo and color scheme with a design specialist
- Photography to create property photos that catch the eye and provide a clear and accurate view of layouts
Pricing
Pricing information is not available on Market Apartment’s website, but those interested to learn more can request a quote.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the benefits of having a property management website?
With a rental management website, users can attract and screen tenants, send online lease agreements and request e-signatures, accept and track rent payments, and manage maintenance requests.
Can I create a property management website without any technical skills?
Absolutely! Building a property management website without any technical skills or having to hire an additional team is possible through website builders. Creating your website doesn’t have to cause you a headache; with the use of website builder templates, you’ll be set to create a professional website to attract customers.
How can a property management website help me attract new tenants and owners?
A property management website enables owners and managers to build their online presence and reputation in the industry. By showcasing your services, brand, and expertise, you will be able to attract, educate, and engage prospective tenants and clients. This will help you generate qualified leads for your type of property.
What features should I consider when choosing a property management website software?
Features to consider when choosing a rental management website include tenant screening, property accounting, online rent collection, maintenance requests, and residence centers, to name a few. You should first determine what your biggest needs are, then look for software that specializes in solving your unique needs.
Get Started Building Your Property Management Website
A website for your property business is much more than a pretty landing page. With Buildium, you’ll have all the functionalities to properly showcase your business, manage your property, and convert valuable leads. Start building your website today with a 14-day risk free trial (no credit card required!)
