PropertyManagement.com Newsletter #7 - Don't Pay for Software you Don't Love

Hey, how's it going?

Happy Thursday.

it's Matt Spear here for PropertyManager.com's weekly, newsletter.

today we talked about if you don't love your software that you're using, find something different, and specifically build it yourself.

so today I'm going to talk a little bit about how you can do that.

You can take action on that.

I mean, you could literally watch this video and take action today, and get that process started.

so yeah, let's go ahead and, and jump in.

For, for those of you that aren't familiar with with Replit, I would recommend just going to replit.com checking it out, creating account for free and just start playing around.

I like using Chat GBT with Replit.

So I'll have chat GPT pulled up and then I'll say like, hey, I'm trying to build this app and repl it.

This is my idea and kind of brainstorm and, and then after I'm done brainstorming I'll say, you know, hey, Chat GPT help me write a prompt that I can copy and paste into replit to get my project kicked off.

that's just going to make it a lot more efficient with the first build that Replit makes for you.

And it's going to take your idea and really get it way further down the progress bar.

You know what, you want it to be a lot faster by starting at a really good spot.

So that's kind of tip number one for me.

What I wanted to do is I wanted to build a rent estimate tool for my property management business.

I built this in a way to be very general just because I knew we'd be, we talk, you know, be sharing this with our propertymanagement.com customers.

But you could build this just for your own company and your specific market.

And because the reality is you don't need to run rent estimates for, you know, Tucson, Arizona if you live in Louisville, Kentucky.

Right.

Like, you just need to run rent estimates for your clients.

and you probably pay a decent amount of money to do that right now.

and so let me show you kind of my approach.

so I started in ChatGPT, created the prompt, copied the prompt into Replit, kicked off the process, then I'm just chatting back and forth.

you know, if I see something I want to change, I change it.

So let me show you what I've got so far.

so let's go ahead and I'm going to refresh it Here.

This actually isn't even live or deployed yet, but I'm gonna go ahead and do an address here.

It's 918 E 46th St.

That's a two bed, one bath.

And so you just hit generate.

So this is all custom code here.

You know, this is all like replit built custom code.

This is like my app.

This isn't another software.

Like this would be custom completely mine as a property manager.

and this took me about 10 or 15 hours.

I could have done it way simpler, like three to five hours, but I went a little bit overboard and I'm really honestly still not done just because I'm having a lot of fun with it.

but you can see here like pretty, pretty good.

Like I think the rent is about 15 to 1600.

it's spot on.

So it's super accurate.

I'm using a RentCast API which took, you know, about 30 minutes, 45 minutes to get, get hooked up, goes ahead and pulls comparables.

it shows you rent cast data and then internal leasing data.

So I'm trying to build this concept where I can share my rents with the tool and that help it be more accurate like for my specific area that we rent in, which I think is a really cool concept that could be replicated.

and then you see that it shows you all the different, comparables and then you can recommend a rent here.

So this would be like the use case of like, hey, I'm going to send this to a client to let them know we're going to renew at this rate and this is my recommendation.

Or hey, I'm just recommending this rent to a prospective client that is interested in working with us and I'm trying to impress them with like, hey, here's a custom, a custom quote on what we would be able to do.

the idea is that you'd be able to click and kind of uncheck these based on what you want to present to them.

and then obviously you don't want to present 1598.

That's not what you'll list for.

So maybe you would say, you know, 1575 get shareable report, would then queue it up to basically create the PDF or the link that you would then deliver to the client.

Some bugs here.

like this map function doesn't.

It's super cool that I was able to like set this up because it's like hooked up to Google Places API and it is sort of complicated to be able to do but obviously super buggy like you can't.

The text is all messed up and it's just like, not working super well.

but that's something I can fix.

you get sort of the general idea though, with it.

You can see all these comps here.

It shows how accurate like, the match is.

So it's like, hey, this is really strong in terms of the recommendation.

You see my 1575 up here?

This was my recommendation.

This is what I'm presenting.

I'm not just letting the Software say, Hey, 1598, this is what I think we would be able to deliver.

and then you can hit copy on share, report, and you could send this in a link.

My vision for this is that you'd actually be able to track clicks and views based on that custom link.

So you'd know when the prospect clicked it or viewed it or if they've opened it.

which I think could be a really, really cool feature that you'd be able to build.

but obviously this is work in progress.

I would want like a logo here, maybe some charts, just make it a little bit more official.

but I built this in like 5, 10 hours.

So this is just an example of like, hey, anybody watching this?

Are you spending 3, 4, 500amonth on a rent estimate tool?

Some of you probably are.

you could re.

You could build this tool yourself for 3, 4, 500 bucks and then never pay a monthly fee again.

which is pretty cool.

and you can do that without needing a developer.

And if you're like, hey, this, I can't do this myself.

Like, I'm not interested in doing this myself still, you can come up with the idea, put it into replit.

it's called replit bounties, which I mentioned in the article today.

but replit bounties, you share your idea here, you create a bounty, and then professionals come in, Professional replit developers will come in and build what you're asking for.

And so then you're still able to do this really inexpensively.

but you don't have the pressure of doing it all yourself.

so that's another thing that you'd be able to do.

which I think is another great option.

But get crazy.

Like, just get in there.

Like, have fun with this.

Like, think about other things you could replace.

I, as a, you know, I can think of, you know, leasing, maintenance, just project management, KPI tracking.

There's just a lot of things that you could do.

but look at your P.

L.

Go pull up your P and L and look at, like, hey, what are the things I don't love that I'm paying a lot for?

And start there.

also, just to kind of close things up for Today, @propertymanagement.com, we're really moving in this direction of trying to be that, like, community, that area where property managers can go and get value, like tools like this rent estimate.

and so for all of our verified customers, we'll be sharing these tools that we build, over time, which will really start to ramp up as we get the podcast, and newsletter continuing, to build momentum.

So we'll share these tools with the community, to be able to use, and then hopefully that'll inspire ideas for you to go out and build your own things.

it's really just to get kind of the juices flowing.

So, yeah, hopefully you enjoyed this.

Hopefully this, inspires you to try to save some money off that P and L and have a little fun while you're doing it.

All right, thanks, guys.