As a rental property owner, you know a lot of work goes into keeping your tenants happy and your property in good condition. From marketing your units to maintaining them, it’s essential to have a solid system in place to manage everything. 

There are a lot of different software options out there that can help you with this, but it can be tough to decide which one is right for you. In this post, we’ll compare 2 popular options—TurboTenant and RentRedi—to help you decide. 

We’ll also take a look at Stessa, a free rental property management software that over 200,000 investors already use to track their properties.

TurboTenant overview

The rental property management software from TurboTenant offers online advertising, tenant applications, screening, and rent payments. 

TurboTenant may be a good choice for landlords looking to easily manage an unlimited number of rental properties. With 24/7 customer service available online or by phone, TurboTenant makes it easy to get started without any upfront costs. 

Optional services like lease agreements, landlord forms, and digital signatures for signing leases online are also available for an additional charge.

Pricing

TurboTenant offers four pricing plans: Free, Vacancy Pro, Manage Pro, and Premium.

The Free plan has all the basic features, while the paid plans are for landlords requiring more from property management software. Vacancy Pro and Manage Pro cost $99 per year, and the Premium plan costs $129 per year.

Software features

• Property information, features, and photos can be placed on a professional listing page.
• Advertise vacancies on numerous rental listing websites, including Zumper, RentPath, and Realtor.com.
• Automatically track leads and prospect contact information.
• Create and customize rental applications to allow prospective tenants to apply using any computing device.
• TransUnion tenant screening includes a credit report, criminal history background check, and past eviction report.
• State-specific leases and addendums are available.
• Legally sign lease documents with digital signatures and documents online.
• Tenants can pay the rent online.
• Tenants and landlords can create and monitor maintenance and repair requests.
• Manually enter expenses in TurboTenant and assign them to the correct property and Schedule E category.
• Attach and store invoices and expense receipts to create a record.
• Download a CSV file with transactions, upload it to accounting software, or send it to a certified public accountant (CPA).

RentRedi overview

RentRedi offers an all-in-one property management software solution that is easy to use and can be accessed on computers and mobile devices. The company believes its technology is easy to adopt and is affordable for self-managing landlords who own residential real estate.

Pricing

RentRedi has 3 different pricing options based on the billing cycle. All billing cycles include unlimited rentals, tenants, team members, rental listings, and customer service. As of July 2022, the pricing options include:

• Monthly: $29.95
• 6 Months: $20 a month paid every 6 months
• Annual: $12 a month paid once a year

Software features

• Vacant property listings on RentRedi are automatically syndicated to partner sites Realtor.com and Zillow.
• Use a single dashboard to upload photos, create virtual tours, and manage listings, marketing, and showings.
• TransUnion provides access to comprehensive credit, criminal, and eviction history reports for every applicant.
• Landlords can prepare their own lease documents and upload them to RentRedi to be signed with digital signatures.
• The landlord dashboard manages rent, late fees, and evictions and sends rent reminders.
• Rent payments can be made online using an ACH transfer, credit or debit card, or cash at over 90,000 retail locations.
• Send in-app push notifications to renters, receive maintenance requests, and send rent reminders.

TurboTenant vs. RentRedi

Here’s a closer look at the main features landlords should consider when choosing between TurboTenant and RentRedi.

Listings

TurboTenant makes it simple to advertise your vacancies on well-known websites. A few clicks are all it takes to get your listing live on websites such as Realtor.com, Apartment List, Rent.com, Facebook Marketplace, and Craigslist. Plus, every rental property you have will receive its own individual listing page on the TurboTenant website.

RentRedi listings are immediately syndicated to Realtor.com and Doorsteps.com, where they may be seen by millions of people looking for rental properties in their area. In addition, landlords may use professional marketing pages on social media to advertise their properties and limit access to qualified renters only.

Tenant screening

TurboTenant and RentRedi use TransUnion to provide tenant screening reports, including credit, criminal, and eviction history reports to give landlords a complete picture of prospective tenants. Both companies charge tenants a fee for screening. With TurboTenant, the tenant application and screening fee is currently $45 to $55, while RentRedi collects a $39.99 processing fee from the applicant.

Leasing

TurboTenant provides a platform for landlords to create and manage their rental agreements online. State-specific lease agreements are available for an extra cost for the Free and Vacancy Pro plans, as well as the option to use your own agreement. These can be sent to tenants for digital signature and then stored online. With the free TurboTenant plan, there is an additional cost for documents like state-specific leases and digital signatures.

RentRedi doesn’t offer a system for creating leases online. Instead, landlords may upload their own lease and addendums to share with applicants. The RentRedi Tenant App is used to create a legally binding signature, and the signed lease can be stored online with the tenant’s profile.

Online rent collection

Tenants can pay the rent online with both TurboTenant and RentRedi using an ACH bank transfer, a debit card, or a credit card. 

TurboTenant doesn’t charge a fee for ACH payments but does currently charge tenants 3.49% for paying rent using a debit or credit card. RentRedi currently charges tenants $1 for each ACH or cash payment (available at over 90,000 retail locations) and 2.9% + 30 cents for each card payment. Landlords also have the option of picking up the fee themselves.

Financial reporting

With TurboTenant, you can manually enter and track all your expenses in one place at no extra charge. For each transaction, enter the date, property, and category for each expense. You can easily export all your transactions by creating and downloading a CSV to use with your favorite accounting software or to give to your certified public accountant (CPA).

Financial reporting is an add-on feature with RentRedi and requires a paid subscription with REI Hub, starting at $15 a month for up to 3 units as of July 2022. After signing up for an account, landlords can automatically sync properties to view the number, import recent transactions, and access preset rental templates. 

Tax management

Income and expense transactions entered on TurboTenant can be downloaded in a CSV format, uploaded to financial software such as QuickBooks, or sent to a CPA to help prepare a Schedule E. 

With RentRedi, a landlord must have a paid subscription with REI Hub to prepare a Schedule E and other reports, such as a P&L statement, cash-flow statement, and real estate balance sheet.

Stessa vs. TurboTenant vs. RentRedi

While TurboTenant and RentRedi offer many features, some might be unnecessary or not cost-effective for owners of small property portfolios.

That’s why 2 experienced real estate investors got together in 2016 and created Stessa, a Roofstock company, for rental property owners. After just a few short years, Stessa is used by more than 200,000 investors to track their properties with over $60 billion in asset value.

Stessa is a cloud-based software that helps real estate investors maximize profits through smart money management, automated income, and expense tracking, personalized reporting, and much more:

• Track unlimited individual properties and portfolios of single-family rentals, multifamily units, and short-term vacation rentals.
• Collect tenant rent payments online using a free ACH transfer and a recurring payment option for tenants, as well as the ability to collect late fees.
• Automatically track income, expenses, mortgage balances, and property values.
• Landlords can perform tenant screening on Stessa through RentPrep and handle rental applications within the platform.
• Comprehensive online dashboard to view property and portfolio performance in real time.
• Open an FDIC-insured high-yield bank account* for each property and seamlessly integrate them with Stessa’s financial tracking features.
• Publish a vacancy for rent and syndicate it out across a variety of websites for maximum exposure to high quality tenants.
• Use Stessa’s tenant screening services and free rental applications to find and select qualified tenants.
• Upload your document, tag it for digital signatures, and send it to tenants, vendors, partners, and others. 
• Track expenses on the go with the iOS and Android apps.
• Organize and store all real estate documents safely and securely.
• Generate key financial reports, including income, net cash flow, capital expense statements, tenant rent roll, and real estate balance sheet.
• Export tax-ready financials to your tax professional to make tax time a breeze.
• Create a personalized tax package on the Stessa Tax Center that includes an income statement, net-cash-flow report, and a ZIP file in a single email.

Go here to create a free Stessa account.

*Stessa is not a bank. Stessa is a financial technology company. Terms and conditions, features and pricing are subject to change. This article, and the Stessa Blog in general, is intended for informational and educational purposes only, and is not investment, tax, financial planning, financial, legal, or real estate advice.