A technology firm catering to the real estate industry has taken the next step with its Web-based offerings, with a new subscription-based service that allows property owners to manage their properties, list sales and rentals, communicate with tenants, and more.
Investment Instruments Corp., co-founded by Providence resident Owen D. Johnson and based in Newton, Mass., offers its property management tools through iiProperty.com, a Web site that compiles and tracks data used by Realtors, brokers, landlords, homeowners and professional real estate investors.
Customers can use the iiProperty dashboard for free to manage their properties at a basic level, or they can pay a monthly subscription for a premium account and manage their property portfolios at a more advanced level.
The service is designed for people who own from one to more than 50 units, said Allison M. Atsiknoudas, Investment Instruments’ co-founder and CEO.
The iiProperty dashboard gives customers a comprehensive picture of their property portfolios. Among other features, it enables customers to advertise multiple property sale and rental listings online, set up automatic monthly tenant invoicing, send tenants notices through the mail, run cash flow and tax reports, and track detailed income and expense items.
Landlords and property managers who list through iiProperty can have their listings posted on Google Base, Craigslist, Oodle.com (a search engine for local classifieds) and edgeio.com (a Web site that aggregates and distributes listings) for free.
The service also provides real-time industry information, including the latest mortgage rates, real estate news headlines and current market price comparisons.
The dashboard interface uses bar graphs, pie charts and other colorful graphics to present much of the information, enabling customers to quickly visually interpret the state of their property portfolios, Atsiknoudas said.
The system is proactive, flagging important information and events such as vacating units or expiring leases, and initiating appropriate actions for the portfolio manager. For example, when a rental unit is vacated, the system prompts the manager to either advertise the unit for rent or create a new lease if a new tenant has already been found, said Johnson, the company’s president.
“It’s kind of this alert system that really helps bring priority items to the forefront for the landlord,” he said.
Investment Instruments has been aggressively ramping up its iiProperty offering since last October, when the company garnered nationwide media attention with its Rentometer, a free Web service designed to instantly provide the average rent for any size apartment in any real estate market in the country.
Johnson and Atsiknoudas, who founded the company in March 2006, met and became friends in 1994, when both were studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Investment Instruments currently has 12 employees who work remotely on both the East and West coasts and a few other locations throughout the country, Atsiknoudas said.
From a technical standpoint, Johnson said iiProperty’s system is distinct from other similar offerings on the Web right now because its core software uses Ruby on Rails – a two-year-old technology for building and scaling Web applications that is widely acclaimed as an evolutionary step forward.
Atsiknoudas said Investment Instruments is also unique because it builds applications for renters, who traditionally have been seen as requiring different market information.
“Our goal is really to create transparency in the market, and to better develop and enhance the relationship between owners and tenants and real estate professionals,” Johnson said. •
