194: Rookie Reply: 19 Best Real Estate Investing Apps We Couldn’t Live Without

This is Real estate rookie episode 194.

My name is Ashley Kerr and I'm here with my co host Tony Robinson.

And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie podcast where every week, twice a week, we bring you the inspiration, information and education you need to kickstart your real estate investing career. So Ashley Kerr, what is going on today? I see you don't have your, your typical hip hop T shirt. All you got some country on today. Felt like switching it up, I see.

Yeah, you know what, I feel like everybo knows my gangster side so I gotta show my countryside a little bit here. My Kenny Chesney, she thinks my tractor sexy T shirt on.

Yeah. So I actually found the other day this bin in our basement and it's all my husband's old T shirts from when, I mean he's don't want to brag when I'm a lot younger than him. So his he has like all these 90s T shirts from concerts he went to. And so I was going through all of them, I'm like geez, some of these are like, you know, cool vintage country T shirts. So I might start. There you go throwing them out here on the.

You got your own thrift shop? Yeah. You got your own thrift shop in your basement. I love that. Well what, what else is new? Ash? What's going on?

So my business partner Joe, who's actually been on the podcast before, he's been pretty stagnant shall we say in his real estate investing in the past probably year and a half he built his own house, he had a baby so he's been super busy. Well, he has been talking to me about a little bit more about getting another deal, working on a project and today I was so proud. He sent me a property and he said I set up the showing and we're going at 5:30 today. As I said, I am so proud of you for like finding the deal, getting us a showing. Now how are you going to pay for it? And he's like, well I'm poor so you got to figure that out. But I'm super, super happy for him that he's ready to get back into investing and taking some initiative after taking some time off. He has a full time landscaping business that he runs. So you know, it is still kind of his side hustle that he does. But yeah, excited for him to get back into it.

That's awesome. And what kind of property is it? Is a single family or a duplex?

Yeah, it's a single family and it's actually right near his house, where we've also purchased a property before. So the this area, there's actually a waste management dump site. I don't even know. A landfill, I guess that's what it's called. And in that town. So he lives on the far end of the town and the landfill is on the other side of the town. So we purchase properties near his side. Because the landfill, they actually pay the majority of the property taxes. And it's something to do with. Oh, because of the smell of the garbage. Well, you can't smell it at all when it's here on the other side of the town. So the property taxes, I mean, are ridiculously cheap, especially in New York state. So we find that very attractive to purchase in this area.

So tip for new investors, always look for the landfills. That's where we find the best deals going forward.

No. Cool. I'm excited for you guys. Keep us posted on how that deal turns out. And I'm glad to see Joe back in the game.

Yeah, I don't know. Joe was on one episode we did a partnership was with Sarah too. We had her on talking about partnership. So you guys will have to go back and find that in one of our past episodes and take a listen.

Cool. Glad things are moving along. I mean, we're busy, busy right now. But one of the things we did most recently that has been tremendously helpful is we hired some folks onto our teams. So we have four people that we added to our operations team. And so we've been ramping them up over the last couple of weeks and it has been like a, like a life changing experience to have some other people to kind of manage all the different pieces of the operational aspect. So we've got some virtual assistants that we hired for like the front end guest communication. Then we hired an operations manager that manages those VAs and kind of deals with the bigger kind of more strategic issues that pop up. So me, Sarah and Omid are like solely getting some of our time back. So that way we're not so much in the weeds and we can continue to focus on like growing the business. So busy training people, but also like we can see the light at the end of the tunnel that it's going to be one of the best decisions we've ever made.

Yeah, I remember Sarah did this Instagram reel where you guys went to Disneyland, I think, and it was like a day in the life of an investor at Disneyland. It's like, oh, I've got to take care of this call. You know, got to Shoot this Airbnb.

And like all that was so real. Like people were asking us like, oh, is that stage? No. But like literally that is like the.

Life that I've been with them places and I know it's real.

Yeah. So excited to kind of start building the team out so we can, you know, grow this into an actual business and not just a job for ourselves.

So awesome.

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Want to talk about actually some apps today that help manage your business easier too. So we both created a list of different apps that we use every day for different things in our business. And we thought maybe these would help you guys be an interest of you. As real estate investors, we're usually always on the go and we don't always have time to sit down at a computer and pull up software or to go onto our computers and try different things out. So with apps, do everything from your phone. So some of the things, some of the apps that I use when I am looking for deals first one pretty obvious is zillow or realtor.com those apps just to scroll listings. The next is Land Glide. So this is an app that shows you parcel information so you can input an address or you can search like maybe if you're driving around and you see a house, you can pull it up on the map, see who the owner is. The mailing address. Propstream is another one that is similar to that and then there's also on X Hunt, this is my favorite one. It's actually a hunting app and so you can pull up information about the property too. But it also tells you like how and Land Guide does this too as to like how much of the property of the parcel is maybe forest, how much is field, how much is the actual building, are there other buildings on it? So I think that's really cool too, especially if you're looking for vacant land deals or lots of acreage. You can find out what exactly that acreage is composed of. Then there's also Deal Check, which is just a way to analyze the property and will actually pull information from the MLS such as Zillow into the calculator for you when you input the address. Then there is Home Snap where you can actually take a picture of the property and it will actually pull it up for you, the information on it. So it uses, you know, your GPS tracking on your phone. So you have to have all those location services turned on. But these apps also tell you too kind of the outline, the survey of the property. They're not 100% accurate, but if you're walking a property, I like to be able to see, see where the actual lines are, where the property ends and starts.

So those are kind of my big ones for finding deals. The next ones that I use are more of just to keep my head in place. And that one is, the first one is personal capital. So this is where I can link all of my bank accounts, all of my credit cards, even my investment accounts. And I can just open it every day and I can see just like a little dashboard of what all my balances are on all of them. Then I use easy calculators. So this is a free app with so many different calculators. So I use it to compute interest only payments. I use it to compute principal and interest payments to pull up an amortization schedule. And then I also, you know, sometimes when I think about, okay, if I put this much into my kids savings account and or their investment account and you know, I see on average it takes 9%, I like to see, you know, in 10 years how much money my kids will have in their invested account. So those different calculators I like to use and they come handy, they're so quick to open up. Then the next thing is Google Tasks. So this links with all my other Google products. So Google Calendar, Google Docs, all these. So Google Tasks Tasks is just a really easy way to input things I need to do on the go and you can set them so they're actually on your calendar to remind you. You just check it when you're done and it disappears. But you can always go back and look at what you've actually accomplished for your then. The last app that I've used is Hours Tracker and I've used this two different ways. So Hours Tracker, I've used it as time tracking to see where my time is going, where I'll just log in and log out as to like okay, I worked on my business for three hours here and then I made launch for an hour. Then I scrolled social media for an hour and it's like, okay, there's where my time is wasted, there's where my time is productive. But I've also done it to track different points projects and also have, you know, Daryl that I work with, he's used this too is to like, okay, he's working on managing this rehab just so we can kind of get an idea too of where his time is actually going. So I found that app, Hours Tracker very valuable and those are the main apps that I use throughout the day besides like my text messages and my mail. Actually I don't even respond to text message messages so I wouldn't even include that one.

That was like an encyclopedia of real estate investing apps. So it'll be hard for me to top that. But I had a couple that I think are cool. The first one that I'll talk about isn't even about real estate investing, it's about content creation. And I'm starting with this one first because I think so many people can benefit from sharing their journey about investing on social media and other platforms. And one of the apps that I was using is called Splice so S P L I C E and it's a really easy to use social media editing app and it allows you to export in like the Reels or TikTok size format. You can add captions and music and all kinds of other things. So it's a really easy way to take your, you know, your normal content, spruce it up a little bit so it gets a little bit more love on social. The next one I use, similar to what you the Hour Tracker one but it's called Time and this one directly integrates with QuickBooks. So that's why I like that when my CPA recommended it, I was using it more so for like the real estate professional status. So you know you have to like track your hours hours to show how much time you're putting into the business. So we were using it for that reason. So Time by QuickBooks MileIQ is another one that I really like. So that one helps you track mileage on your vehicles. I can't remember if that one integrates with QuickBooks or not, but QuickBooks has another version of a mile tracker app that's really helpful. The next app that I use is the Slage app. So at all of our short term rentals we have a keyless entry pad and we're able to remotely unlock or lock that using the Slage app. And then we can also create, delete and edit unique codes for all of our guests using that app as well. So the Slage app is super helpful as a short term rental owner. The next app we use for the short term rentals is the Ring app. So, you know, like the Ring video doorbell, they have a whole suite of security devices. They also have the Ring floodlight camera, which we have at every single one of our properties. And that's cool because you can kind of check and see who's coming in, who's coming out. If you ever need to scare someone off your property, you can. The alarms go off. We've had to do that once or twice. So the Ring app is definitely a helpful one. And then the last one I'll mention that's kind of like productivity based or not even productivity based. But the next one I'll mention is the Loom mobile app. So if you guys don't know, Loom Loom is like a screen recording website where you can go in and take quick screen recordings of what you're doing to give video instructions to someone. But they also have a mobile app. And I found that to be super helpful because sometimes we're out or we're doing stuff on our phone and you can record a Quick Loom on your phone as well. So that's pretty cool. And then the last two I'll mention, these ones are like strictly productivity. First is Monday.com, so we're big on trying to have like a property man or project management software for our business. We used to use Wrike. We've since switched over to Monday.com, there's a little bit more customization you can do there. But if we're ever on the fly or we need to take track of something while we're on the go. The Monday.com app is super helpful. And then the last one is Miro. So M I R O. So Miro is like a brainstorming app where you can like, you know, do like, what are Those things called like little thing with the. Well, I can't remember what they're called.

Like a.

Anyway, it's like a brain story.

Like an organization where you can like put chart. Like a brain dump.

Yeah, like an org chart. Yeah, exactly.

With post it notes thrown up all over it.

Yeah.

It's going to drive me crazy that I can't think of what the heck that. That, like that diagram with the lines. I don't know why I can't think of what.

Yeah, Tony actually just got me started using that too when we started br dumping ideas for the podcast. And I have to say I really enjoy it too because right now I actually have this huge whiteboard sitting in my living room and I think that this app is finally going to get me away from whiteboards.

The whiteboard? Yeah, it's a mind map. That's what it's called, A mind map. Yeah. So you can make like mind maps, flowcharts, all kinds of other things and just any kind of brainstorming. So for me, most people that are entrepreneurial, they have like a thousand ideas a day and it's easy to let those ideas slip. And you have this great idea and you never execute on it because it came and then it went. So for me, I love having the Miro mobile app because anytime I have an idea about any part of my business, I open up Miro. We have like a board for that specific idea. I drop a little note on there. That way I can come back to it later when it's time to execute. So the Miro app is something I use really regularly as well. So I think that's everything on my side. Ash, those are all like the big ones that we use on a regular basis.

Yeah, I'm definitely pretty sure I'm going to switch to that time one and then because I like that it integrates with QuickBooks because that's what I use then. I didn't know that Loom had an app too. So I'm definitely going to download that. Yeah. So thanks, Tony.

And thank you guys for joining us this week. For this week's Rookie reply, I'm Ashley at welcome Rentals and he's Tony @tonyjrobinson on Instagram. We will see you guys on Wednesday.

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