The real estate market is one of the busiest in the world. People will always need to buy, rent, and sell property, including residential houses, commercial and industrial premises, land, etc. With an intense activity of this market, companies need to search for convenient ways of handling relationships with a great number of clients. At this point, customer relationship management (CRM) software becomes indispensable for modern business.
CRM systems are basically databases with the contact information on customers and a set of useful tools that optimize the entire cycle of a deal. Many housing agencies prefer to use a dedicated system based on their specific business needs, so custom CRM software development is getting more popular. However, there’s also a vast choice of ready-made solutions for customer management in the market. This article will tell you about the most popular of these solutions for real estate companies.
Top 5 CRMs for Real Estate
The market offers a wide range of systems for client management for any business, making it difficult to select the best one. We made our list of the five most efficient CRM software used by real estate companies. The focus of each description is on the key features, integrations, and pricing for 2020. If you plan to get a CRM developed from scratch according to your specific needs, use this information as reference material for your future product.
1. Pipedrive
Pipedrive entered the market ten years ago, and now there’s almost no man in the housing business who hasn’t heard about it. According to the company’s official website, its CRM helps real estate agencies increase profit by 15% in six months. Pipedrive is powered with artificial intelligence. It primarily deals with sales automation and includes tools for contact and lead management, deal tracking, and analysis. The CRM isn’t saturated with too many features but has all the instruments required for specific sales tasks. Pipedrive supports integration with such popular apps as Trello, Asana, Slack, and many more.
Best for: sales management.
Price: $12.50-$99 per user monthly depending on the company’s size.
2. Propertybase
Propertybase has also been in the market for ten years now. Whereas Pipeline is a one-size-fits-all solution for pushing sales in any industry, Propertybasespecifically targets real estate brokerages. Apart from contact and lead management capabilities, it offers industry-specific tools for marketing, interaction tracking, client & property matching, transaction management, MLS (multiple listing service), etc. MLS is an especially useful feature popular with real estate brokers since it helps to share data on the property for sale among specialists via a single database. Propertybase eliminates the problem of data duplication and entry errors. It also has a Social CRM dashboard for tracking social media activity and is compatible with Dropbox, Financial Force, MailChimp, etc.
Best for: real estate brokerage teams.
Price: Free trial available. The Silver package cost – $79 per month. The new Blue package offering CRM+Web features is coming soon.
3. Contactually by Compass
Contactually is a specialized CRM platform that deals with all types of real estate clients. The CRM covers campaign, contact, and lead management, client segmentation, email marketing, chatting, and relationship tracking. Contact categorization into buckets makes the deals more organized and convenient to process. Contactually also minimizes manual tasks by using artificial intelligence for agents’ workflow and encourages users to focus on daily prioritized tasks. The platform supports integrations with HubSpot, various Google services, Realtor.com, Brokermint, and other software.
Best for: real estate brokerages and agencies.
Price: Free demo version. Basic plan – $45 per month, $35 per month annually; Professional plan – $69 per month; $59 per month annually; Accelerator plan – $119 per month; $99 per month annually.
4. Apto
Apto is a CRM software for managing relationships with commercial and industrial real estate clients. It’s divided into several consoles for controlling deal pipeline, reporting, and managing commercial and industrial clients. It’s a communication-focused software that includes conversation starters, contact activity tracking, client segmentation, map prospecting, etc. Apto continuously improves by gathering feedback from clients on its product and interviewing brokers on what makes a perfect CRM for them. Among Apto’s partners and integration are Gmail, RealCapital Markets for commercial housing, Buildout, and many more.
Best for: commercial and industrial real estate brokers.
Price: Free demo version available. Basic plan – $129 per user monthly; PRO plan – $149 per user monthly.
5. ClientLook
This one is a direct competitor for the Apto CRM in the commercial real estate area. ClientLook allows monitoring and managing client information, tenant movement, lease expiration, comps, listing, etc. Its special tools include a so-called “Success service” – a package of educational programs for specialists onboarding with this CRM: webinars, onsite, and remote training. This service also provides specialists with marketing resources and instruments for data cleaning, standardization, and validation. A Virtual Assistant helps staff save time on data entry and search. ClientLook supports the Buildout tool for marketing and brokerage, Realtors Property Resource (RPR) Commercial software, TheAnalyst PRO for improved analytics, and more industry-specific integrations.
Best for: commercial real estate agencies.
Price: Free for six months, $99 per month thereafter; Monthly Plan – $129; Annual Plan – $89 per month.
Conclusion
CRM systems have become indispensable for real estate brokers, agents, and their teams. Instead of dealing with spreadsheet chaos, professionals can keep piles of data in a convenient order and manage it via a user-friendly interface. Instead of putting much effort into peripheral tasks, they use an automated solution and focus on relationships better. The usage of a CRM system increases business KPIs and improves the productivity of employees since CEOs can follow the progress of every employee.
A business owner can choose a ready-made CRM software or get a custom one at any development company. The key factor here is whether the available functionalities of solutions in the market meet their business needs or not. Getting software from a development agency allows them to integrate only necessary features and save money. On the other hand, they may want to implement advanced technologies to the CRM that will make their real estate business even more competitive.
