Hi hhavatar - what do you think about having a skype chat (as much as I hate skype and their privacy issuesā¦) to hash this out a bit? I think these forums are great but perhaps a few 30 minute chats will progress much quicker? The best time for me is now (6-8am Seattle/Vancouver time) and email me at wayne (at) taylormail.ca to get my skype details. Thanks!
hi everyone. Just wanted to let anyone know who finds this post that a few of us have started meeting to try to make suiteCRM customized for our real estate needs. it has been slowly progressing. These are the updates:
-started working on layouts
-established basic customization for north american realtor
-established basic direction for Irish brokerage
-starting to work on self hosting it on Ubuntu servers
Itās a work in progress so perhaps more people want to jump in to the process?
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Hi guys, not meaning to gate crash the party or anything, but is there an update or some sort of progress report concerning this? I only just decided on SuiteCRM for the real estate company I work in and Iām trying to customize tit to suit our workflow
No problem crashing gates. Someone actually tried to email me from this thread about this topic and they were from Calgary. I read the email and then accidentally nuked it and canāt find it now. Feel free to get back to me at wayne (at) taylormail.ca as you did before. Sorrya bout that and look forward to working with you on this!
Hello everyone,
Sorry for the delay! We have been busy in the lab, working to bring you the only full-featured real estate solution, that we are proud to announce ā EstateGate!
EstateGate is based on SuiteCRM 7.3 (bleeding edge) and offers an array of features necessary for an independant broker, team, or large agency to keep calm and sell on. From a single window pane, it is now easy to track: buyers, sellers, investors, renters, and lenders.
- Twilio is fully integrated for call-center capabilities such as auto-dialing, round-robin calls to available floor agents, and SMS/Media messaging. Reporters can be generated and look better than ever thanks to pre-defined KReporter 3.0 charts that even work on mobile devices.
- Documents are digitally filed with NeatCloud integration and integrated to the contracts module ensuring time senstive clauses are never missed, and that all members are engaged in the workflow and held accountable for action items that belong to them.
- Appointments can be created online to view properties and confirmed through text or re-scheduled and re-assigned should something arise.
- Document sharing has never been easier with support from a large 20 GB secure transfer portal. No more fake leads junking up your modules, as prospects are verified with two-factor authentication proving they are legit.
- MLS/IDX integration is as simple as 1-2-3 and brings your website to life with accurate content direct from your local board, including market summary stats should your board permit such information.
- Track expenses and overhead incurred while transacting with different parties to ensure all funds are properly disbursed at closing.
- Exclusive ArcGIS by ESRI enables accurate maps unrivaled by google. Perfect for accurately portraying large parcels of property without hiring photographers, helicopters or drones.
- Plus much, much more that is simply too much to list in a single post. Check it out for yourself at https://www.veritris.com/solutions/crm/. Our public portal site is available now at vvrokc.com.
P.S>
[/ol]We have been designing CRM related software going on 4 years now. The secret is to tie everything around the account module. Once you learn how to do this, it works flawlessly.
I just joined. Im actually also trying to doing a real estate crm.
are u all still working on it?
Ok I just came across this thread and itās very interesting! I am a real estate broker in the US and, because of my background in Linux and open source, I have been exploring Sugar and now Suite to see if I can use it for my brokerage and property management operations. For now, Iām really interested in having it manage my property management ops because Iām using spreadsheets. Although there are real estate specific tools out there, my āopen sourceā bug has made me spend a lot of time looking at this. Iām new to Sugar so have been playing around with Suite but Iām not terribly optimistic so far. Would love to collaborate and see what you all have been able to do. Thanks!
I am an avid Ubuntu man and suitecrm fan. Sounds like we have a fit there. I have come a fair distance getting myself familiar with the basics and customizing the opportunity module for real estate for my needs. Iād like to build a focused team here and share ideas and solutions and build this. It would make sense to do so here to keep it all available for everyoneā¦ we are all busy so I donāt want to double work. It also looks like buddy above has already done this work if you want to pay him but I havenāt tried it and I canāt vouch for anything other than what he wrote above. Letās stay in touch.
Hi Wayne. Iām all for collaboration, sharing and helping each other. I havenāt used the opportunity module at all. Iām using Accounts, Contacts and Contracts, which Iām using for leases, listing agreements, etc. I created a custom module called Property to hold managed properties. This is what Iām doing so far:
- Accounts: 1 per landlord client. This also holds his properties
- Contacts: Anyone including landlords, tenants
- Contracts: Right now this holds leases but I want to use it for listing agreements, purchase contracts and use workflows for important dates, stages
- Property: A property including address and connected to a landlord via Accounts
One key thing I would like to track for which Iām currently using spreadsheets is income and expenses per property, creating invoices and deducting expenses from a reserve account for each landlord. I have not found an easy way to do simple math related operations using calculated fields, etc. For example, say I have a repair reserve (set in Accounts) of $1000. If I create an invoice on a property for $100, it should deduct $100 from $1000 making the reserve for that account $900.
The thing that people misconstrue about suitecrm, is that all of the default modules have the capabilities you would ever need. There is no need to create an additional module for listings. Ideally, an account would have a label indicating what type of property it is: listing, rental, commercial, land, apartment, etc. and another field as to the status: Active/Under Contract/Sold/Withdrawn/Rented/Leased. Landlords are contacts whom would then be assigned to the account. What if you have more than one landlord or the landlord owns multiple properties and has property managers? Contracts should hold leases and be tied to an account. To perform calculations and valuations, simply create custom fields with formulas to calculate the desired equation and display it in another field. Our platform uses 3rd party modules which allow for creating custom code and echo the results to the display/list/edit views.
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Our platform is out of alpha and is considered a strong beta candidate. At this time, for the sake of the community, we are giving 30 day trials.
Assuming the default modules have all the capabilities as you say, the trick then is to map your functions to your biz processes? I didnāt create a listings module, just a property module because I couldnāt figure out how to represent a single property eg. managed rental. My logic is somewhat similar to yours. For me, an account is the 1st level in the hierarchy. For property management, it holds the property(ies) for that account ie. all properties belonging to 1 or more landlords. For this, I created a 1 - many relationship between accounts and property. Contracts can be leases or management agreements, etc, so multiple contracts tied to an account.
When you say āsimply create custom fieldsā¦ā I donāt know how to do that. Iām assuming that requires custom php or javascript and you canāt do it in Studio? Iād be interested in evaluating your application. One potential problem I see for myself is the price tag. Thanks.
Sorry, I mis-understood what you wrote. I understand your concerns regarding price, and would love for you to evaluate the application and suggest what it would be worth. One of my pet peeves is the cost to do business in real estate, so I am aiming to keep this affordable. However, due to some of the proprietary modules and custom code, we have to charge a nominal fee to cover those expenses. I would love to hear your feedback and possibly earn your business. At your convenience, schedule sometime with me using our scheduling app. I use this religiously to manage my time. It is also a great way to send documents securely and stay in touch with clients. The app is named LiveSite and is also included with our offering.
Dispage Enhanced Studio allows you to create custom fields (if you know how to code) right inside the module builder.
Thanks. I do know how to code. I was a Unix systems administrator in a past life and worked for Oracle for many years. The reason Iām looking at Sugar is exactly that. There are many real estate related CRMs out there including Top Producer. Realty Juggler is $99 a year. I started playing with SuiteCRM to figure out if itās usable for my needs to manage my real estate biz as a whole. Iām also playing with the idea of writing my own web app using PHP and codeigniter, for example. Another option is to build a front end for SuiteCRM, etc. Before I get into that, I would like to see if SuiteCRM would suit my needs and Iāve already spent more time messing with it than Iād like to. The only reason for that is my tech background. I understand your fee requirement for the prop stuff. My take, however, is that if I have to use a subscription based app, why not use something like appfolio or the many others out there, instead of messing with SuiteCRM.
Would like to see a demo for sure and talk further. Thanks.
āBecause they have enough money as it is, and do not allow you to customize the solution to fit your business. Instead your business has to mold around their sofware. That is the beauty of suitecrm. You make it do what you want it to. We should join forces and make this even better being that we all possess coding skills.ā
You nailed it right there! Are you a real estate broker too? Iāve looked at Open Realty and my website is Wordpress but youāve done a lot more with all this than I have. Iāve put down a small requirements list Iād like to solve with any tool I use/build. I think most software offered by real estate software companies out there focus mostly on lead gen. I havenāt seen one single software to manage a real estate brokerage (with or without property management). I posted on a local broker group asking how brokers are managing their ops. The most responses were for Quickbooks. I also sit on a leasing and property management committee. Most of the big managers use one of the offerings out there like appfolio. I briefly looked at it but their sub model would cost me around $200 a month or so. Plus Iām sure I donāt need everything it offers. Iām just so done with using spreadsheets to manage my properties because that just canāt scale.
While Iām not a coding guru by any means, I do enjoy it. At Oracle one my last roles was managing data center floor space for our LOB. The best solution at that point was a fancy spreadsheet another group was using. I took it, used it for a few months and then wrote my own web app to manage the floor space. Hacked javascript because I didnāt know it and learned whatever I needed to get it done. Took me about 3 months. I figure now that Iām in my own biz, I should use my skills. The biggest challenge is time and putting it in income producing activities rather than stuff Iād really like to do. 
My real estate license expires tomorrow and I am taking the brokers test today I have been licensed for 10 years.
There is not an application on the market that manages all aspects of a brokerage, which is why I decided to create my own, as what was available on the market simply did not cut itā¦ Did you know appfolio is owned by intuit, the creators of quickbooks?
Our platform also has quickbooks integration courtesy of epicom ā very expensiveā¦
So, not only do we have lead generation, the ability to manage listings, leads, and accounting logs is built inā¦ I donāt like separating features of a product. Its all or nothing. For that reason, I really believe this is worth at least $200/mo. no setup fee and 5 users. How do you feel about that price range?
Vetris,
By using the Accounts module for properties, (ie: listings), we run into an additional issue with leads auto-populating account information if related to an Account or Opportunity which for the business model for our brokerage is less than desireable in regards to sales and lead tracking.
When you have an inquiry, they may inquire about one property initially, but look at many and the Accounts module would need to be almost entirely overwritten in order to accommodate listingsā¦ We need to track that activity both in the lead history for marketing purposes, , but also in the history of each and every property shown as our listing agreements protect us for a period of time after a listing expires. It is NOT uncommon for a client to list for 6 months then attempt to contact a lead we introduced them to in order to avoid paying commissions.
The Accounts module is better served as a āCompanyā and can be used as an account for a property management situation in regards to large scale/recurring leasing and maintenance, where you have a long term relationship with an individual or corporate entity, but does not serve well for the sale of inventory properties, businesses and related licenses where the transfer is a āone and doneā situation. This is especially true in commercial acquisitions as I have found that our repeat buyers created new corporate entities for each property and those entities become defunct upon a sale of a property so there is no need for long term data retention of those as it is the principals that are the important future leads.
Salman,
While our brokerage does not engage much in property management at this time, I have been looking into it.
Unfortunately a CRM is not and never will be an ERP or vice versa, which is really what you would need to manage properties effectively as an ERP not only assists with project management but also tracks expenses, etc.
I would stick with SuiteCRM for sales and maybe leasing, (managing listings) but look into an OS ERP for property management, maintenance and billing and expense tracing related to managing those properties once the lease has been executed if you are managing more than a handful of properties or units.
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Good luck on the brokers! What state are you licensed in? Iām in Texas in the Austin area. No, I didnāt know Appfolio was Intuit! I know what you mean about separating features but I donāt agree. I feel a modular approach is much better. There should be core functionality which everyone would need. Then you can offer additional modules/features for a customizable experience. Thatās the model which appeals to me and I think it would appeal to different kinds of brokerages having different needs. For example, if someone doesnāt do property management or use quickbooks, they donāt need those features so why pay for them? $200/month might be ok for a larger brokerage but Iām small and I wouldnāt be able to do that. The other issue is getting agents to use the tools. For example, I know that Keller Williams has a lot of productivity tools they offer their agents and they take a big commission chunk. However, Iāve talked to some of their agents who donāt use most of those tools so whatās the point? Software is only useful if people actually use it.
This is exactly why SuiteCRM is designed to revolve around the account module. This defunct entities should have been contacts. It took me along time to wrap my head around the concept, and even longer with constantly fighting with relationships that I really didnāt need. Properties(Accounts) have a status, Buyer/Sellers/Investors (Leads/Contacts) also have the same. You manage things, not people. Therefore, the status of that thing is what changes; not the object itself.
SuiteCRM is the perfect solution for property management. Our platform accepts payments, shares documents, manages workflow including escalations, sends text messages, and is integrated with quickbooks. What more could you ask for?