Most people who start investing in real estate do so with the intention of growing in the industry, according to Dave Spooner, co-founder of Hudson, Ohio-based tenant management software startup Innago.
However, growing as quickly as available capital will allow is slowed when landlords who own just a few units are responsible for mundane duties such as collecting and depositing rent checks, keeping track of late payments and more.
With the help of software developer Yasir Drabu, Spooner launched the Innago tool to remove those distractions and help optimize landlords' time. It does this by letting users at small- to medium-sized rental properties handle payments, upload and look at lease agreements and conduct online background checks on prospective tenants.
Tenants benefit, too; they can submit photos and maintenance requests to their landlord and easily chat with them through the program.
"We’Re trying to build software you don’t need a certification to learn how to use."
“Our software is really scalable and goes alongside the normal life cycle of a landlord,” Spooner said. “It’s simple, effective and intuitive enough to work with just a couple of units, but it’s also powerful and scalable enough to work with many more.”
While the software is free to use, Innago charges as little as one dollar from the landlord if their tenants make an online payment — and customers have said Innago’s features are well-worth the dollar. Landlords particularly enjoy Innago’s payment features, which send tenants a notification before rent is due and automatically adds the landlord's custom late fee when the payment isn't in on time. Additionally, the software does not allow tenants to pay next month’s rent until the late fee and last payment are collected. This eliminates the possibility of missing late fees, which Spooner said are an easily forgotten-about income source for landlords.
"The reason we call it tenant management software is because our focus is on that tenant-landlord relationship,” Spooner said. “We want to make the communication and the relationship and organization of tenants a lot simpler for a landlord.”
Since its launch in 2017, Innago has garnered more than 100 customers. The landlords who use Innago range from those that own one or two units to those that own 750 units. There's a lot of these type of mangers out there; Spooner said that of the 44 million units for rent in the U.S., 85 percent are owned by small- to medium-sized size landlords.
This population has often gone underserved because of the ease with which software companies could make huge sales to large facilities with one call; smaller properties often had a less visible presence and were therefore harder to find and work with. However, with the advent of the internet, the landscape has changed how people interact with companies, and finding smaller entities is easier and, as result, more lucrative.
And besides the sheer amount of landlords serving smaller properties, Innago also targets these kinds of customers because the management software that currently exist oftentimes does't fit their needs. In fact, most solutions are developed for landlords at larger properties and as such, are often unwieldy for other users.
“We’re trying to build software you don’t need a certification to learn how to use,” Spooner said. “We grow alongside the smaller landlords we’re targeting, and they won’t worry about changing software costs and paying an arm and a leg for features that they feel that they need.”
Innago does this through direct outreach, inbound marketing and by producing high-quality content for the company blog.
“We write regular content that a small- to mid-size landlord is learning as they go, figuring out things themselves,” Spooner said. “Not a lot of people know about us, and the best way to get our name out there is to provide something that is really useful to them.”
Next on the horizon for Innago is a mobile app for iOS and Android phones. While the software can be used on any browser, an app will make accessing it easier.
Innago also plans to add listing syndication because the feature has been requested by landlords. And as always, Innago will also work to refine the product they currently have.
