Platform Offers Rental Tracking, Automated Categories
The new features driven by investor demand include the addition of short-term rental tracking, transaction auto-categorization using machine learning, and a method to organize real estate documents.
SAN FRANCISCO—Stessa recently released features to help owners of rental properties better manage entire portfolios in a single platform. The portfolio tracking platform for rental property investors has grown more than 50-fold in the last year, according to the company announcement.
“By providing powerful free tools for the individual investor, Stessa makes it easier for landlords to keep track of their real estate investments,” said Heath Silverman, co-founder and CEO of Stessa. “Our goal is to give real estate investors more visibility with less effort so that they can make better decisions and grow.”
The new features, driven by investor demand, include the addition of short-term rental tracking, auto-categorization of transactions using machine learning and a method to organize real estate documents for quick access. Additionally, the platform has added a new net cash flow chart that provides a picture of investment performance, advanced collaboration features and an automatic tax package with everything investors need to prepare rental property tax returns.
“Historically, individual investors have been unable to gain visibility into how their portfolios are performing without a ton of manual work,” Silverman tells GlobeSt.com. “I believe the next wave of fintech is coming in real estate and for the first time, Stessa is willing to share that there’s more than $25 billion in rental property investments using the platform.”
This new functionality includes:
Short-term rental tracking: Capture, analyze and report on financial results for vacation rentals alongside buy and hold investments.
Real estate documents: Simplify record keeping with a single place to track, organize and store files (leases, bids, contracts, insurance, legal and closing docs, etc.) with access from anywhere via unlimited cloud storage.
Collaboration advancements: Investors with partners can now share transactions and documents to easily stay on the same page. Rental property owners can collaborate on financials and share files with partners, brokers, lenders and CPAs.
Property alerts: Get notified when something needs attention such as lease renewals, rent collection and property tax payments.
Tax package: This generates the reports investors need to prepare rental property returns as well as complete transaction details for the year organized into IRS-ready categories with all archived receipts.
Net cash flow chart: Visualize investment performance at the portfolio and property level. The chart highlights 12 months of actual income and expenses with performance tied to goals.
Mobile app enhancements: Investors can track performance and expenses with the iOS app upgraded to include full dashboard reporting, more accurate receipt scanning and better categorization options.
Transaction auto-categorization: Transactions are categorized without any manual input using machine learning.
Resources for investors: All registered Stessa users get free access to resources created by experts to help operate and grow portfolios.
The global growth of fintech is dependent on its growth in individual markets, which differs greatly. As of August 2018, the Americas was the most popular location for fintech startups, according to Statista. However, Fintech adoption rates in various financial sectors such as savings and investments and borrowing show that the US consumers often lag behind consumers in other countries such as China, India and Brazil.