Real estate investors share the AI ​​tools they use to work efficiently

Childhood friends Connor Swofford and Pieter Louw started investing in rental properties together in October 2024.

Over the past 12 months, they have expanded their joint portfolio to 24 units across nine properties in Buffalo, thanks to creative financing and their combined skills.

“I’m very good in the field, knowing the construction side of things,” Louw, a real estate agent in Buffalo with a background in construction and engineering, told Business Insider. “And Connor is an absolute threat when it comes to organization and things as a whole.”

Swofford, a startup consultant, lives in Charleston and is focused on streamlining their workflow so they can continue to grow their portfolio while treating it as a side hustle.

Friends and business partners meet virtually twice a week for approximately 30 minutes to discuss their holdings and potential transactions. Swofford said he spends no more than two hours a week on portfolio-related tasks. Louw, who is on the ground visiting construction sites and showing apartments, said his time commitment fluctuates but he spends an average of 10 hours a week on their joint portfolio.

“The partnership kind of flourished,” Louw said. “It was just supposed to be this little fun thing that we do, and that’s still what it is, but it turned into something bigger than either of us could have expected.”

Swofford and Louw, both 31, plan to keep it as a side hustle, using the cash flow to pay for vacations, increase their retirement savings and contribute to their children’s future education.

They shared their “software stack,” which allowed them to scale quickly without sacrificing much time. It consists of three AI tools and costs $20 per month.

1. Baselane. While researching software for homeowners and banking platforms for businesses, Swofford came across Baselanewhich offers both. It is an automated banking, accounting and rent collection tool that has become an integral part of their workflow.

It’s the main AI tool they use – and the only one they pay for ($20 per month).

“All of our rent collections happen there; they let me know if anyone hasn’t paid; I check all of our expenses through there; I do all of our categorizations through there,” Swofford said, noting that they also pay their contractors through the platform and earn good APY by maintaining their business funds with Baselane.

They also use it to track the performance of their properties and analyze trends that may affect their strategy. For example, the financial reports generated by Baselane helped them realize that two-unit properties in their market were not as profitable as larger multi-family properties. Now, they are abandoning duplexes and focusing on acquiring properties with three to ten units.

2. Asanas. Swofford and Louw use the free version of the work management platform Asanas to assign tasks to their subcontractors. They work with contractors regularly, as they use the BRRRR method – short for buy, rehab, lease, refinance, repeat – and purchase properties to which they can add value through renovations.

They can also assign maintenance tasks through Asana each time a tenant submits a request.

3. ChatGPT. They regularly use ChatGPT to help them with everything from creating emails to troubleshooting issues. For example, the chatbot came in handy when they first had to deal with an eviction, and they used it to answer questions about the responsibilities of the landlord versus the tenant.

“That’s literally all we have. We pay $20 a month for Baselane and everything else is free right now,” Swofford said.

Ultimately, they want to leverage AI tools to become better landlords, improve their response time to tenants, and communicate effectively and efficiently.

Louw has learned that if you treat your tenants well, they are more likely to take better care of the space: “When they see that you respect them, they tend to be respectful too. »