Stessa: A Complete Product Review for Real Estate Investors

See what you need to know about Stessa if you invest in real estate and want to better manage your assets.

Whether you’re new to real estate investing or have been an investor for a long time, Stessa is probably a tool you’ve heard about from a friend or being mentioned online. In this article, we’ll break down what Stessa is, who it’s for, and what features you get with your Stessa account.  

What is Stessa and How Much Does it Cost?

Stessa is a free, online tool for real estate investors. Real estate investors with as few properties as a single rental up to those with thousands of rentals use Stessa to keep track of the performance of their portfolio over time. While Stessa can be used through a desktop computer or mobile phone browser, there is also an iOS and Android mobile app, with certain features, available to account holders.

Stessa has grown in popularity, reaching hundreds of thousands of investors nationwide, partly as a result of its broad set of features and its very low cost. In fact, Stessa is free to use!

That being said, the natural question is how can Stessa provide all that it does and still be free? From the Stessa website, “...we do offer optional, premium services for real estate investors for a fee, to assist with things like rent analysis, and market research.” So you get access to all of Stessa’s features at no charge, plus access to exclusive offerings through the Stessa platform.

Who is Stessa For?

Something about Stessa that stands out from many other tools on the market, is that it was built with many different investors in mind.

Those who buy and hold rental properties by themselves—meaning without outside investors—Stessa is a valuable tool in measuring and tracking your progress. The asset management toolset within Stessa will enable you to see how your portfolio is doing against your goals.

For investors who purchase and manage properties with investors, you’ll also get a lot out of the platform. Stessa enables you to categorize your properties into portfolios and to share the performance with your investors. This helps you keep track of properties in a sensible way and maintain transparency between you and your investors.

If you’re in the business of buying and holding rental properties, which can be done through value-add improvements, BRRRR, house-hacking, or simply buying property turnkey, Stessa will give you the structure you need to manage and measure the performance of your assets.

Rent Collection

One of the newest features to be released from Stessa is its rent collection capabilities. There are many very important activities in managing your investment, and collecting rent is certainly at the top of priorities.

Stessa brings modern technology to the everyday investor. Get automatic rent reminders, auto-recurring ACH payment options for renters, and a secure method for processing rent. Stessa utilizes Plaid integration, making it easy to connect your bank account to your Stessa account for auto deposits of payments.

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Many investors over the years have used a myriad of tools like Venmo, PayPal, or CashApp, but that’s against the terms of service on those platforms and they lack the right protocols built into the platforms ideal for landlords, such as blocking partial payments.

Making it easier for renters to pay rent may mean you’re more likely to get rent in full and on time, every month.

Interest-Bearing Bank Account and Cash Back

As an investor, finding additional yield in your deals can result in that much more profit at the end of the year. And Stessa is helping with two newer features, an interest-bearing  banking account and a cash-back debit card.

By using Stessa for cash management, investors can enjoy 2.00% APY* interest rates on deposits, 1.10% cash back when you use the Stessa debit card, and $0 fees on inbound wires. There is a $5 charge for outbound send wires transfers.

Setting up a banking account through Stessa has a few other advantages and features, including no fees for bounced checks, no minimum balance requirements, and no monthly maintenance fees.

Detailed Reporting

Stessa is known for the level of reporting the platform enables the average investor to create. Gone are the days of having to build your own complicated spreadsheets. Directly within the Stessa platform, you can build the following reports:

• Income Statement
• Net Cash Flow
• Balance Sheet
• Rent Roll
• Tenant Ledger
• Schedule of Real Estate Owned
• General Ledger
• Capital Expenses
• Tax Package
• Stress Test

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