Odoo For Real Estate: 8 Core Modules & Real-World Cases In Property Management

By exploring this article, you will find out if Odoo is for your real estate business.

We will delve into 8 core Odoo modules that benefit real estate firms and explain how they help with tenant management, financial tracking, or property management. We will also provide real-world business cases that highlight how actual estate firms are using Odoo to accomplish great outcomes.

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The Needs For A Real Estate ERP Solution

For the real estate sector, productivity and effective communication are critical factors. However, without the right tools, managing buildings, tenants, finances, or maintenance work can become more challenging. In this case, any real estate business should consider adopting a solid ERP system like Odoo to revamp the operations and automate repetitive tasks.

Learn everything about Odoo: Odoo Guide For Beginners.

Let’s revisit the most typical obstacles that real estate professionals have to overcome and how an ERP helps to solve them:

Real estate businesses’ challenges

How an ERP like Odoo can help

1. Paperwork, Excel - manual operations & outdated software

Numerous real estate firms depend on a disorganised system of spreadsheets, paper-based procedures, and disparate software. This results in data silos, reporting troubles, and more time for manual work.

Modern ERPs, such as Odoo for real estate, provide a single platform that integrates all key operations - property management, sales, leasing, accounting, maintenance, and more. For instance, within Odoo, lease agreements and maintenance requests can be generated and signed electronically, saving a lot of time and resources.

2. Ineffective tenant & contracts management

It is stressful for businesses to rely on manual work to keep track of tenant data, lease agreements, or renewal dates. Due to overlooked renewals or improperly handled deposits, tenants can become frustrated, resulting in lost revenue for the real estate company.

With an ERP solution like Odoo for real estate, the tenant management feature provides a centralised hub to store and update tenant data, track lease lifecycles, and automate lease renewals. This promotes healthier tenant relationships and timely communication while avoiding costly mistakes.

3. Complex financial management

Property taxes, maintenance invoices, and rent collection are just a few of the numerous financial transactions of a real estate business. Handling these activities across separate systems likely leads to poor financial insight and accounting problems.

ERP systems can eliminate this difficulty. For example, Odoo’s integrated accounting features enable real-time financial reporting, automated accounts payable and receivable, and simpler cost management. This makes it possible for real estate companies to make better decisions and have a clear picture of the financial situation.

4. Ineffective maintenance management

Maintaining property value and tenant satisfaction requires timely and effective responses to maintenance requests from tenants. Traditional work order management and communication techniques, however, can be sluggish and inconsistent.

With ERP maintenance features, for instance, Odoo's maintenance module, tenants can electronically submit service orders, monitor repair progress, and get updates. In addition, property managers can set up appointments, allocate personnel to maintenance work, and keep an eye on budgets. This quickly solves tenants’ concerns and streamlines the entire maintenance process.

8 Robust Modules Of Odoo For Real Estate Businesses

Now we will dive into 8 powerful Odoo modules for real estate businesses. These capabilities cover various aspects of property management, from automating sales and tenant management to streamlining workflows and improving financial clarity.

1. Customer Relationship Management

For real estate businesses, Odoo's CRM module provides effective solutions to manage leads and tenant relationships. These apps create efficient workflows and enhance leasing and tenant management by centralising property listings, tenant data, and communication histories. Additionally, users may discover areas for improvement and obtain useful data about the leasing progress.

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Odoo CRM for real estate

Key features:

  • Targeted lead capture and nurturing for tenant engagement.
  • Lead scoring and qualification based on pre-defined criteria.
  • Customisable stages for applicant pipeline management.
  • Complete visibility into tenant interactions via calls, emails, and property inquiries.
  • Automated follow-up emails and communication triggers.
  • Scheduled leasing activities like property tours and open house management.
  • Holistic tenant insights such as property inquiries, view listings, or interaction history.

2. Sales

For sales management, users can speed up the process by listing properties on the Odoo Sales app and concluding deals more quickly. You can draft and submit comprehensive offers for commercial real estate leases, including terms and conditions.

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Odoo Sales dashboard

Key features:

  • Professional lease proposal builder with customisable templates.
  • Upselling features to offer additional services or amenities.
  • Electronic signature capability to speed up lease agreement approvals.
  • Streamlined lease agreement and renewal dates management.
  • Seamless tenant portal for rent payments, maintenance requests, and more.
  • Electronic contract management and recurring revenue tracking.

3. Project

With the Project module, real estate companies can speed up building projects, tenant maintenance requests, and property management tasks. If you run a property development company, you can use the app to manage a new residential building project: schedule activities, track progress, and manage diverse projects.

odoo real estate management Havi Technology Pty Ltd

Odoo Project for real estate businesses

Key features:

  • User-friendly interface for both property managers and maintenance teams.
  • Customisable project workflows for different needs, managing maintenance, renovations, or large-scale construction projects.
  • Multi-project management and analysis.
  • Gantt charts and resource planning for real estate projects.
  • Centralised communication and file management.
  • Project reporting and analytics with customisable dashboards.

4. Maintenance

With the help of Odoo's Maintenance, real estate companies can reduce repair costs and manage properties more efficiently. They can also leverage the automation capability to communicate better with renters, repair workers, and property managers.

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Odoo Maintenance requests

Key features:

  • Preventive maintenance scheduling for appliances, elevators, HVAC systems, and other property components.
  • Kanban and Calendar views for better maintenance request tracking.
  • On-the-go access via mobile devices.
  • Tenant portal for ease of request submission.
  • Efficient work order creation and management.
  • Automated reports on key metrics such as MBTF and MTTR to refine preventive maintenance schedules.
  • Personalisable dashboards for maintenance data display.

5. Invoicing

The Odoo Invoicing app provides a complete solution so that you can handle every aspect of your property's financial management. This app provides effective cash flow management by automating financial procedures, tracking payments and costs, and creating invoices.

odoo for real estate

Odoo Invoicing (source: Odoo)

Key features:

  • Professional invoice creation and customisation.
  • Automated tax calculations and compliance management.
  • Real-time invoice tracking and multiple payment processing.
  • Seamless invoices and credit notes are issued for refunds.
  • Automated recurring invoices for rent and regular charges.
  • Simplified vendor (i.e. property maintenance agents) management and seamless integration with the accounting app.
  • Automated vendor bill import and fiscal position management.

6. Rental

With Odoo Rental, real estate companies can effectively manage rental assets, including residential and commercial properties, or retail locations. Users can build a list of tenants, specify requirements for each tenant, draft contracts for rental plans, produce invoices based on defined groups, and keep track of payments.

odoo real estate

Odoo Rental for real estate

Key features:

  • Real-time rental status and late payment notifications.
  • Automated “To Do” lists based on confirmed reservations.
  • Flexible lease management with customisable rental period options.
  • Dynamic pricing and customised price lists for diverse property types.
  • Security deposit and extra fee management.

7. Helpdesk

Odoo Helpdesk enables real estate firms to improve tenant service and accelerate communication. It provides an extensive set of features for effectively managing maintenance requests, tenant enquiries, and other issues about the property.

odoo rental management

Odoo Helpdesk dashboard

Key features:

  • Multi-channel support channels for tenants, such as email, live chat, and online forms.
  • Customisable teams for requests management, ie. maintenance, leasing, or billing.
  • Automated ticket assignment based on pre-defined criteria.
  • Customisable workflow stages to track tenant inquiries.
  • Automated email and SMS notification per request stage.
  • Self-service for tenants with a dedicated Help Centre.
  • Real-time live chat support channel.
  • Odoo Field Service integration.

8. Website Builder

With the help of Odoo's Website Builder, real estate companies can easily develop professional websites that showcase properties and attract potential tenants. When the website is integrated with other Odoo apps, it runs smoothly and stays in sync with your back-office systems. This simplifies workflows and makes renting easier for companies and their tenants.

odoo real estate management

Odoo Website Builder

Key features:

  • Intuitive property website builder with a user-friendly interface and drag-and-drop functionality.
  • Dynamic property showcase with customisable layout and AI-generated templates.
  • Comprehensive property listings with search filters, property types, and more.
  • Multilingual support for a wider audience base.
  • Targeted marketing tools for better tenant experience like email automation, call-to-action forms, and tenant portals.
  • Website analytics and insights into traffic, visitors, and marketing effectiveness.

Discovering Odoo & Real Estate Firms In Action

1. A leading player in the real estate industry of Saudi Arabia

Founded in 1988, Ali Al-Fauzan & Sons is one of Saudi Arabia's leading real estate development firms. They represent the nation's innovative strategy for finding effective property management options in the midst of expanding markets.

Difficulties in property management operations

Before implementing Odoo, Ali Al-Fauzan & Sons encountered operational challenges due to their dependence on several disconnected software. It was impossible to keep track of property listings, tenant messages, financial transactions, and projects. Tasks like creating leasing proposals, following up on applicants, and tracking budgets were time-consuming.


Source: Odoo

Great results from Odoo implementation

Ali Al-Fauzan & Sons recognised Odoo, a robust and user-friendly ERP software, as the ideal solution to centralise their operations and streamline property management.

  • Odoo replaced the company’s fragmented system with an integrated solution.
  • Odoo CRM enabled them to upgrade lead management.
  • Odoo Accounting offers them real-time financial reporting.
  • Odoo Project also boosted their project management efficiency.

2. A prominent Egyptian private real estate development company

Sakr Real Estate, a prominent developer known for its dedication to "smart construction," is at the forefront of Lebanon's real estate growth. Nevertheless, their early reliance on manual procedures - specifically, Google Sheets - made it difficult to manage thousands of leads from a late-2019 real estate boom.

odoo real estate module

Source: Sakr Real Estate

Operational hurdles in real estate management

Before Odoo, Sakr Real Estate mostly used Google Sheets for manual lead and inventory management and reports. This approach no longer worked when lead volume surged to several thousand by the end of 2019. Spreadsheet-based management became tedious, limiting communication and delaying follow-up with new buyers.

Streamlined operations after Odoo implementation

Sakr Real Estate adopted Odoo to solve these problems. When the implementation was completed, Odoo introduced an extensive suite of capabilities made especially for this real estate businesses.

  • Odoo CRM was customised for two pipelines: selling and acquiring properties. Specifically, Odoo Studio was utilised for building custom data fields, capturing key real estate data like property types, sizes, locations, and payments.
  • Odoo Sales enhanced their sales workflows with custom lead-scoring algorithms. The app also provided dynamic sales dashboards with critical insights into the pipeline’s value and identified leads.
  • Odoo also improved the firm’s property evaluation, legal document generation, and deal negotiation by centralising data collection throughout the acquisition process.

Custom Odoo For Real Estate With Havi Technology

Odoo for real estate provides a powerful set of solutions. However, most businesses can get the most out of it only with customised workflows to fulfil their unique requirements. Our certified Odoo experts will analyse your processes and develop customised Odoo solutions that perfectly align with your specific workflows and long-term goals. Schedule a consultation and explore how our custom Odoo solutions can help your real estate business.

Odoo For Real Estate - Frequently Asked Questions

1. Is Odoo good for real estate?

Of course! Odoo provides core modules that benefit real estate firms, such as CRM, Sales, Rental, Maintenance, Invoicing, Helpdesk, and more. You will also get the most out of its modular architecture and open-source environment. Odoo modular architecture allows users to use essential apps only at the beginning, and add more apps later in the future when their businesses grow. Moreover, Odoo is known as the leading open-source ERP with unlimited customisation capabilities. Therefore, if you need custom real estate service workflows, it is highly recommended to leverage this capability of Odoo.

2. Is Odoo accounting free?

For the Odoo Community version, you can use the Odoo Accounting app along with other apps for free (but with limited features). For Odoo Enterprise users, several apps can be free if one requires others. Specifically, using the Accounting app along with the Sales, Invoicing, and Subscription apps is free because these apps complement each other's functions (learn more: https://www.odoo.com/trial). If you add more apps other than the previous ones, Odoo Enterprise will cost you extra fees.

3. What is Odoo Australia?

For Australian businesses, Odoo provides not only an extensive set of modules like CRM, Sales, Accounting, HRM, Inventory, Manufacturing, etc.), but also localisation features for the local market. Accordingly, the latest Odoo 17 version showed extensive possibilities: Australian payroll, Starshipit integration, BAS report improvements, Customer statements & Remittance advice, and other robust localised features.

4. What is the disadvantage of using Odoo?

It gets more complex with customisation in Odoo. One of the ERP advantages is that it can be easily customised so that businesses can tailor it to their requirements. Nevertheless, advanced customisation may cost more to accomplish and users may also need specialised development experts. 

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Let our dedicated team support you every step of the way.

Join our newsletter

Everything you need to improve operations and grow your business, straight to your inbox.

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