The Hidden Cost of Home-Grown Yardi Real Estate Analytics

As an ex-consultant, I lost count of the number sales calls, discovery meetings, and proposal reviews with billion-dollar real estate clients where we proposed custom data warehouses and accelerators to extend Yardi reports. These solutions are prohibitively expensive for most real estate firms, costing upwards of $250,000. And if you’re not sure what all the accelerators are actually accelerating, it’s difficult to justify the cost. Let’s explore the hidden cost of Yardi real estate analytics.

Hidden Costs of Real Estate

One option is to take on the project in-house, often hiring a new senior analyst at a cost of around $125,000 per year when including benefits. Remember, not all tech people are alike! Even if you have IT support in-house, IT analysts rarely have the skillsets necessary to build Yardi data integrations. Setting up the necessary cloud infrastructure, such as a cloud database, blob storage, an ETL tool, and Power BI licenses, is also a significant undertaking. However, if done correctly, these costs can be kept under $6,000 to $10,000 per year. Then, you’ll need a Power BI analyst to build your reports. Most good Power BI Analysts cost another $125,000 per year when including benefits. If you want one that has real estate experience, expect to pay another $25,000 per year or more. 

Minimum annual recurring cost = $256,000

Finally, there is the most expensive resource of all: time. Undertakings of this size typically take over a year to complete. We know from experience that custom, home-grown data projects may seem like a good idea at first, but they often end up being more expensive (in both time and money) than necessary. Real estate KPIs haven’t changed in decades, and many of the reports that you need, such as balance sheets, income statements, and rent rolls, are fairly standard.

We got tired of constantly reinventing the wheel and decided to build one shiny wheel that everyone could use. You can setup the initial version of this customizable solution in less than a month, saving you time and resources. You pay based on the amount of data you have, so the cost only grows as you grow. At CREx, we believe that the same tools and resources should be available to property managers with 10 properties and not just managers with 1,000+ properties.

CRE data analytics shouldn’t cost $250,000+ per year. That’s why CREx Software is a fraction of that price. Plus, our experience with other customers lets us provide you with even more value. With CREx, you don’t have to worry about finding and hiring the perfect Yardi integrations developer, Power BI analyst, Power BI licenses, cloud costs, or technical support fees. We’ve got you covered.

If you’re still interested in going the custom route, we have plenty of references and referrals to share. Just let us know and we’ll be happy to help.

Cost of Yardi Real Estate Analytics

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