Juggling multiple properties, clients, and projects, regular meticulous reporting, complex decision-making, document management, and many other responsibilities form a daily routine of real estate investors.
CRM systems like Salesforce lighten the workload and streamline their workflow by helping keep track of customer relationships and investment portfolios, collaborate across teams and get actionable insights into deal data – all within one consolidated platform.
Out-of-the-box Salesforce CRM functionality does not meet each and every need of real estate investors but with some customizations, you can get a robust system that fits like a glove.
Real estate investors handle a significant amount of sensitive client data, from financial information to personal details.
Salesforce offers industry-leading security features, such as multi-factor authentication, data encryption, and granular access controls, so you can control exactly who has access to specific data.
However, keep in mind that the Health Check feature in Salesforce only highlights the key issues, and it should be your Salesforce admin who takes actions to mitigate the risks of security gaps, unauthorized access, and breaches.
Therefore, it is key that your Salesforce instance is under constant monitoring by the Salesforce admin to run technical audits.
Ascendix offers a flexible Salesforce administration solution – a virtual admin, who will meticulously supervise the system, manage permissions, address security issues, help with data management and other related tasks.
Find out more about our Virtual Salesforce Admin Package.
Sometimes data and processes are scattered among multiple platforms and products, which makes it difficult to see the big picture.
Salesforce is designed as a digital hub for all your investment-related information, from property details and tenant information to transaction histories and investor communications – everything is in one place.
If you still need the functionality of the software you used before, some customizations and integrations can build the bridges between your data islands.
Salesforce is loved for its flexibility and vast ecosystem of products. You can customize Salesforce however you want – create workflows that match your specific processes, modify fields to capture relevant data, and develop custom reports that track the metrics that matter most to your business.
If you couldn’t find anything suitable on AppExchange, a marketplace with over 7K of all kinds of Salesforce integrations, there is always a possibility to integrate third-party tools or develop custom functionality right in the system.
Ascendix has over 20 years of expertise in real estate industry. Let us help you with Salesforce customization and configuration.
Real estate investors can automate routine tasks and manual work with Salesforce Flow Builder. The powerful feature set allows you to create records, send reminders, manage follow-ups, and assign tasks.
Meanwhile, the user-friendly drag-and-drop interface makes it accessible to users of all technical backgrounds
Salesforce Flow Builder | Source: Salesforce
Real estate investors need robust analytics to make informed decisions and track the performance of their investments. Salesforce offers built-in analytics capabilities for data visualization, reporting, and forecasting.
You can easily create customizable dashboards to track key metrics, such as property values, rental income, and investment returns. The platform also offers powerful AI-powered forecasting capabilities, which can improve forecast accuracy to up to 42%.
Consolidated Salesforce Reports for Real Estate Agents in a Single Dashboard | Ascendix
A clear, data-driven understanding of your real estate portfolio helps to identify opportunities, mitigate risks, and optimize your investments.
Managing relationships is perhaps one of the most critical aspects of real estate investment, and this is where Salesforce Sales Cloud, often called Salesforce CRM for its powerful CRM functionality, truly shines.
From prospective and current tenants and partners to property managers, financial advisors, and other service providers, Salesforce CRM can centralize all your contacts, properties, and associated information gathering all in comprehensive profiles in a single, unified platform to give you the visibility you need.
Contact Management in Salesforce | Source: Salesforce
Detailed profiles for each contact help track their history, preferences, and interactions, craft highly personalized communication and build meaningful communication based on those data.
For example, investor contacts can contain their investment portfolio, past transactions, communication preferences, and specific investment criteria or goals. This way, you will not spam their inbox with irrelevant property options that do not meet their criteria.
If you are seeking automation without sacrificing personalization, consider Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.
Also, real estate investment firms can enhance internal communication between the departments.
For example, the acquisitions team can log detailed property profiles and investment opportunities directly in Salesforce, making this information instantly accessible to everyone with permission.
This allows the property managers to hit the ground running when onboarding a new asset, as they can quickly review the history, condition, and any existing tenant information.
Meanwhile, the leasing department is informed about free units, average rent, and property conditions, so they are ready to promote them and seek new tenants to increase the occupancy rate.
Similarly, the investor relations team can stay up to date on the latest property additions or changes to the investment portfolio to provide timely and accurate updates to their investor contacts.
What if real estate investors decide to get some skin in the game and act as brokerage, too? It means more contacts, interactions, negotiations, and consequently significantly more relationships to manage. Helping effectively manage all those relationships makes Salesforce the best CRM for real estate investors.
Salesforce is also a great choice for investment managers, wealth management, capital markets, venture capital, and private equity firms.
Experience Cloud is a versatile platform within the Salesforce ecosystem designed to create powerful and engaging real estate investor portals that serve as central hubs for investors, providing them with access to critical information, tools, and communication channels.
For example, you could create a customized investor portal that allows investors to access their investment data, track portfolio performance, and receive updates on your investment strategy. This will demonstrate your commitment to transparency and accountability, which will strengthen your relationships with investors and attract new capital.
Ascendix’s client, Innovative Capital Corporation has benefited from the investor portal based on Salesforce Experienced Cloud and you can, too.
An Example of a Salesforce-Powered Portal for Innovative Capital | Ascendix
Another one of the most common ways to leverage Salesforce for real estate investors is to create a help center and FAQ portal to address common questions like information about minimum investments, redemption policies, and fees.
FAQ Portal Interface | Ascendix
Such secure, branded digital portals support efficient information flow between GPs and LPs. Also, this way, you show your commitment to transparency and confidently display your achievements.
We will help you create a completely custom investor portal powered by Salesforce Experience Cloud without overpaying for unnecessary functionality.
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE) is a piece of functionality in Salesforce Marketing Cloud designed for marketing automation, nurturing leads, drip campaigns, leads scoring, and automated marketing workflows to reach the right audiences with the right messages at the right time.
If you focus on a small number of high-value deals, primarily use personal networking, or have simple lead nurturing needs, MCAE is not for you. In this case, some Salesforce customizations can cover the necessary functionality of MCAE without the need to buy the whole product. Contact our consultants to find out more.
For example, when a potential investor downloads a property investment prospectus from the investor portal, Account Engagement can automatically enroll them in a targeted nurture campaign based on their investment preferences (commercial, residential, or mixed-use) and send personalized content about similar properties in their preferred market.
For example, if an investor frequently views content about multi-family properties in specific metropolitan areas, Account Engagement can automatically add them to a list of future multi-family investment opportunities in those regions and reach out with personalized recommendations.
Based on set criteria like minimum investment thresholds, previous real estate investment experience, or consistent engagement with specific property types, AI estimates the probability of converting this lead to real opportunity and assigns the score accordingly.
Create Marketing Cloud Account Engagement automation workflows easily with a drag-drop approach and intuitive interface. As far as the prospect’s actions trigger the algorithm, the rest is executed automatically.
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Automation Workflow Example | Source: Salesforce
The automation provided with MCAE can strengthen the firm’s tenant engagement. By tracking prospect interactions and automating lease renewal outreach, the commercial real estate investment company can ensure it maintains strong tenant relationships and minimizes vacancy rates across its portfolio.
If you need more advanced property management but do not want to hire another company for that, we suggest considering Salesforce integrations for property management. They’ve been designed and are regularly updated by companies dedicated to exceptional property management, so you will undoubtedly get all the necessary functionality.
Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (FSC) is different from the regular Salesforce platform. It has features made just for the financial services industry. There are a few ways SF FSC can benefit real estate investors:
First things first, we suggest creating custom fields and objects that will reflect the peculiarities and vocabulary of the industry. Let your Salesforce consulting partner be your translator by filling the system with relevant terms.
Custom objects can be created to track properties, deals, and investment vehicles separately while maintaining their relationships. For example, custom fields can help monitor property-specific metrics such as “Cap Rate,” “Net Operating Income,” and “Price Per Square Foot” and quickly evaluate potential acquisitions against your investment criteria.
Salesforce for real estate investors can be configured to handle complex ownership structures common to the industry. Meanwhile, relationships between objects can map out the connections between properties, LLCs, investors, and funding sources.
For instance, a single property might be owned by multiple LLCs, each with different investor compositions and distribution schedules. Salesforce can be customized to clearly display these relationships and automatically calculate ownership percentages and distribution amounts.
Salesforce FSC Relationship Mapping | Source: Salesforce
Not only fields and objects can be customized, but also workflows. For example, fix-and-flip investors might implement automation that schedules contractor bids and creates renovation timelines based on standard scope of work templates.
If you are focused on land investment, Salesforce can fit your needs, too. Ascendix has experience with this sphere. We’ve already delved into the peculiarities of Salesforce customizations dedicated to optimizing land acquisition and disposition processes while developing AscendixRE Land – Salesforce-based CRM for land brokers. With this experience, we can quickly grasp what you need and professionally perform necessary customizations.
Ascendix’s team can perform unique Salesforce customizations backed up with industry knowledge.
From property reports and leases to investment proposals and financial statements, real estate investors must juggle a vast array of documents on a daily basis. Fortunately, the Salesforce ecosystem has a few integrations that help with document management.
Ascendix Composer is a dynamic document generation tool designed to streamline the creation and automation of documents directly within Salesforce.
Composer – Document Generation Tool | Ascendix
With Ascendix Composer, real estate investors can:
Get an Ascendix Composer demo to see how it works.
We also can help you create custom workflows for intelligent document routing to streamline the approval process while DocuSign integration will provide e-signature capabilities.
Salesforce for real estate investors usually contains an enormous amount of data about partners, capitals, properties, sometimes tenants, and service providers. Finding the necessary one is not always an easy task so a smart search tool is a must-have.
Ascendix Search is an enhanced search and filtering app specifically designed for Salesforce users in the real estate industry. It aims to improve data management and accessibility, allowing you to quickly retrieve and analyze critical information.
How to Filter Salesforce Data with Charts and Graphs with Ascendix Search
With Ascendix Search, real estate investors can:
Get an Ascendix Seach demo to see it in action.
Zestimate, the #1 property valuation tool is available in your Salesforce CRM via integration. Predictions are based on historical data, property location and condition, and current market trends. Data are regularly updated to keep the estimations as precise as possible. Although Zestimate has an impressively low error rate, you can always consider broker price opinions before fully trusting the AI.
Zillow Home Value Connector | Source: AppExchange
Also, you can always create your own property valuation tool with regular data updates, a more extensive range of criteria, and broader functionalities.
Predictive AI can help estimate the After Repair Value (ARV) of the property, so investment companies that work by the BRRR method (Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat) like REITs and syndications as well as those who follow a fix-and-flip strategy. Deep learning algorithms that power decision engines can also predict capital expenditures and return on investment in such cases.
Predictive AI and decision engines can uncover hidden insights if they have enough data. For example, the system can take into account disaster risk scores provided by The U.S. Department of Homeland Security to provide a more comprehensive view of the potential risks and manage their impact like enhanced property insurance coverage, investing in disaster-resilient upgrades, or even reconsidering the acquisition of properties in high-risk areas.
Of course, relying on historical data when it comes to such unpredictable things as natural phenomena is not entirely ideal. Tampa, Florida hasn’t had a direct hurricane hit in over 100 years despite the predictions. However, the high possibility of natural disasters negatively influences the property market, especially if considering insurance prices. After Helene and Milton, the property value in the areas with low climate risk is now rising much faster. This data can become a game-changer for ROI forecasting.
Some financial forecasting is available through analytics and reporting features in Salesforce.
Salesforce CRM Analytics is designed to create customized dashboards and reports based on your Salesforce CRM data. For example, CRM Analytics is a great choice if you need to create customized investor reports that provide detailed information on portfolio performance, market trends, and investment strategy.
Salesforce CRM Analytics is also equipped with Einstein for more informed and precise forecasting. Leveraging Salesforce for real estate investors in this way, you can share reports with investors on a regular basis to build trust and confidence.
Forecasting in CRM Analytics | Source: Tableau
If the standard set of features is not enough, we can help you create custom dashboards to reflect your investing peculiarities. You could see at a glance the ROI of each property, the cash flow generated, the current market value, vacancy rates, tenant demographics, and upcoming lease expirations.
Tableau is a perfect add-on to enhance Salesforce for real estate investors with detailed and visually appealing analytics and reporting capabilities that are backed up with data from external sources. With Tableau for real estate investment, you can monitor the performance of your investments and identify their underlying drivers, deep dive into property information, measure occupancy rates, create comprehensive dashboards for interactive reporting, etc.
Tableau for Real Estate Investment | Source: Tableau
Also, we are looking forward to the Tableau Einstein launch in the summer of 2025. We are promised reporting automation and predictive AI forecasting at its finest.
Juniper Square integration is for reporting functionality designed specifically for the private equity and real estate investment sectors.
Xero is a cloud-based Salesforce-compatible accounting software. It can help with everything related to finance management, from commission and interest calculation to invoicing and reporting.
There is no way to make a profitable investment without seeing the whole picture. Salesforce for real estate investors is compatible with reliable external data sources. For example, integrations such as SourceScrub, PitchBook and Prequin are here to nurture your decisions with all the data you need.
Prequin is the #1 source for limited partners and investment data. Prequin Salesforce integration enables linking Preqin records to the custom LP object in Salesforce this way synchronizes key LP details, previous fund commitments, partnerships with other GPs, fund performance stats from closed-out funds, and other available information.
PitchBook provides detailed profiles of millions of private and public companies, including information on their business descriptions, financials, investors, acquisitions, and more. Many firms use Pitchbook for deal sourcing, comparables, and market research.
Integrating it directly into Salesforce allows opportunities identified in Pitchbook to be automatically generated as records. Relevant company data then populates key opportunity fields.
SourceScrub is a data aggregation platform that provides insights into private companies. Its integration with Salesforce helps real estate investment firms identify potential acquisition targets or investment opportunities.
SourceScrub automatically populates the contact fields with missing data and helps find properties that match investment criteria as well as partners that are capable of investing in your available assets.
If you do not collaborate with property management companies and prefer doing it with your internal staff, then AppFolio or Yardi will be a great option. There is no AppFolio or Yardi Salesforce integration, but with some effort from Salesforce developers, it’s possible to synchronize or connect them through API or secure third-party integration tools.
Innovative Capital, a commercial real estate brokerage and private capital lender, was facing several challenges before partnering with Ascendix. They struggled with managing the growing volumes of data for their lenders and borrowers, lacked efficient marketing tools for lead nurturing, and had outdated manual processes that hindered their ability to scale.
Ascendix’s experts analyzed the needs of the company and suggested a few optimal solutions. First, the Ascendix team implemented a Salesforce-powered investor portal with the help of Salesforce Experience Cloud. This digital space unified their disparate data sources, provided investors with secure access to important loan information and performance metrics, and enhanced the overall client experience.
Beyond the investor portal, Ascendix helped Innovative Capital optimize its Salesforce CRM to decrease manual work and increase operational efficiency.
“ In this journey, we're working hand in hand with Ascendix to alternately create strategies within the software to serve our loan officers and help them to increase their bandwidth so that they can take on more clients, do more loans and drive more revenue.
Ascendix team doesn’t only build solutions for Innovative Capital but also provides Salesforce support continuously and finds answers within 24 hours.” ”
As a result, greater data management efficiency, improved data security and compliance, and enhanced marketing and client engagement have directly contributed to Innovative Capital’s business growth and revenue increase, as they can now onboard more clients and close more deals.
We will navigate you through all the steps and challenges, from initial setup to sophisticated customization.
Ascendix brings over 25 years of deep real estate expertise combined with extensive Salesforce consulting experience. Whether you’re a private equity real estate firm, REIT, or LLC, we can help you make standard Salesforce your perfect CRM for real estate investors.
Contact our team today for a free consultation and discover how we can help streamline your real estate operations with Salesforce.
CRM for real estate investors is software that serves as a centralized platform to organize contact information, track property listings and deal flow, manage investor interactions, communication history, and critical data points, automate repetitive tasks, and gain valuable insights.
Salesforce is the best CRM for real estate investors because of its extensive functionality, product range, helpful and knowledgeable community, and adaptivity to the needs of real estate investors through customizations and third-party integrations.
Kateryna is an experienced writer focused on topics related to Salesforce consulting and optimizing operations within the real estate industry via CRM implementation. Through her insightful articles, Kateryna aims to help organizations make the most of their Salesforce adoption.
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