How to choose a PropTech software development company
To choose a PropTech software development company, ask for 8 things before you sign. They are comparable projects with the integrations named, references still in production, repository ownership from day one, milestone or monthly billing, a security plan, a post-launch service-level agreement (SLA), an exit clause, and paid discovery. Below, each check comes with the term we sign and the project behind it, and 6 of the 8 name a client you can look up.
We asked ChatGPT and Claude this question 9 times in October 2026. Every answer gave close to the same 8 checks and named no company, so we answer each check ourselves. If a previous vendor left you with code you can't run, start with repository ownership and the exit clause.
TL;DR: Ask every vendor for a document or a named client behind each check. Ours: accounts in your organization from day one, a fixed $5,000 or $9,900 audit before any phase gets a price, and access you can revoke in one click. Clients you can look up include CondoGenie (since 2018) and Lake (chosen from 150 vendors).
The 8 checks and our answers
Each row is a question you can put to any vendor, next to the answer we put in writing.
| Check | What to ask any vendor | Our term | Proof |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comparable projects | 2 projects in your segment, with the systems each one connected to | Condo, homeowners association, rental, and broker products, integrations named | Lake, C.I.A. Services |
| References in production | Clients still running the product, and their last release date | Client, start year, and status on every case | CondoGenie, since 2018 |
| Repository ownership | Whose GitHub, cloud account, and domain hold the work on day one | Yours, from day one | C.I.A. Services |
| Billing | What is fixed, what is monthly, and how changes get priced | Fixed audit, fixed phases, monthly pods | AreaButler, since 2022 |
| Security plan | How credentials move, and who can log in after handover | Secrets in your vault, old keys cut off the same day, Sentry in production | CondoGenie, C.I.A. Services |
| Post-launch SLA | Response time by severity, and who answers | Named engineer, Sentry alerts, response time in the retainer | CondoGenie, AreaButler |
| Exit clause | What you get on exit, and whether you can stop after a phase | Access revocable in one click, work bought phase by phase | A PropTech product bought by an acquirer |
| Paid discovery | Price, duration, and deliverable | $5,000 or $9,900 audit, or a 4-week Solution Design | An apartment refurbishment platform and a mobility operator under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) |
Comparable projects, with the integrations named
Lake, a vacation rental marketplace, put its rebuild in front of 150 vendors. Its CEO and founder explained why the work came to us:
"He was the only one of 150 vendors who asked to speak with the integration partner that we were working with."
David Ciccarelli, CEO and founder, Lake
"He" was our CEO, Andrei, and the partner was Calry, the middleware that syncs Lake's listings with the property management systems (PMSs) that property managers run. In PropTech the integration is where builds stall, because the big systems have gatekeepers.
Truto's May 2026 integration guide reports that Yardi's interface program admits companies at least 2 years old with 3 active Voyager clients, and RealPage routes outside apps through its RPX program. For listings, RESO's Web API leaderboard shows at least 90% of multiple listing services (MLSs) on a certified Web API.
- Ask for: 2 projects in your segment, the property systems each one connected to, and who the vendor spoke to on the integration side.
- Red flag: a portfolio of screens with no system names.
- Our term: CondoGenie for condo boards, C.I.A. Services on RedDog, Lake on Calry, and AreaButler on onOffice and Propstack, all on our PropTech case studies page.
Lake's rebuild took 3 months. Its connected properties have since grown from about 500 to 40,000.
References that are still in production
A reference from a project that ended at launch shows you the sales process. A client still running the product years later shows you how the code holds up.
- Ask for: clients that still run the product, and the date of each one's last release.
- Red flag: references only from projects that ended at launch.
- Our term: each PropTech case study names the client, the year we started, and its status: CondoGenie since 2018, AreaButler since May 2022, and Lake since 2025, all ongoing. The reviews behind them are public on Clutch (38 reviews, 5.0 rating, October 2026).
Rafal Dyrda hired us in 2018 to replace the old version of CondoGenie, his condo management SaaS. He set out the goal in his review on Clutch:
"Our goal was to replace an old version of the software with something that will sustain our customers and their needs for years to come."
Rafal Dyrda, founder, CondoGenie
Our team still ships CondoGenie 8 years later. In August 2026 alone we put out 5 production releases, and active users grew from 1,398 in 2019 to 19,324 in 2025.
Repository and IP ownership from day one
If the contract passes intellectual property (IP) at final payment, the code you paid for in month 7 of a stopped project still belongs to the vendor. Account control removes most of that risk. With the repository, cloud account, and domain in your organization, the vendor is an invited collaborator you can remove.
- Ask for: whose GitHub organization, cloud account, and domain hold the work on day one, and when IP passes to you.
- Red flag: "You get the code at the end."
- Our term: the repository, cloud accounts, and domain sit in your organization from day one, and we work as invited collaborators. On a project takeover, repositories, cloud tenancy, credentials, and documentation move into accounts you own within 5 business days. The invoice comes to you, and you can revoke our access in one click.
C.I.A. Services runs around 150 associations and more than 50,000 properties in Houston and San Antonio on RedDog, which stayed in place with the client's own backend developer. The owner and board app we built reads RedDog's data through an API.
Milestone payments or a monthly pod, never an open hourly meter
A whole-build fixed price on code the vendor hasn't read is a guess with a number on it, and the first surprise comes back as a change request. Put an audit first and fixed phases after it, and every fixed price you pay covers scope someone has read.
- Ask for: what is fixed, what is billed monthly, and how a change that surfaces mid-phase gets priced.
- Red flag: a single fixed price for a build the vendor hasn't opened.
- Our term: the software audit is fixed at $5,000 or $9,900. Each phase after it is priced on its own, and anything that surfaces mid-phase gets its own name and its own quote. Ongoing work runs as a senior engineering pod at $25,000 to $60,000 per month on terms of 3 to 6 months, billed monthly and never by the hour.
AreaButler, a German PropTech company, has worked with our engineers since May 2022. Founder Alexander Timper wrote on Clutch that feature cards come from customer and market feedback, and "we estimate the efforts and prioritize based on customer benefit and market impact."
A security plan you can read before the first commit
On a vendor change, the old team's keys, tokens, and admin logins keep working until someone rotates them. A written security plan says who rotates them and on which day, before any code ships.
- Ask for: how credentials move, who can still log in after handover, and what the audit checks.
- Red flag: a certificate logo with no written practice behind it.
- Our term: secrets rotated into your own vault, the previous team's keys cut off the same day, a security and data review inside every software audit, and Sentry in production on CondoGenie. An automated security pass on AI-generated code is part of our definition of done and catches flaws like key-stealing injection paths. Our legal entity is registered in Estonia, in the EU.
On CondoGenie, Sentry sends defects to our team before residents report them.
In the C.I.A. Services app, each role sees only its own data. Owners see their account, multi-lot owners see all their accounts, board members see some confidential data for their community, and staff see every client community.
A post-launch SLA with a named person on it
"Support available" costs a vendor nothing to write, and it doesn't say who picks up when the resident portal stops loading at 7 p.m. On CondoGenie, the answer is in writing: production support and bug fixing are a standing commitment through 2026.
- Ask for: response time by severity, the name of the person who answers, and the monitoring that sees a defect first.
- Red flag: "support available" with no person and no number.
- Our term: a named engineer on your Slack, Sentry alerts to our team before your users report a defect, and support in the first 48 hours after launch. A response time for each severity level goes into your retainer. We set that figure per retainer because [NEEDS DATA: one-line reason, or replace with the severity-1 number from D6 (a)].
At AreaButler, Alexander Timper wrote on Clutch that in case of bugs the team "is super responsive and takes actions also late at night."
An exit clause that works on a bad day
You read the exit clause on a bad day: a release has slipped for the third time, or the company is changing hands. What helps then is a running system in your own accounts and documentation another team can pick up.
- Ask for: the notice period, what you receive on exit, and whether you can stop after any phase. If you license the software, ask about source code escrow, a separate agreement with its own terms (Kilpatrick Townsend's note covers how to negotiate one).
- Red flag: a long minimum term with nothing handed over until the end.
- Our term: the accounts are yours from the start, our access is revocable in one click, you buy work phase by phase, and the audit and Solution Design documents go with you to any vendor. If a previous vendor already walked away, our project takeover starts by moving the accounts to you.
For a PropTech product bought by an acquirer, the change of hands was the sale itself. We stood its code up in the acquirer's own AWS account, then handed over a verification walkthrough, documentation, and 30 days of support, over 2 to 3 weeks.
A paid discovery with a price and a deliverable
Pay for discovery, and check that its output works without the vendor. A free discovery ends in a proposal, so its job is to sell the build. A paid one ends in documents you can hand to anyone.
- Ask for: the price, the duration, the documents you receive, and whether "don't rebuild" is an allowed answer.
- Red flag: a free discovery that ends in a proposal.
- Our term: a free 45-minute call, then a software audit at $5,000 in 5 business days or $9,900 in 10, with a keep, refactor, or rebuild decision per module. For a new product, we run a 4-week Solution Design that ends in user stories with acceptance criteria, a clickable prototype tested with users, and a module-level estimate. It costs $14,000 to $25,000, paid half at kickoff and half on acceptance.
For a mobility operator under NDA, we returned 16 gaps in its specification of 90 user stories before quoting, then ran a 4-week Solution Design.
Morten Kroslid, chairman and founder of a Norwegian PropTech company that digitalizes apartment refurbishment, listed a final system specification and an evaluation of the existing platform among his results on Clutch. What stood out to him was "understanding the scope and challenge very fast and giving ideas for solutions."
When another vendor fits better
We're the wrong pick in 2 cases, and both buyers have a fair requirement. An enterprise real estate group rolling out enterprise resource planning (ERP) and banking integrations across thousands of staff needs it done without stopping the business. A board that wants a single fixed price before anyone reads the code wants a number it can approve.
The first is mainly a change-management job. The second is the red flag from the billing check above.
A large integrator with a change-management practice fits the first. For the second, we'll decline the whole-build price and offer the audit first.
Should I choose a fixed price or a monthly team for property software?
Choose a fixed price for a phase whose code has been read and whose scope is written down. Choose a monthly team for a live product with a roadmap measured in years, such as CondoGenie, which we have run since 2018. A fixed price on unread code turns each surprise into a change request.
What should a post-launch SLA for property management software include?
A post-launch SLA should set a response time for each severity level, name the engineer who answers, and require monitoring that catches a defect before residents or owners report it. It should also cover the first 48 hours after launch. Ours puts a named engineer on your Slack, sends Sentry alerts to our team, and writes the response time into your retainer, because [NEEDS DATA: same reason as in the SLA section, or the D6 (a) number].
Are boutique PropTech development companies a better choice than large firms?
A smaller specialist team fits a product company with a single decision-maker and a multi-year roadmap. AreaButler's founder wrote on Clutch, "We interviewed around 20 companies world wide," before choosing us, and Lake compared 150 vendors.
A large firm fits an enterprise real estate group rolling out ERP and banking integrations across thousands of staff. Ask either kind for the 8 checks above.
How to choose a PropTech software development company from your shortlist
Send the 8 checks to every vendor on your shortlist, us included, and compare the answers in writing. Ours are on this page, with the clients and dates behind them. For how we build property platforms, see our PropTech software development page.
Start with a 45-minute call, then a $5,000 audit if it fits.
[Book the 45-minute call]
Written by Yulya Glamazdina, marketing, Brocoders. Reviewed by Rodion Salnik, co-founder and CTO. Last updated October 2026.
We wrote this guide about our own terms, and it ranks no vendors. For a list of PropTech development companies, see our PropTech companies list.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ask for these 8 things. They are comparable projects with the integrations named, references still in production, repository ownership from day one, milestone or monthly billing, a written security plan, a post-launch SLA, an exit clause, and a paid discovery.
Behind each answer, ask for a document or a named client you can call. Walk away from a vendor that answers the ownership or exit questions with adjectives.
You own the code when the contract assigns IP to you in writing and the repository sits in your organization. A contract that passes IP only at final payment leaves partial work with the vendor if the project stops.
Open the repository, cloud accounts, and domain in your own organization before the first commit, and add the vendor as a collaborator. On a takeover, we move repositories, cloud tenancy, credentials, and documentation into accounts you own within 5 business days.
Our software audit costs $5,000 for 5 business days or $9,900 for 10, at a fixed price. A 4-week Solution Design for a new product costs $14,000 to $25,000, paid half at kickoff and half on acceptance. Both end in documents you can take to any vendor, and the first 45-minute call is free.