For property managers
Pricing by instinct works right up until somebody asks you to explain it. Then it is your experience against a number the owner found on a website, and experience does not photograph well in an email.
Run each unit the same way and a portfolio gets a single standard instead of forty opinions. The report prints the comparables it used, with addresses, rents and when each was last seen, and an appendix listing every attribute answer that went into the estimate. Nobody has to trust the number, because anyone can trace it. That also means the report cannot be quietly tilted: whatever was entered is printed.
Every comparable the estimate used, with address, beds and baths, size, rent, distance and when it was last seen.
A number with reasoning attached survives the owner call.
Send the document with the recommendation instead of defending it twice.
Pricing near the market rather than above it gets units leased sooner.
Every unit priced the same way, which is what makes a portfolio comparable to itself.
Compliance
New York, New Jersey and California have passed laws restricting rent setting software that runs on nonpublic competitor data, and more states are drafting their own. Several of the largest management firms in the country have paid multi million dollar settlements and agreed to change how they price. When forty units are your responsibility, that exposure is yours as well.
Independent is how this is built rather than a policy added on top of it. For a portfolio that is the difference between a pricing method you can hand to a regulator, an owner or a tenant, and one you have to explain.
Run one, see whether the document would have ended the conversation, then decide about the rest of the portfolio.