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How to Create a Property Management Dashboard in Looker

Cody Schneider•

Building a powerful property management dashboard puts all your critical data in one place, helping you make smarter decisions on everything from tenant turnover to maintenance spending. This guide walks you through the key metrics you need to track and the step-by-step process for creating a comprehensive and interactive property management dashboard in Looker.

Deciding What to Track: Key Property Management Metrics

Before you build anything, you need a clear plan. A good dashboard tells a story about your portfolio's health. The most effective ones combine high-level financial data with granular operational metrics. Grouping your metrics helps you organize your dashboard and makes it easier to spot trends.

Financial Performance Metrics

These are the numbers that tell you if you're making money. They are the bedrock of any property management dashboard and should be prominently displayed.

  • Occupancy Rate: This is a simple but critical health indicator. You calculate it by dividing the number of occupied units by the total number of units. Tracking this over time shows you leasing trends and seasonality.

  • Net Operating Income (NOI): This is your total income after subtracting all operating expenses. NOI is a pure measure of a property's profitability before considering debt and taxes. Your dashboard should show NOI for the portfolio and on a per-property basis.

  • Gross Potential Rent (GPR): The maximum rental income you could generate if every unit were leased at market rate. This is your baseline for measuring performance.

  • Vacancy Loss: The difference between your GPR and your actual rental income. Visualizing this helps you understand the direct financial impact of empty units.

  • Operating Expenses (OpEx): All the costs associated with running your properties, not including mortgage payments. Break this down by category, such as maintenance, utilities, management fees, and property taxes, to see where your money is going.

  • YoY Revenue and Expense Growth: Comparing your current income and expenses to the same period last year provides valuable context. Are maintenance costs rising faster than rent? This comparison makes those trends obvious.

Operational Efficiency Metrics

These metrics focus on how well you're running your day-to-day operations. Improving these numbers can directly boost your bottom line and tenant satisfaction.

  • Average Days to Lease: How long does an empty unit sit on the market? A high number could indicate issues with your pricing, marketing, or the unit's condition.

  • Lease Renewal Rate: What percentage of tenants are renewing their leases? A high renewal rate means lower turnover costs (cleaning, repairs, marketing) and more stable income.

  • Maintenance Request Turnaround Time: The average time from when a tenant submits a maintenance request to when it's resolved. This is a huge factor in tenant happiness.

  • Costs per Turn: The average cost to get a unit ready for a new tenant after the last one moves out. Keeping this number low without cutting corners is a constant challenge for property managers.

Gathering Your Data for Looker

Looker visualizes data, it doesn't store it. To build your dashboard, you first need to connect Looker to where your property management data lives. For most property managers, data is scattered across several different applications:

  • Accounting Software: Tools like QuickBooks, AppFolio, or Yardi contain your core financial data (rent payments, expenses, etc.).

  • CRM or Leasing Platforms: These hold information on leads, applications, lease start and end dates, and tenant communications.

  • Maintenance System: A platform like Zendesk or even a detailed spreadsheet is where you track work orders, costs, and resolution times.

To use this data in Looker, it typically needs to be consolidated into a central data warehouse (like Google BigQuery, Snowflake, or Amazon Redshift). Once there, a data analyst uses Looker’s modeling layer (LookML) to define the relationships between your different data sets — for example, linking a tenant ID from your CRM to their payment history in QuickBooks. This behind-the-scenes work is what makes it possible to ask complex questions and get a single, unified view of your business.

Step-by-Step: Building Your Property Management Dashboard in Looker

With your data sources connected and your metrics defined, you're ready to start building. The core components of a Looker dashboard are "tiles," which are individual visualizations like charts, graphs, or single numbers.

Step 1: Create a New Dashboard

First, navigate to the folder where you want your dashboard to live. In the top right corner, click the New button and select Dashboard. Give it a clear, descriptive name like "Property Management Performance Overview."

Step 2: Build Your KPI Tiles

Start with the high-level numbers that you want to see at a glance. Single value visualizations are perfect for this. We’ll create a tile for Occupancy Rate.

  1. Click Edit Dashboard and then Add Tile. A window will appear asking you to choose an "Explore." An Explore is a curated starting point for data exploration created in LookML. You’ll likely have Explores named something like Properties, Leases, or Financials.

  2. For this, let's assume you have a Properties Explore.

  3. In the Explore interface, you'll see a list of "Dimensions" (fields you can group by, like Property Name or City) and "Measures" (fields you can calculate, like Count or Sum).

  4. Select the "Occupancy Rate" measure. Your data team would have predefined this calculation in the LookML model.

  5. Under the Visualization tab, choose "Single Value."

  6. Click Run to see the result. If it looks good, click Save to add the tile to your dashboard.

Repeat this process to create single value tiles for other key metrics like NOI (This Month), Average Days to Lease, and Maintenance Requests (Open). Arrange these at the top of your dashboard so they are the first thing you see.

Step 3: Visualize Trends Over Time

Single numbers are great, but seeing a trend gives you context. Let's create a line chart to show NOI over the last 12 months.

  1. Add a new tile and select your Financials Explore.

  2. From your list of dimensions, find a date field like "Transaction Date" or "Month." Hover over it, and select "Filter." Set the filter to be "in the past 12 months."

  3. Select "Month" again, but this time just click on it to add it to your report.

  4. From your measures, select "Net Operating Income."

  5. Go to the Visualization tab and choose the "Line" chart option.

  6. Run a test to preview the chart, then save it to your dashboard.

You can create similar trend lines for Occupancy Rate Over Time or New Leases per Month.

Step 4: Create Tables for Deeper Dives

Sometimes you just need to see the raw numbers. A table is perfect for breaking down performance by property.

  1. Add a new tile and choose the Properties Explore.

  2. Select your dimensions: "Property Name" and "City."

  3. Select your measures: "Occupancy Rate," "Net Operating Income," and "Total Operating Expenses."

  4. Choose the "Table" visualization type. Looker has great formatting options for tables, like adding heatmaps to quickly show high and low values.

  5. Save this tile. It will serve as an excellent summary of each property’s performance.

Step 5: Add Filters for Interactive Slicing and Dicing

This is where Looker really shines. Filters turn a static report into an interactive tool.

  1. While in edit mode on your dashboard, click Filters in the top toolbar and then Add Filter.

  2. Let’s add a filter for "Property Name." Give the filter a name and choose the "Dropdown" control type.

  3. In the "Field to Filter" option, select the "Property Name" field from your Properties Explore.

  4. Next, you have to link this filter to each tile you want it to control. In the "Tiles to Update" tab, link the dashboard filter to the corresponding field in each tile.

  5. Save the filter. Now, you can use the dropdown menu at the top of your dashboard to view data for a single property or a group of them.

Consider adding other useful filters like Date Range, City, or Building Type.

Step 6: Organize and Share

Now, arrange your tiles logically. Put your high-level KPIs at the top, followed by trends and more detailed breakdowns below. Use text tiles to add headings or brief explanations where needed. Once you're done, save your changes. Your dashboard is now a live, updating resource you can share with your team or stakeholders, right from Looker.

Final Thoughts

Creating a property management dashboard in Looker organizes your scattered data into a single source of truth, giving you the clarity needed to track performance, spot problems early, and improve your portfolio's profitability. It turns complex data streams into actionable operational insights for your entire team.

While Looker is immensely powerful, its setup requires technical expertise and a steep learning curve. At Graphed, we specialize in simplifying this entire process. You can connect your data sources - from spreadsheets to accounting software - in minutes, and then just ask for the charts and dashboards you need using plain English. Instead of spending weeks on technical setup, you get a real-time, interactive dashboard in seconds, built by your own AI data analyst. See how easy it is to get started with Graphed and start getting insights from your data today.