17th August 2010

Property Management Software Solutions

posted in Property Management |

Recently, in response to a request from a friend, I embarked on a search for property management software. My friend had been using a package called RentRight for many years and was now faced with replacing one of the computers attached to her in-house local area network (LAN.)

Since RentRight is such an old program and is no longer in development by its owner Domin-8, we were looking to find a package that would run on Windows 7 and would also work well with her legacy Novell Netware server.

Now, before you laugh at the fact that they are still running Novell Netware, consider the fact that I’ve seen countless Novell installations where the uptime is on the order of years, not months. This means that the server has been running continuously, without being rebooted, for YEARS. Show me ANY Microsoft server installation that can do that and I’ll shut up right now……..no takers? Ok then….

Novell Netware’s bulletproof nature not withstanding, Microsoft has spent billions of dollars over the years to convince people in the computer market  that Microsoft Windows Server is the best platform to run on and unfortunately for the users, it has succeeded. Unfortunate for the users, but very fortunate for computer support people.

So much so that, the only replacement software I could find, required a Microsoft Server due to the database engine which the software was designed around. Again very unfortunate for the users because normally, the “horsepower” and scalability provided by a server-based database engine is completely unnecessary.

The only other option I found was a large number of web-based property management applications which you would access using your internet connection and a web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox. It seems the providers of these solutions  would like their customers to pay monthly forever just to use their property management software. Of all the property managers I spoke with, none of them want to pay monthly forever for anything, let alone a software application. But there are other problems with this arrangement.

In Florida, we are subject to a hurricane season on a yearly basis. Some years we are not affected at all but other years we could lose power for weeks at a time. Since internet service is not yet considered a “utility,” it is usually the last service to be restored after a storm. Personally, back in 2005, we lost electricity service for 12 days and it was more than a month before internet access was restored. In fact, services were restored in the following order: cellular phone service, electricity, land-line telephone service and finally, cable TV/internet access.

If my friend would have been using one of these services, her business would have been at a complete standstill. Another problem with these Software-as-a-service solutions is that suppose you decide that your current provider isn’t working out for you. You could stop paying monthly and cancel the service, but what about all your data? Usually property management information systems provide access to a lot of information which is stored in many different database tables. All of the online solution providers use different database structures and there is usually no way to export the data you’ve entered, sometimes years worth, and take it with you. To me, that’s just not a viable solution and I think many property managers would agree.

So, for now, the search goes on. My friend opted to purchase a new computer running Windows XP so that it would easily replace the old one. With the economy the way it is, she just couldn’t afford to replace her entire network, property management software and pay someone to migrate her RentRight data to a new property management system.

There are currently 2 responses to “Property Management Software Solutions”

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  1. 1 On August 17th, 2010, Sesha Mudumbi said:

    Dear Sir

    Although you posted some valuable points (such as power in Florida after a storm etc), some counter – points also have to be mentioned:

    1. Several web based products do charge a monthly subscription. However, you get such benefits as ACH rent collection etc. included for the price. For ex, my web product (www.optimallandlord.com) would cost a prospective user $4.99 per unit per month. But, the cost of ACH rent collection is included. Typical rent collection costs run upto 3$ (if not more). So, you are only paying, perhaps, less than $2 per month for all the other features of the product.

    2. There are several automated features such as lease renewals/terminations, notifications, invoices, late fee calculations, reminders, repair tickets – that it may not be imperative for a prospective landlord to constantly be logged in (as you suggest the case of after a storm and being without internet service). The settings one sets up when an account is setup would automatically run the processes for you. There would be no need for a landlord to baby sit that part of the product.

    3. Most importantly, you mention issues related to different vendors having different databases. You are exactly correct – but most conscientious websites/managements would definitely have data migration processes – for ex, for our website, we have excel templates that would clearly indicate what the mandatory fields are for every table and how to input them. Further, we assist our converting customers to populate these spreadsheets and also go to the extent of loading it for them. So, you need to appreciate that many companies such as ours try and consume the burden of converting a customer’s existing data and rarely push this on the customer. Ofcourse, some websites may charge a nominal data conversion cost.

    Sesha.

  2. 2 On October 7th, 2010, PhillyLandlord said:

    Sasha,

    To counter, i don’t think you read the article correctly, and I think you make some assumptions which only validate the points of the article.

    1 – Point 1, I can agree with, if you use ACH functions. I can tell you that some of my tenants do not have ACH available to them. Actually, some still pay by money order. For these tenants, there is no benefit.
    2 – This can be a blessing and a burden. Imagine this scenario, a tenant pays manually (check or money order). The system “automatically run the processes”. If I am unable to log in I will need to go in and manually adjust all rents to remove the late fees. If notifications are on, I may have some very ticked off tenants if they received notices of late payment of rent when they weren’t late. I am sure you can shut off these automatic processes, but shutting them off removes this as a selling point.
    3 – You missed this point completely. The author is stating that he wants to EXPORT all information OUT of your system and would want to take it with him/her whenever they chose to no longer use your service. All companies make it easier to import the data, they want to get customers. It’s Exporting the data into a workable format when you leave that is an issue.

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