After many conversations with property management professionals, it is clear that there is concern in whether to use a web based rental property management software system due to the data being put on a third party server.  I can relate with this concern.   Years ago, I had the option to use a service to sync my PDA phone with my desktop.  The service would first sync the data to their servers and then sync to my PDA phone over the Internet.  For some reason, I felt uncomfortable with the thought that my data was being stored on a third party server, so I chose not to use the service.

Today I use a hosted Exchange service to handle my email, calendar, task, and contact management synchronization to my desktop and PDA phone.  They deal with all of the upgrade headaches, support of the software and servers, and have prompt and friendly service when I have issues.  And I get all of this for just a few dollars a month.   What changed?  My paradigm changed.

A couple of years ago, the town that I live in had what was later called the 100 year flood.  Homes in my neighborhood got two to three feet of water in their basements.  Just six months prior, we had set up offices in our basement for a recording studio business my children operate and offices for my wife and me.  We had never had a drop of water in our basement for 15 years.  So we put our computers on the stands close to the floor (not the best decision).  We were fortunate in that we only got 4-6 inches of water.  However, it was just enough to harm every computer we had.   So even though we had backed up each computer to the others (what were the chances that all of the computers would fail), the worst scenario possible occurred.  We were fortunate in that the hard drives were recoverable.  If we had gotten 6 more inches of water, that would not have been possible.

Today, I firmly believe that my data is safer when stored on reliable third party servers.  They have business level data redundancy and recovery procedures, secure environmentally controlled facilities, and secure data transfer from the web browser to their servers.  And it is very affordable.

Property management companies or landlords doing their own management no longer need to worry about these issues.   By using an online property management software program, all of the data and software issues are managed by the software company, in a safer and more reliable environment, allowing you to focus on your core business, managing properties.   Just look at the growth in popularity of Google’s offering of calendar and document services.  Businesses are learning that it cost less and is more reliable to use someone else’s servers than having their own.

Should you put your property management data online?  The answer is yes.

Rob Crichlow
DIY Real Estate Solutions

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 1:31 am and is filed under Real Estate Internet Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.