You may have asked yourself just how rental property management software can help your business as you explored the many options on the market for online property management software tools. If you are using outdated software, spreadsheets, or the paper and filing cabinet method, online property management software tools have become very powerful in the past few years as the property management software industry has matured. In this post, we will specifically talk about why it’s worth the time and effort investigating new tools for your business and how it can save you money in the short and long term. It is also important to mention that the start of the recession, companies that have been able to successfully grow their business have made widespread use of new technology that has allowed them to be much more efficient and save on overhead costs. Who doesn’t want to be more efficient and do more with less?

You may not have realized that smaller companies and individual landlords are now able to run their businesses using the same best practices and efficiencies similar to that of larger rental property management companies. As rental property management software has become more powerful and new technologies have appeared, affordability is now better than ever. What may have cost you thousands of dollars five years ago can now be bought for much less, as wide availability of the internet has considerably lowered costs for online property management software. An interesting statistic that we came across recently is that today over 60% of property management businesses use a rental property management software system to automate tasks, track online leads, and provide tenants with online services. Like many other industries, successful property managers are increasingly moving toward offering these services to remain competitive and attract renters who are becoming more and more technology-savvy. According to research done by Software Advice, Inc., companies who use a rental property management software solution managed an average of 102 rental units per employee, as compared to 61 units per employee for those that used generic software such as spreadsheets! That’s a great productivity improvement that can free up time to work on more valuable tasks.

What’s your strategy for the future and how does online property management software fit into the picture? What would you do if you had a large amount of time freed up for yourself and your employees? Here are a few questions that we challenge you to consider:

1. If you had a considerable amount of new free time for yourself or your employees, what could you spend it on to grow your business and increase revenues?
2. How many times over the past year have you thought about how technology has changed your business and will continue to do so?
3. What is your strategy to provide tenants with online services such as maintenance requests, rent collection, and also make them available to use from smartphones and tablets?

In future posts we will talk about these three questions in much greater detail. This is an exciting time to be in the property management industry. As they say, knowledge is power and being prepared will help to bring you continued future success.