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 If you are using outdated software, spreadsheets, or the paper and filing cabinet method, online property management software tools have become very powerful in the past few years as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.

Just how easy is it for a renter to find my properties on the Internet?  This is a question we have been asked many times from our clients as they look to understand how well their paid and non-paid property advertising efforts are working for them.  As anyone who has done any internet advertising knows, these costs are both expensive and time consuming - and money doesn’t grow on trees.  So just how can a property manager find out if their advertising is working for them?

Fortunately, our diverse customer base allows us to speak with many property managers to understand and develop best practices for advertising online.   To help answer this question for our clients, we have been working to develop a method to help our property managers best allocate their advertising dollars.  We’ve coined this term “Propability”, and define it as: the ability of a property to be easily found on the internet and to attract well-qualified renters.   Propability should be an important consideration to take into account for any property advertising and marketing that you plan to do.

What Determines Propability?

• Ad Content - Does your ad’s content sound professional and does it entice the renter to continue reading to learn more about your rental?  The better the content, the more engaged your ad reader will be.   This also includes correcting spelling and grammar errors that can make your business look unprofessional.

• Photos, Video, and Floor plans - These are probably the most important, since as the saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words.  Do you take professional looking pictures of your properties?  Do you have 360 degree views, great lighting, high quality video walkthroughs, and include floorplans?

• Keyword Tagging - Property listing websites and search engines rely on specific search terms that help renters to find properties that interest them.  Are you using the right terms to find a great match for your property?

• Web Search - Rentals typically aren’t listed long enough to be indexed by Google and Bing, but the website that you list your properties on is very important.   Listings on high-quality websites are going to have a higher number of renters and will drive more traffic to view your rental.  Also, don’t forget about using niche websites if you have unique properties such as luxury apartments or vacation rentals.

• Social Media - The use of social media websites and tools such as Facebook, twitter, and Google+ are great ways for your rental to quickly and easily spread among groups.  For example, a Facebook “like” of your rental can quickly lead to hundreds or even thousands of people seeing your property.  This also helps to build brand recognition for your business.  We believe social media will continue to become more important over time as an advertising mechanism.

• Linkability - An important tie-in to social media is how linkable your property is so that a renter can save it for later or send to another person.  Do you offer social media buttons, emailing of property listings, and the ability for a renter to print or save properties for later without having to do a new search?

In the coming months, we will be publishing more information on propability and how it can help your business, and also discuss how we plan to integrate propability into the E-Rental Tools property management software package.

Any others we’re missing that are important to your property advertising?