Annoyances in keeping property records in one place

[nkrish]

Hi All,

Just wondering if there are any investors out there with multiple properties who face any issues around keeping all records related to the properties they own.

I find it annoying keeping documents in one place, keeping maintenance histories in another place and invoices in another place (and loosing one or two of them over the year).

Would anyone else have similar issues? I am trying to understand if this is a real problem for others as well or am I the only one with this annoyance.

Hopefully this starts some constructive discussions.

Cheers, Neil.

[donna]

Hi Neil,

Welcome to PropertyTalk.

I like digital format and scan paper based comms so no I don't have any issues personally. Most info ends up in soft format around annual returns time.

cheers,

donna

[nkrish]

Hi Dona, Thank you for your reply.

What I am trying to find out is if there was a solution for storing all property related information (LIM, builders reports, titles, maintenance details (when was 10 year alarm fitted in), property managers details, tenants details, reminders and much more) would it be useful to investors or not.

First stage I am trying (through other channels as well) is to see if this is a real problem or not before investing the time/money in developing a SECURE online solution around this and hence my post.

Personally I would love this as I would be able to see all information around my property but a business cannot be based on myself only I will need to find some real customers who would be interested in something like this.

Cheers, Neil.

[Bobsyouruncle]

I don't quite follow your annoyance. Are you talking about your record keeping hard copies? This is just part of running any business. We have 1 Eastlite folder per property so you can get complete history or info from one source of hard copy. Everything else is run through MYOB so never any need to "Find" anything.

What exactly is the problem you are having?

[nkrish]

Hi Uncle and Donna,

What I am trying to find out is, if there was a SECURE solution online or an application on your computer for the below, would it be useful and would you or other investors use it?

- For storing Property meta data (Purchase price, settlement date, deposit paid, address, etc)
- For storing all property related documents (LIM, builders reports, titles, etc)
- For storing maintenance details (date that 10 year alarm fitted in, servicing done on heat pump, etc) and add related invoice photos etc
- Property managers details
- Tenants details
- Ability to setup reminders (remind me in 10 years when I need to change the alarm, Remind me in 2 years that I need to service the heat pump)

Later on more things could be built into a solution (depending on demand) like this to give more value to investors like:
- Software predicted valuations for all your properties
- Analytics to compare your deposits against the current valuations to track your investments returns
- Calculators to calculate various property related metrics (calculate repayments across different banks, explore different strategies with money put into a property, or any other useful calculation which other people can define)

I am trying (through other channels as well) to see if this is a real problem or not before investing the time/money in developing a solution around this.

Personally I would love this as I would be able to see all information around my property but a business cannot be based on my self only I will need to find some real customers who would be interested in something like this.

What are your or other peoples thoughts on something like this?

At the moment I am doing things manually as well, documents in email, no proper place for maintenance history, Invoices in a box, etc and it is annoying hunting for things when needed 3 years later (warranty, alarm codes, etc).

Cheers Neil.

[Keys]

I use dropbox. Label all scanned files with the property name first. Use the search engine on my computer explorer programe to find what I want within minutes if not seconds.

[FJW]

Hi Neil

Have you thought about going paperless so its all stored in the cloud?

Hope this helps

[sidinz]

There's already property management software out there. You might find you're duplicating something unnecessarily, making it hard to find clients.

As for me, I use a laptop. Most documents come in PDFs or Word. For other stuff I create spreadsheets. Pretty simple, really.

[nkrish]

Hi Sidinz,

I have looked at property management software already available and what I see is that its targeted more towards property managers then individual investors. Also their price point reflects their target market of larger property management companies which is not suitable for us.

At this stage I am putting it out there to gauge interest and learn other people's thoughts on this topic. This will allow me to make a more informed decision on what is actually needed versus what I think is needed.

You are spot on, I do not want to go down the route of building a solution looking for a problem which very few people encounter and hence the question to all investors . I am attempting to identify a real pain point which can be automated for investors and build a solution around it. It may be this or something else which collectively annoys a lot of investors. I am open to suggestions/ideas.

My vision was the next generation of tools to make it easier to manage all aspects of managing your properties.

I do the very same thing at the moment which you do with Excel, emails, folders in my computer.

I am a technologist and like to improve manual processes. Once a manual process is improved, much more can be built on top of it in terms of analytics and alerts and automation to free up our times for the more important things in life.

Cheers, Neil.

[Perry]

Is there not a risk of paralysis by analysis, though?

How much of the type of information detail that you've described is needed often enough to warrant the effort and expense of what you're thinking about? Would there be a certain number-of-rentals figure cut-off point below which a small filing cabinet and the earlier-mentioned computer programs would not be more than adequate?

I pose those question based on assorted claims that by far the bigger bulk of NZ residential LLs are mum and dad investors with less than 4 rentals.

[Nick G]

I'm in IT also and I don't really think there is a market for this because Dropbox is free and Evernote has a lot going on for it also. For a bit extra per year I back up my Dropbox daily to the cloud.

What might be useful is a product that teaches people how to do the same rather than another indexing and archive service. Most people don't know how to use the tools they have at their fingertips.

[Perry]

What might be useful is a product that teaches people how to do the same rather than another indexing and archive service. Most people don't know how to use the tools they have at their fingertips.

How right you are! It never ceases to amaze me how many people think the Internet and Gooble are the same thing. Simply because they can't type a web page address into their browser. They're almost too dangerous to be allowed near a computer.

[nkrish]

Nick/Perry,


Good to see everyone's view point on the topic. It's getting me thinking about all the different points you all are making. It does appear that this will indeed be a hard sell.


A few people from another channel are interested in something of this nature but if the market is not big enough then its not worth investing the time and money into it. The people who are interested appear to be the younger investors who are more technology oriented. Sorry I am not generalizing this based on anyone of you as I do not fully understand your demographics but it is based on the people I have met physically so far and discussed this with.


Yes the existing tools do allow for all of this to be managed, which is what I do myself at the moment and the few people who are interested also do. We use a mix of One Note, OneDrive, Dropbox, windows folders, emails etc between all of us.


One of them uses One Note but finds keeping the maintenance history difficult especially with invoices. If he could associate an invoice with a maintenance item it would work well for him.


Perry, Your comments are interesting and have me thinking a lot, would an investor pay 25-35 dollars a month for the ability to keep things in one place and setup reminders, and keep invoices in one place? More thoughts on it would be, would investors with 1-2 properties find it useful if it was a free service and once you go beyond you start paying?


But the underlying question would still be are there enough investors interested in it or not. I will be meeting more people over the next few weeks and going into more channels to study this more to see if there is a market or not.

Cheers, Neil

[Nick G]

One more thing, if an investor uses a property manager this would change your client pain point also. I get monthly statements that I save into a dropbox that my accountant accesses and my accounts synch with Xero, job done.

[nkrish]

Demographics - Young investors who maybe managing properties themselves, lol, pretty small market. But definitely a question I will ask the people who want something like this, are you managing the properties yourself?