Data from Your Property Management Software

I'd like to take a poll and hope you will contribute your vote and additional thoughts. Please follow this link to vote. Thanks.

poll.fm/u0uz

Good poll. I do understand that there is a cost for the vendor to provide the data, but in most cases the cost is minimal and it is just a way to generate more fees, IMHO anyway.

I worked at one firm and the owner made it clear that he felt he had the right to charge fees for giving firms their data. To me, it would be consider good customer service. Again, that's my opinion. It is one of those things that should be negotiated up front in the contract.

I think this is really two questions: Are we talking about pure data extraction, such as a simple export, or are we talking about data manipulation and analysis? In my humble opinion, you should have access to your data 100% of the time through some sort of export feature without any other fees because you own that data, they only store it. However, if you want the system to dissect your data 1,000 different ways, then there is a development cost to those systems and I see no problem with the company charging for that service.

If a competitor comes along and offers that service for free, then the original company will have to adapt or lose customers, but that means the market will dictate the cost of that extra feature.

Brent,

Agreed. If you are wanting data manipulated or analyzed in any way I can understand a charge for that service. That is common when a company is building an interface to another system.

Again, this is one of those contract issues that should be ironed out. How will you get your data, what format, what frequency, etc.?

Hello, This is a tough question because it completely depends on the vendor 'type' and data needed. If you are a $100 dollar a month client utilizing a cloud type of application, then it would be very tough to get you a data dump. If you are a Yardi client, then its part of the contract that you have data access, plus the ability to write custom reports.