Can Property Stampede Keep You Out of Court?

I think it can! I read Preparing for Court: Landlord/Tenant Disputes on the All Property Management Blog and it discussed how you can avoid going to court when disputes arise. In the article, they say that the key to avoiding court is to maintain good records.

They say to make note of everything in regards to the property and tenant. Keep the notes as long as possible. They also recommend taking photos of the condition of the unit before and after a tenant occupies the property, so that you can back your decision in retaining their security deposit. So how can our online property management application keep you out of court?

Property Stampede allows you to create notes and attach them directly to properties, units, leases and tenants, so if you need to easily document events, problems, and important details that could potentially keep you out of court. Not to mention you have the ability to upload pictures, videos and receipts and attach them to properties, units, leases or tenants. Your tenants also have the ability to view the lease at any time from our web site, so they never have to contact you to view their lease terms.

Ultimately Property Stampede provides property managers and real estate investors with the organizational tools to maintain the proper records that can keep them from having to sit before a judge. I think that is something worth value.

We Have Business Cards and a Logo!

After quite a bit of debate and many revisions, we have finally designed our business cards and our logo.  This is really exciting and we are looking forward to any feedback you may have.

Business Card Front

Business Card Back

Logo

What is most important to you in picking a business application?

We at Property Stampede are trying to determine what drives value in a business application. We would like to think that it is our fashionable appearance or our heart warming personalities that creates value for our end users... but we completely understand if you disagree.

The reason we are trying to determine what drives value, is quite simple really, we want to offer the best possible application to our customers as we can. It helps us little if we do not know what makes our customers really excited about our application. Is it a low price, a large feature list, top notch customer service and support? What makes our customers tick?

Can a company provide a large feature list(1), top notch customer service(2), ease of use(3) and high reliability(4) while still offering it at a low price(5)? In comparison, does WalMart offer all of the above? I would venture to say that they have has 1, 4, and 5. Yet they are rated as one of the best in department retail.

Another example is Apple. They definitely do not have 5, ugh... but they are growing and gaining the affection of the younger elitists in our society. Apple has 2 for sure... I was in the store at the genius bar once and a customer came in with an obviously damaged laptop. He even told them that he had slipped on ice and thrown his laptop 10 feet in the air. It still worked but the cd-rom had stopped operating. They replaced the cd-rom for him. Astonishing. I think in total they have 2,3,4, and innovation (I forgot to add that one earlier, we will call it 6).

Is a company silly if they try to go after all of the core aspects of creating value? (There is actually terminology for this stuff, but I do not remember it all...) My personal opinion is that it is impossible for a company to focus on all aspects, and if they do, they never achieve greatness. Our goal is to achieve greatness, if thats the case, then where do we spend our time?

My initial thought was a low price, but I am beginning to rethink that. I think that our product is providing much needed innovation in the terms of property management and searching for property to rent. Our goal is also to provide top notch customer focused customer service. I guess ease of use goes hand in hand with customer focused service and development. We also want to be able to guarantee that our product is reliable and that our customers data is safe. Not to mention an all inclusive feature list, full accounting records, document management, crm functionality and powerful marketing components.

So if the above is our vision for our company and its products, can we still offer it at a low price... or better yet should we? Do we price our software to be competitive or do we price our product based off of perceived value? Do we risk having a smaller user base in exchange for higher profit margins per user?

These are the questions we are currently asking ourselves and would love input on the subject.

Thank you,
Chris

Indentured Blogitude?

I was reading Gigaom and learned about Indentured Blogitude. I never knew that something like this could possibly exist, that our society is so hung up on social networking that they would force bloggers to work in such environments and work to death. Its sad.

See the conditions for yourself:

Angry Renter?

I stumbled across AngryRenter.com, which is a cry for government to let our free economy correct itself out, and to not bail out reckless borrowers and irresponsible lenders. The following is an excerpt from their website:

All we hear these days is whining from reckless home borrowers and their banks.

But did you know that renters are 32 percent of American households? And that homes in foreclosure are less than 2 percent?

So why is Congress rushing to bailout high-flying borrowers and their lenders with our tax dollars?

Unfortunately, renters aren't as good at politics as the small minority of homeowners (and their bankers) who are in trouble. We don't have lobbyists in Washington, DC. We don't get a tax deduction for our rent and we don't get sweetheart government loans.

Quite simply, we are just Angry Renters. And now it is our time to be heard: no government bailouts!

They put up a good argument. If you agree with them, navigate over to their sign and sign the petition. The petition will be available to be signed until it is sent to congress on April 21st, so don't waste time.

Planning Routes

As I was checking my Google Reader for the latest posts of my favorite blogs, I came across a post on Inman News discussing a tool released by the Virginia Association of Realtor's. The tool allows you to add multiple addresses into the tool and then calculate the quickest roundtrip route. Interested, I took a look and began to think.

For our rental property search, part of our functionality was going to include the ability to save listings as favorites. Something I have been contemplating before I even read about www.idealroute.com was allowing users to select from their favorites listings they want to drive to and auto calculate the quickest route or an ordered route going from one unit to the next. Include the ability to download these units as points of interests into your favorite GPS, and that might just be one powerful feature.

Rent-A-Shelter?

I came across this through Zillow blog and it got me thinking. Our system is designed so that any type of space that can be rented, can be managed by our property management application. So if you have a bomb shelter that is just collecting dust, clean it up, take some photos and enter the details of the unit on PropertyStampede.com. Access our marketing tools and put your 'bomb shelter' in front of the eyes of thousands of prospective tenants.

Craigslist Launches Official Blog

For years, Craigslist has been providing its press through the founder's personal blog, but it now has its own voice @ blog.craigslist.org.

It is a very basic and slightly bland design, not far off from what we have come to hold dear to our hearts in craigslist. It lacks an RSS feed, but it is a blog and looks as if it may be worthy read.

We Have Screen Shots!

I appreciate everyone's patience in waiting for our beta to begin, unfortunately due to an outbreak of influenza and the magnitude of work that needed to be completed, we have to push the date for the beta back. After careful consideration we are pushing the beta back to May 15th.

In lieu of not wanting to leave you empty handed we have prepared a 'sneak peak' via a few screen shots. Any feedback on what you see in the screen shots is greatly appreciated.