Become a Cloud Investor – Use Technology to Gain the Upper Hand

There are several industries that seem unreasonably reluctant to embrace new technology as a means of improving business systems. The business of real estate investing is certainly one of these industries. Sure, there are an ever increasing number of apps to help bring the industry to the 21st century: Zillow, Postlets, Realtor.com, AppFolio, Buildium are a few that come to find. However, few real estate investors take the time to develop a comprehensive system that uses integrated technology and applications. As a new or seasoned real estate investor, you should see the slow technology adoption curve as an opportunity to gain an advantage over your competition.

Specifically, you need to embrace the Cloud as a critical place for you to do business. The cloud offers endless opportunity in the areas of streamlined business processes

Stop Dealing with Paper

The price of storing documents on the cloud is lower than ever. Services like Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive are incredibly powerful and cheap. Not only do both provide amazing applications for running your business, they also provide storage space for all your documents. For just $10 per month, Microsoft offers 5 licensees to their latest software as well as 1 Terabyte of cloud storage for each licensee on OneDrive. For those unfamiliar with computer storage terminology, 1 Terabyte is a massive amount of storage! One would be hard pressed to fill 1 Terabyte with hundreds of full length feature films let alone scanned documents, images, and analytical tools. The price of cloud storage is no longer a barrier. The only barrier to gaining the full benefit of a paperless business is inaction and reluctance to buy-in to the new way of doing business.

Cloud storage could and should be used for storing every single document and piece of information that runs through your business. This includes but is not limited to the following documents

• Estimates
• Invoices
• Contacts
• Project Analysis
• Leases
• Payment Records
• Maintenance Requests
• Walk Through Documentation
• and so much more

Two Huge Benefits of Using the Cloud

Benefit #1 – Collaboration

Cloud based applications typically place a major emphasis on seamless collaboration. This means that the days of “version control” are no more. With cloud based collaboration, there is rarely a need to save files as version 1, 2, 3, etc. Instead, you have a constantly evolving document that is always the source of truth. Cloud collaboration allows you and your team to update files in real time.

For example, lets say you use Asana to manage the project plan of your rehabs. As the project manager, you want your GC to inform you of the overall schedule and health of the project. Instead of the GC working “offline”, saving a file, and sending to you, he instead sends you the link to the project in Asana. In the midst of a complicated rehab project, timelines and schedules are shifting constantly. The snapshot that he could have sent you might be out of date the second you open it. However, if you have the link to the Asana project plan, you will always have a real-time view of your overall project status and health. Both you and your GC have permission to edit and adjust Asana project attributes. The GC could even invite other contractors to update various aspects of the project.

Benefit #2 – Accessibility

How many times do we hear something like, “The file is on my desktop, I’ll send it when I get back to the office”. In the old days, one would work on a file on his PC and save the static file to his hard drive. This limits the ability to share this file with others when you are not near your computer. The cloud eliminates this problem immediately. When files are saved to the cloud, they are accessible anywhere that has an internet connection. This means that you can open, view, edit and share files from your phone or tablet when you are on the go. What is even more powerful is that you can do all of these things from any device…even if it’s not your own.

For example, imagine you take an amazing cruise vacation to the Caribbean. Instead of paying the high prices of connecting your phone to the ship’s internet, you decide to use the ship’s business center to stay up to date on your business dealings. With the ship’s computer and internet connection, you can access your cloud files to edit and share just as you would from your home PC. The cloud certainly eliminates barriers to conducting business outside your office.

Commit to the Cloud

You’ll gain an amazing sense of relief upon making the conversion to being a “Cloud Investor”. Knowing that all your documents, pictures, leases, proposals, analysis, insurance policies, deeds, etc are all safe and accessible from anywhere is an amazing feeling. The cloud is changing the way we do business. If you don’t get on board, you’ll be left in the dust. You must embrace the cloud as a major element of your business processes.

As a case study, lets examine your process for executing a lease with your tenants. If you’re like 95% of real estate investors, its likely your process goes something like this:

• Write up the Lease in Microsoft Word. Save it to your desktop
• Print the Blank Lease
• Using a pen, fill in the blanks: Property Address, Start Date, Tenant Name etc
• Bring the lease to the tenant where you both sign. (Again, using a pen!)
• Bring the lease back to your office to either:
• Average Investor: Make a copy & send to the tenant
• Advanced Investor: Scan the lease and send to the tenant via email
• Store the signed lease in a tabbed manila folder

This process is probably comfortable for you. You’ve been doing it for awhile and it seems to be working just fine. But deep down, you know there is a better way to go about signing and storing tenant leases.

Let’s see how the process of executing a lease would go for a “Cloud Investor”

• Create the lease on a fillable form program like “Adobe Acrobat”
• Save the blank lease on “Adobe Creative Cloud” for future reference
• Meet the tenant, bring up the blank lease on your iPad, fill out the specific information in the fillable form fields: Property Address, Start Date, Tenant Name, etc
• Using your finger, you and the tenant both sign the lease.
• Save the file to Google Drive in the specific property folder
• Share the file with your tenant for future reference.
• Advanced – Post the Google Drive file on your website portal where the tenant can login to her account to access all relevant documentation

Action Steps

• Educate yourself – The cloud can be confusing at first. Read blogs, listen to podcasts and ask your tech savvy friends for help understanding how the cloud could help you.
• Define your business processes absent of technology. Identify the top three that would benefit from cloud technology
• Create an action plan for bringing your business to the Cloud
• Develop an infrastructure roadmap – What devices are needed by you and your team. Consider these devices enablers to your cloud baed platform. They are a relatively minor investment compared to the benefit you will gain from becoming a Cloud Investor