Have you heard the term resident portal yet? While I think the definition will change over time, what I think it means today is a link accessible to residents via your company website. It will be a place where they can pay rent, turn in service request, access account and community information. Think myspace or facebook with a more specific and unique focus. It is truly an application of Web 2.0 or social media principles in my eyes. The question becomes, do we use that as yet another place to flash advertisements?
I'm not sure what I think of monetizing resident portals just yet. If I am thinking about it from the resident perspective, I think I might be turned off by it. I would think of it as a tacky way to get my attention. I think Seth Godin makes a great point [in this post].
Nevertheless, property management companies can now partner with companies like PropertyCentric or Domin-8 to not only provide localized search results [read more about that here] via the resident portal but they can also target advertisements at the community members.
I would love to hear your thoughts, feel free to comment below.
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