Why Sensitive Information Is Safe With ExactEstate

In an age when privacy violations abound, you’re always hearing about the latest company that illegally sold, shared, or otherwise misused private information. This includes our property management software industry. Despite the ethical implications, it seems many companies are powerless to the pull of the profit they illegally earn from doing this. 

At ExactEstate, our commitment to users ensures we will never engage in such nefarious practices. With us, yours and your residents’ information is secure and never tendered for profit. Beyond this, we run our business on an ethical framework, which we proudly share in detail below. 

What You Get When You Work With ExactEstate

1. No Disclosure of Sensitive Information

Companies, in the course of doing business, often accrue huge repositories of user data, including multifamily residential complexes, property managers, and PMS providers like us. In our field, that means data pertaining to renters and buyers, their credit scores and budgets, as well as properties, their cost/value, history, and much more. In an economy with increasingly unaffordable housing, that information can be used in extremely unethical ways. 

We’ve also seen companies force users to jump through hoops to “opt-out” of having their data shared, burying the pages where they can do so because they want it to be hard for users to find. Worse, they sometimes force users to furnish an explanation about why they don’t want their information sold or shared. The notion of “opting out” shows that they situate privacy violations as a default, a norm.  

At ExactEstate, our morals lie elsewhere:

• We never disclose personal information. 
• We take our responsibility of storing your sensitive documents and information very seriously. 
• We offer user-based permissions to prevent those who shouldn’t have access to things from accessing them. 

2. Full Transparency in Pricing

We like to think of our pricing structure as “refreshingly simple.” While competitors have prided themselves on increasingly complex, confusing price models, we don’t gatekeep any exclusive features behind pricey tiers and extras that you have to buy. Our pricing model is just $3.00 per unit, per month. This affords you complete access to everything our system offers, with no hidden costs or variable prices. 

3. Our Privacy Practices Have Been Independently Audited and Approved

We have proudly completed our SOC (System and Organizations Control) 2 Type 2 Audit. This "badge" of sorts for customer security is, by definition, "is a third-party audit that evaluates a service provider's internal controls and systems related to security. The report focuses on five areas, also known as trust service principles (TSPs), that are important for businesses that handle sensitive customer information.”

These 5 areas are:

• Security
• Availability
• Processing Integrity
• Confidentiality
• Privacy of Data

Being SOC 2 compliant assures users that our security programs are properly designed and operate effectively to safeguard your data against threats. 

Why It’s So Important for Property Management Companies and Software Providers to Commit to Ethical Practices

When renters have been harmed by the unethical misuse of property management software, it’s fair to assume they will demand retribution. The property managers and the software providers who are culpable will have to answer to those they harmed. 

Violations that can occur in this context include:

• Artificially inflating property prices above market rate/rent gouging among corporate landlords
• Collusion between property managers and software providers to provide non-public, commercially sensitive data 
• Violations of the US Antitrust Law

These practices effectively price renters out of properties they may have otherwise been able to afford, deepening this country's already alarming housing crisis. ExactEstate doesn’t engage in these activities because they conflict with our core values and brand ethos.

Our Core Values & Brand Ethos

These principles dictate how we run our business and interact with our customer base. 

Core Values:

“1. Strike a Balance: Always keep the platform balanced between “complete and comprehensive” and “easy to use and intuitive.”

2. Serve Clients: We are a service-based company. We work alongside our customers as extensions of their team and deliver solutions to their problems.
3. Operate with Openness: From pricing strategies to the release of client data, we are transparent in how we operate, how we charge and how we work.
4. Remain Hungry: We are a challenger brand. We must work harder, provide more value, and offer more support in order to justify our existence. We are hungry to help our clients succeed.”

Brand Ethos:

“Life is too short to hate your property management software. We believe that property management software should be comprehensive, easy to use, well supported, and priced fairly.

• Software That Performs - Our product must work flawlessly. Our software must deliver comprehensive property management functionality.

• Software That’s Easy to Use - Adoption and use only occur when the software is intuitive and easy to use. Providing our clients with simple, seamless experiences solves their first challenge.

• Software Supported by a Team That Cares - Software is only as good as the team that supports it. From feature additions to lifetime training, our support team becomes an extension of your team that's invested in your success.

• Software That’s Reasonably and Clearly Priced - From the initial subscription cost to credit card processing fees, we operate with absolute transparency and strive to deliver clear value to our clients.”

These seem intuitive until you realize there are players in the PMS market who don’t abide by them. When you run an ethical company, it extends to the caliber of products you offer to your customers.

We never want customers to feel like they have to:

• Give up privacy protections in order to access a truly premium product
• Pay ridiculous, inflated amounts for good software
• Work with a software team that doesn’t know or care about them, treating them like a number
• Suffer through poor user experiences from badly made software
• Worry that their customer or property data will ever be sold or misused

At ExactEstate, we don’t treat ethics like a concession we have to make in the realm of profits. It’s just the right thing to do. It’s the easy thing to do. And we stand by our customer base, who we know agrees with this principle. If this resonates with you, ExactEstate is the right PMS for your property management company.