Housing Data Services
Data, web & communication services for Tenant Management Organisations,
Housing Associations and Contractors
Housing Associations and Contractors
Welcome, visitor from United States of AmericaHDS are developing a number of applications for social landlords and contractors. All are web-based: data is held on secure servers in the USA and accessed by encrypted channels - like internet banking.
These applications allow landlords and their partner contractors to access and update property, tenant, and other data with appropriate permissions granted to staff and contractors by the manager. In addition, tenants may have internet access to their own data.
We offer an application to contact tenants by SMS text-message and are developing an integrated repairs system. The latter incorporates automatic messaging between the social landlord, contractors and tenants.
We also offer analyses to Tenant Management Organisations, Estate Management Boards etc to establish whether they are receiving correct funding from their local Housing Authority. (Council analyses are often very opaque and make it very difficult to check the base-line data.)
Most social landlords and many contractors already hold property. tenant, rent and repairs data in databases. Although we are prepared to design add-ons and extensions for existing databases, many of these are proprietory and any alteration to the database risks voiding guarantees and maintenance contracts. TMOs/EMBs etc. are often expected to hold their data on the Council's own system without any control over how it is used. Their annual allowance is smaller than it could be because the Council charges them for the cost of the database, internal network and IT department services.
Communications with tenants are essential. Letters are extremely expensive, slow and very unreliable. We make extensive use of automatic SMS text messaging as a very powerful and reliable medium for contacting tenants: