Estate Management 101: From Red Tape to Digital Solutions

The Evolution of Land Records and Modern Estate Management Systems

Gary reminisces about the early days of managing land-based property records - physical documents like maps, leases and correspondence, prone to mould and mildew. Hear how the traditional storage and retrieval systems, complete with red tape and asbestos-sealed cabinets, have now been replaced by digital terrier systems that scan, index, and cross-reference documents for easy access. While these modern systems, such as MRI's Contract Intelligence and Horizon ProLease, facilitate efficient data management and lease reporting, they also pose new challenges, like ensuring thorough lease readings and integrating with accounting apps. That Retail Property Guy applauds these technological advancements but notes the ongoing need for accuracy and consistency in data management.

00:00 The Era of Physical Property Records

02:19 The Transition to Digital Archives

03:27 Modern Terrier Systems and Their Benefits

05:21 Advanced Estate Management Databases

06:07 Tenant-Friendly Database Solutions

07:48 The Importance of Consistent Data Management

09:36 Future Topics and Conclusion

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Transcript

0:00

Way back when, in the day, when I started my career, the majority of the records for any land based property were actual documents, like maps and plans, foolscap wallets of signed and bound leases, and files of associated correspondence, sometimes dating back over a century, and charting the derivision in title from a Victorian landowner to a 20th century developer, and then onward to each parcel demised to a Often stored in damp cellars, these documents were susceptible to mould and disconcerting stains and odours. The teams that used these packages might try to mask that smell with air freshed and raw cheap perfume, but the accumulated odour could be unbearable. The unmistakable whiff of mildew was difficult to shake off. Except in those days it was acceptable, or at least legal, to smoke in the office. So the whiff of mildew, often mingled with the tang of cigarette smoke, it was an endearing aroma. The bundles and document packages were physically bound together with a red ribbon, giving rise to the phrase red tape, meaning bureaucracy. This red tape often left an indelible dull pink residue on your fingers and shirt cuffs. The documents were often stored down in the depths of the basement, owing to the weight and floor loading of their heavy metal fireproof filing cabinets. And these were often rendered fireproof by means of asbestos seals, and then further protected by complex fire suppression systems that could fill a room in seconds with an inert but toxic gas. Sounds delightful, right? Large maps and drawings, often hand coloured, We usually hung in special cabinets with long steel tusks, like elephants. The tusks fitted into perforated header tape on each sheet, allowing you to suspend hundreds of maps and drawings. But then to separate them and remove one from the middle of the pack, without losing the rest onto the floor beneath. And woe betide anyone who inadvertently messed up and deposited a bunch of plans on the floor of the cabinet. It was a perilous task to reach in and pull them out. Health and safety today would have a fit at the sight of a technician. Reaching into the unpropped suspended load of a TUSC cabinet. These archives were a very practical solution to an impractical problem. But they have long since been resigned to the I can't believe it pages of history. As these filing systems have been replaced with modern scanned PDFs All available at the click of a mouse. The systems to manage and register the archive of records for land based property derived their collective name from the Latin word terra, meaning land, so became known as terrier systems. And the colleagues who maintained them also became known as terriers, their raison d'etre being to find any supporting lease, title, contract or map to resolve the basic estate management challenge of reading the lease. Of course, modern electronic Terrier systems have long since scanned, indexed, and crossed reference decades of documents. Some scanned images have better resolution integrity than others, I must say, but the ease and ability to summon forth on screen content has changed the estate manager's world. However, this ease comes with a downside. It doesn't always necessarily spur on a colleague to actually read the whole lease. Extracts and snippets which are out of context can be a dangerous and misleading thing. On top of this, most Terrier systems plot, register, and connect details of ownership or title in a geographical layout, so they are often suited to landlords, investors, managing agents, or estate owners. Such as the agricultural or forestry sector. Most retailers don't often have a fully resourced electronic Terrier system for their documents. The best some small retailers might hope for is a SharePoint folder. And for many property people, that's enough, most of the time. For those wanting a state of the art system, a strong player in the sector is a product developed by Leviton and now part of the stable of MRI products. Rebadged as Contract Intelligence. It's clever stuff. Taking the unstructured content of many diverse documents and converting it into standardized and contextual content. It can scan and interpret a document, though it might struggle with an earlier format PDF, but don't worry, there are also humans to verify everything. It abstracts the data, it compiles the content into a standard template, which is easy to read and navigate. It shows the obvious key clauses, and you can click from the template summary to a pop up of the scanned page from the actual lease or other document. You can link the key fields to fields in your database for reassurance on the background. So, we've reached the part where the Terrier system is only part of the story. It's essential to archive documents and plans and maps. But Terriers don't necessarily host the content or details in a manner that we might recognize for a relationship database. It's almost a comparison between a picture and an Excel table. You can look at one and appreciate it. But you can analyze the other. And for the modern world, the analyzable data is fundamental, whether that's in Excel or a relationship database, for which again, the industry leader at the moment is held by MRI. Estate management system databases help us by tabulating data from payable leases into an easily analyzable format. These fields then allow us to automate processes, including calendar date checks or payment runs. A relationship database is smarter than a single Excel table. The right software can deal with a lot of the heavy lifting or repetition of managing multiple leases. They can produce reports, statistics, forecasts. And of course they can handle automated payment runs. A landlord or managing agent might use a database system like Yardy, which is helpful for raising automated invoices, creating ledgers, and helping cashiers to post receipts. On the other hand, tenants tend to pay invoices rather than raise them, so for a tenant retailer with hundreds of payable leases, this can mean a lot of manual checking and processing, all peaking around the usual payment dates of traditional quarter days or the modern So a reliable database to store regular payment details is very useful to help create and generate payments ready for approval before being paid automatically from the bank. And again, tenant friendly databases have evolved and matured over several decades. So 1980s systems like Mentor and Qube. Yielded to Manhattan, which yielded to Horizon, now succeeded by ProLease Enterprise, offered by MRI. And this isn't just my opinion. In fact, a quick search in Google or similar will show MRI as market leader in this area. In my humble opinion, MRI's product isn't bad. I've worked with many tenant oriented databases over many years. And okay, no system will ever do everything you want straight out of the box. But at least Horizon's ProLease doesn't fight you all of the way. It can be customized and configured. There are tricks and hacks. Though maybe a final step in a complex activity will still remain to be handled in Excel. But here's the nugget. MRI's Horizon, now ProLease, was demonstrably first and best to market in relation to tenants reporting their IFRS 16 liabilities. We'll talk about IFRS in another episode. For this moment, let's just consider it as a large volume of complex, discounted cash flows for all of the tenants lease liabilities. With the statutory obligation to appear on the balance sheet. So here we are with a smart, fully populated relationship database of all of our estate management data. It would probably contain the fundamentals like lease reference, address or location, start date and end date. Current charges and expected events like rent reviews or service charge year ends or breaks. It'll include landlord history and managing agent contacts. Possibly it also details the repairing obligations and any user restrictions. Maybe even the shop fitting history, the sales and storage floor areas, all useful stuff. The relationship method means you input repetitive data only once, and then associate that content to all the records which rely on it. So if it changes, you make just one adjustment and it refreshes all the dependent records available to all users across the business. Nobody should be out of touch or out of date. You can set up configuration tables and codes matching to your expected charge types to the ledgers. In your account system, you can run reports or data extracts, helping you to analyze and regularize, to see patterns, to predict challenges, and to plan outcomes. In practice, it could produce your IFRS reporting, your three year plan of lease events, show your transaction history, and predict your Consistency is key to robust and reliable data. The upkeep and maintenance of content might best be managed or overseen by a small but focused group of users who are able to spot or manage out any irregularities. Housekeeping and consistency far outweigh any liberal, freestyle approach. And here's another nugget. It should be one source of the truth. Being accessible across the business for reliable data. to inform property decisions. But is this the whole picture? In another episode, we'll talk about the challenges of integrating estate management apps with accounting apps, which might require interfaces, secure file transfers, or, hopefully not, human interaction. Look out for those episodes.