There seems to be a misconception in the marketplace that MDS Explorer is primarily designed for the management of residential real estate.  I've thought long and hard about why this is, and I am convinced that it is primarily because we don't sell our commercial features as a standalone, add-on module.  In fact, it has never made much sense to our team that you should have to log into a separate system to handle these types of units.  After all, the core of what is required of a good residential or commercial property management system is the same.  Namely, bulletproof accounting, a well designed and easy to navigate user interface along with other core functionality like document imaging and work order management.

That's not to say that a Tenant File for a residential tenant should look the same as one for a commercial type tenant, it's just that we take a much more user friendly and practical approach to the solution of this problem.  Quite simply, the Tenant File in MDS changes automatically depending on the type of unit you are working with.  Flip from a residential unit to an office unit and the screen changes.  The ability to track the base year appears on the screen just as the no longer applicable field to enter SCRIE information is removed.  It is very simple- browse to the unit you'd like to work with and you are in business.  There is never a need to log out and in to a separate system.

Further, just because we don't sell it is a separate module, doesn't mean that an entire suite of features for commercial property management isn't built into MDS Explorer.  Everything from complicated rent escalations to tenant Chargebacks is gracefully handled from a single system.

So, instead of breaking our commercial features into a separate add-on module for the purpose of getting the word out, we are going to continue building them into our core product because this is what makes sense for the overall design and ease of use that is always most important to our team in the design of our system.  As the Director of Marketing here at MDS I am going to take full responsibility for better communicating the fact that hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial space are already being efficiently managed through the powerful set of features built into the core MDS Explorer system.