Create your business workflow first. 

Then the need for project management so I built a workspace to include a fix and flip workflow management and then finally property management that includes tenant communication, lease management and maintenance management.

You would need at least the premium paid version to enable globiflow for workflows that support the automation of your CRM.

There are synergistic enhancements to a workflow that can only be performed when a group is working together in an office.

If you see the Quick Creation workflow, you can switch back to Guided Creation by clicking the Switch button at the top of the creative flow.

Thus, building a “federated” system consists of processes, workflows, relational data exchanging and most importantly the ability to scale when needed.

You seem to assumption that live data = frequent continues updating by the PM, perhaps some landlords might misconstrued it to be so, I would think the PM should inform them of our best to us it, and the frequency or interval of updates  should remain the same as long as they keeps a good workflow going.I do agree with you that for SF this might not be relevant, but for those of us with multiple MF properties it is of great relevance to be able to have access to this data for analysis and insight into how the various properties are doing.

An ideal workflow for something like this might be:Send nicely branded mailer with your website that's not too slimy salesy but piques 50 people's attention --> 50 people go to your website (directly, because it's on your mailer) and go "wow this guy looks like a professional" --> 20 contact you through your super easy to use online form - a lot of people get nervous to call someone and talk about something scary like selling their house but filling out an online form is low risk for them.  

You might be able to get in the front of the line but even if you do get someone one the hook, it's still pretty risky.Keep in mind that most contractors are notorious for starting many projects at once and keeping them all in play so they will have a guaranteed workflow for many months.

I just wrote a guest post on managing your rental property workflow in Evernote: http://www.landlordology.com/using-evernote-streamline-loan-applications/Enjoy!