On average, agents gather criteria specified by you and then you'll receive automated messages for properties fitting your criteria. 

Also, is there any free or low cost software that is similar to proptrend?

Freedom Soft is a good software to have for pulling lists.For more targeted lists you can create and purchase a list on www.listsource.com

My educational background is in building automation technology. 

(For example, on this one I get "Thoughts on moderation functionality," "Automating my processes to streamline management," and "Commercial blanket loans for SFHs")Because of the poor search functionality, we get dozens, if not hundreds of redundant posts, making BP less, not more, effective as a tool.Is there anything in the works to improve this?

Also take a look at their reporting systems - some providers are still using older accounting software.2.

My company is looking for a new property management software.

But to access the portal for your software and data, only one user can log in at a time. 

Which of course isn't good.We've put in a few automated steps to help get members websites at least "localized" a bit even if they choose not to customize their content at all... and because of this automated personalization that we do on every website... plus our guidance to members to customize some of their content... we're not seeing the duplicate content penalty pop up.We're seeing members in Sacramento rank in the top 3 for terms like "we buy houses sacramento" with the same unchanged "stock content" as someone in Baltimore or Jacksonville, or Birmingham (etc. etc.) with the same unchanged (or slightly changed) stock content.I think where there could be an issue is if you're in the same exact city as another Carrot member who is already ranking very high with their website... it would be advisable to tweak some of the content for sure.But ya, we've reviewed the dup content stuff w/ top SEO advisors and they're all saying that they're seeing the same thing... that unless the duplicate content is on the same domain name... they're just not seeing much if any penalty at all.All of this to say... with Carrot our content is written to give a jumpstart in rankings... and many members rank very high with no content tweaks... but we do advise members to customize their content to make it more personal, add in some testimonials, some info about yourself to build that connection with the website visitor, and to tweak some content here and there at a minimum.

It's fairly automated, like FHA.