Topic: My first leasing consultant job is at a "C" apartment community....HELP

So I've been at this property now for 3 months. This is my first leasing job. 140 units. We are currently at 70% and they are expecting me to rent 20 apartments in a month. This property is old and unloved. Idk what to do!! We just recently had 5 break-ins, in one week!!!

Is it possible?

What did I get myself into??

I was in a similar situation a few months ago, but we had better occupancy.
Where I work is a 15-ish year old property with 56 apt. units, and about ten years ago we added on 22 townhouse style units. The office had been through 4 managers in as many years, and the residents didn't trust me because they felt like I was just going to be replaced anyways. Half of the residents had lived there for 2-4 years, they'd lived there longer than some people worked there.

That's what made me realize they thought so little of whoever was in the office, and that I couldn't take it personally - but I still did. To combat that, whatever I said I was going to do, especially if I had said it to a resident, I followed through. If I told someone I'd print a receipt and put it on their door clip, I did it before the day was over. If I said I would call a resident back when I had a free chance to discuss something, I did it. If a put in a high priority maintenance request, I would follow up with the resident before I closed it out. Once people realized that I cared about them and not just my job they started to trust me. As soon as I had that ball rolling I'd ask them to engage with us on Facebook, or tell their friends/family about the property.

One thing I will say now, and I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with me, but you have to care. You have to care about the residents and the prospects. You have to be willing to do things that benefit the property even if you're not on the clock. I manage our Facebook page, so I respond to questions as I get them, not the next time I'm getting paid to answer them. Prospects don't care that you're off the clock, they're looking for a place to live, and whoever gives them the information they need 1st is way more likely to get their business. I schedule tours for when people are available to see the property, so if I have to make special arrangements to be there on a Sunday at 2pm, I'll ask my boss to approve 30 minutes of overtime, and/or I'll try to off set it by coming in a little later or leaving a little earlier one day (I always get approval first, you don't need to risk your job). It may be that you legitimately cannot meet any one outside of work hours, and they should understand, ask them if there's anything else you can do to get them the information they're looking for. Are they interested in seeing the inside of it? Get them some pictures, make sure they're good quality and they represent the property and unit well. Is the prospect just looking for policies? Send them the application, give them your application-process talk, answer all of the questions you regularly have to answer, and ask if they have any questions.

You mention specifically that you had multiple break-ins last weekend, and I want to ask: Do you know what caused them? Obviously if there's something you/ your company can do to deter would-be-thieves, I would encourage you to do that immediately! If it's a matter of the property being dark at night, do you have lights out on property? Can you get them fixed? A new bulb for a pole/street light can run you $15-30 each, but someone feeling safer walking to and from their car is worth it. If you have a maintenance person/team, have them investigate first before you call an electrician, electricians are expensive and chances are it's a bulb or a ballast that is out.
If you have some ... riffraff that are maybe doing illegal things on property and attracting other riffraff, look and see what you can do about getting them to move out. You may not be able to evict them, but you probably could send them a notice closer to their renewal time saying that your company is not allowing their lease to renew and they must move out of their apartment no later than the last day of their lease.
Do you have an onsite courtesy officer? How do people reach him/her? If you don't, want do you expect your residents to do when they have a concern that might require the police? Last week we had a fight break out in the parking lot at midnight, within 5 minutes our CO had 3 calls, and someone had called out the PD dispatch - we don't mess around with people fighting on property, this is our home.

We still lose people like everyone else, especially to out of town or out of state jobs; but a lot of our residents choose to say here. We don't increase rent left and right, we stay on top of maintenance requests and property maintenance (we're 2/3 of the way through renovating all of the stairs on property, and we just did a security light overhaul guaranteeing that all of the lights on property work). I always ask, especially if the tenant has decided to move to a different complex in the same town, if there was something we could have done to keep them. I've had people tell me I'm too nosy and that I pass out too many violations (this person had gotten three for a pet being off leash). That's when you have to ask yourself, are you really sorry that they've decided to move on? You don't want to run off good tenants that pay on time, have no issues, and take good care of the unit, but you also don't want to play favorites just because of those reasons.

To get new occupancy, you have to do something to attract them, especially if your current tenants aren't so happy.

Where I live, there are a LOT of Facebook groups dedicated to online selling (like a yard sale), and a few Rental hunter groups. I joined all of them that I could. I read and re-read the specifications of posting (a lot will say you can't promote a post more than 1 time in 24 hours, some will say you can't promote a business, some will say you need to include all sorts of details on your post), you want to follow the rules of the group, otherwise the admin will delete your post and then that doesn't do you any good.

Look at the larger companies in your area, especially if they compensate their employees well / within the range they would need to make to qualify to live at your complex. Ask the company if they have a community bulletin board that you can post a flyer on about your property, or if they have an internal website (intranet) that their employees access, and see if you can have them post an electronic flyer advertising your property and how to get in contact with you. If you do any sort of discounts, make a special flyer advertising that and post it where the people that would qualify for those discounts usually are. We do a preferred employer discount of about 5%; I regularly make new flyers for those employers and I provide them to HR to share.

Have a Facebook presence! It's not just about having a page, get people to engage with you on there, check out the complexes in your area that are similar to yours (lifestyle, price range) and see what they're doing. We're not an amenity heavy complex, and we're not geared towards any one demographic, so I get to steal ideas from everyone. I just figured out how to do the scheduled posts on Facebook, and I've been using it to arrange for special posts around when the office was closed for the holiday, a New Years post, a Daylight Savings post, and events for the town we live in. There's a lot of information out there about ways to get people to engage, find some and read it!

Since a lot of my Facebook followers aren't even residents (YET!), I've taken to adding a Facebook 'like' symbol to property wide notices and asking our residents to like us on FB. Next, since half of my property has a pet, I'm going to ask them to upload a picture of their pet to our FB page so I can make a resident submitted collage to advertise that we're pet friendly (pets bring in more money!)

I would also encourage you to figure out a way to automate or semi-automate any thing you do regularly. We do weekly and monthly reports that I can automate through our resident profile software. I respond to email leads DAILY, and I've got them saved as a Signature in my Outlook, so all I have to do is select the type of response and edit it to include specific information (it's way easier to start from a template than it is from scratch). I have to send out reminders for residents and past residents on a Payment Plan and I've got that set up as a Signature as well, with a monthly appointment reminder set up prompting me to email those people a week before the payment is due.

I know this was long, and maybe a bit rambling, but I know it is possible to turn your situation around. Get a little bit of momentum going, get your occupancy up and ask your boss if he/she could fund some sort of event or contest. I'm working on getting my boss to let me install a Bark Park, like REALLY working at it - even if it's the only thing I accomplish from start to finish.