Apartment Blogs

An introduction and guide to using our new Tweet Wall feature!  This is somewhat of a "open forum,"  where you can just say hello, talk about something already on the site, or start your own discussion!  We do hope that everybody takes a moment to post at least one tweet to see how it works and to jumpstart the conversation!  Enjoy!

 

 

   Contractors are Cutting Prices to Get Jobs—

Maybe Too Much!

 

Hello everybody from NAAEI!  Lisa Trosien asked me to post this Twitter tutorial for all of you to see, so I hope you enjoy it!  

 

I think this sign that is posted on the desk of a librarian is a great customer service idea.

Do your residents know that it's okay to "bother" you? If they do, do they know all the various ways they can get in touch?

 

 

 

The mainstay backbone of our marketing strategy at Urbane Apartments is to Enhance the Residents Experience. There are lots of challenges, curves and obstacles that can get in the way at each Resident Touch Point to derail you.

What's Your Part In It
Ever wonder what experience YOU just helped create with your last prospect? Even on those days when you may be off your game, you are still influencing the experience of your prospect that is preparing to make an average purchase in excess of ten thousand dollars from you or your company. You have a lot of influence to Enhance the Residents Experience.

Our webinar on Wednesday 8/26 (5 Steps to Get More from Your Online Marketing) was a great success!  Thanks to Brent for co-hosting this event and to Mike Whaling from 30Lines (www.30lines.c0m) for being so knowledgeable and fun to listen to. 

 

Mike did such a great job - the average rating for the webinar was 4.3 out of 5 and we didn't have time to get to many of the questions. 

We've compiled some additional resources from the webinar:

It's nice when every piece of the puzzle fits into place. But it's not particularly unusual for a metro's apartment sector performance stats to appear a little surprising for a short period of time. Once you're looking backwards, you may realize that early estimates of employment change were stunningly inaccurate. Or that the general appeal of shadow market rental alternatives for some reason shifted suddenly. Or that numerous apartment operators made odd rent positioning choices which impacted demand and occupancy patterns. Right now, Boston is the U.S. apartment market with perhaps the hardest-to-explain results posted during recent months.

Boston is putting up the same sort of ugly employment figures seen almost everywhere else across the country. Annual cuts are running at roughly 100,000 positions, translating to downsizing in the job base of just over 3 percent. (These stats reflect MPF Research's definition of Boston, which includes metro Providence, Rhode Island, as well as the southern portion of the state of New Hampshire ... we obviously took that New England concept to heart in drawing those boundaries.)

Despite the big job losses, about 2,400 apartments were absorbed in Boston during the first half of 2009. That demand number very slightly surpasses the metro's completion tally during the initial six months of the year, so June occupancy of 93.5 percent was right in line with the late 2008 result of 93.4 percent. (Like almost every other metro across the country, Boston did suffer a notable occupancy slide as 2008 came to an end, but there hasn't been any further deterioration.)

News flash - No offense and most people cannot do more than one thing well at any given moment, OK? I don't care what kind of studies you may have read - this is my experience interacting with tens of thousands of people.  So, when someone shows up to see you, please put down the sandwich, hang up the phone, close the report, save the file, log out of TweetDeck, put the cell phone on vibrate,  and BE HERE NOW! That's right - be here now - do what you're doing while you're doing it. Say goodbye to what you're doing before you say hello to me. Be where your feet are (all clichés are welcome in comments section - would love to hear yours).

I believe that the greatest gift we can give someone in our ultra-fast and ultra-busy world is the gift of our undivided attention. So, it would seem that NOT giving someone our undivided attention is a less than subtle way of telling them that whatever the reason for their visit or call, we've got more important matters to attend to.

Believe me, my ego has chilled to the point of accepting that there are more important things in life than me, and is it too much to ask that we simply communicate that instead of rudely attempting to multitask while pretending to be interested? Unless my hair is on fire, I don't mind taking a number, but I am REALLY getting annoyed at being "handled" along with the five other things someone is doing - and none of what is being done is being done competently in most cases!

It's getting very boring reading articles and attending webinars that promise an increase in resident retention if I will only say (fill in the blank) or do (fill in the blank) or give away (fill in the blank). If we want to get and keep customers, we need to BE HERE NOW and follow the "New Golden Rule" - Do unto others as they want to be done unto!

Now that the Horizon situation seems to be passing for the moment, I thought it prudent to point something out that I have been monitoring.  It seems that this twitter complaint has inspired others to really get on board.  I use twilert to monitor certain keywords that people use and to see in what context they are using them.  Of course I have our company name and I regularly do random tests to see if my tweet turns up in my morning email report on that key word.

 

I also have a keyword report on "property management".  Since the well published situation that happened not to long ago, I am noticing this trend of complaining continuing.  This is just with that particular expression alone.  In the tweets I noticed, they named the management company within their post.  One company I knew and I let them know right away which they were grateful for.  The others unfortunately I did not know who they were and felt sad that a customer complaint was going to go unheard.