Brent Williams' Blog

I have a one year old daughter, so when I think about where I want to live, one of the major elements is simply whether there are other families with young children in the area.  So imagine me touring an apartment community and asking if there are a lot of children in the community, or if any buildings are more family-oriented.  What type of response do you think I would get from a leasing consultant?  If they are trained properly, they will probably say some meaningless line about being a “diverse community” blah blah blah.  Did that help me in my apartment search?

The fact of the matter is that my family would likely be happier if we lived in close proximity to others in the same stage of life.  Having other families with children the same age would allow us to have play dates and keep our little ball of energy entertained throughout the day.  But while Fair Housing does a great job at reducing discrimination, it has a negative affect in situations like these, which makes it impossible for me to find a living situation that would fit my needs.

Another example comes from a recent blog, “Risk: It’s Everywhere!” where Nathan Borne discusses national origin and the potential discrimination risk by asking where someone is from.  He then asks why you might want to know that information to begin with.  Granted, knowing that someone is from Malaysia versus Nigeria may not make a difference, but knowing that they are simply from another country could make a huge difference in customer service.  Of all our residents, those coming from a different country would probably be fairly high on the list of those that need the most help with their move.  They may not know anything about the customs, how business is done, or the language itself.  But if we are not allowed to discuss this issue for fear of opening ourselves up to allegations of Fair Housing abuse, then we inevitably cannot provide that much needed customer service.

I came across a blog post (shared by Mark Juleen) where the author detailed out her apartment search and reasoning for her move in the first place.  From what I can tell, it doesn’t appear that she is in the industry, so I think this is an incredibly interesting view into a person’s buying decision!

The Decision To Move

Kelly seemed to really enjoy her current apartment, and she noted all the things that she appreciated: 

Last week, I discussed what it would be like to be an exceptional apartment community, and how that would affect our view of our community, our confidence in our product, and our entire operational process.  I would like to expand upon one of the bigger elements:

Creating a community that truly provides a memorable experience shifts
work from a sales-oriented model to an experience-oriented model.

What does that truly mean, and why is it so difficult?  As I mentioned, if you have a scarce product, and you have high demand, sales happens easily on its own.  The problem is somewhat of a “chicken and the egg” scenario, however, because how do you allocate labor to creating an experience, when you need that labor to plug the holes from residents walking out the door? 

In what may be our most controversial survey result to date, we analyzed the role of model apartments and whether they were actually effective in the leasing process.  Several interesting results came out of the survey, such as how much apartment communities spend on decorating their model apartments, and how often they change that style.  However, the most interesting results revolved around their effectiveness as leasing tools.

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A few weeks ago I discussed that our industry needed to learn how to be “exceptional”, and that we are so mired in small-scale struggles that we have no vision as to what apartment living could or should be like.  But for a moment, I want to assume that a given community has that vision.  They have created a community that is more than simple amenities, but rather a true home for their residents.  Their residents are rabidly loyal, and not only do they consistently renew their lease, but would actually be upset if they were forced to leave!  Consider the community to be the Apple equivalent of the multifamily world.  What would that type of community be like from a management point of view?

Perspective is an interesting thing in life.  If we were talking about a new lease-up, saying that we had 25 units left would start to sound inspiring - like the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.  Suddenly, there is a sense of urgency in the leasing process.  With every unit leased, suddenly there is one less available, so prospects better start applying now!  

On the flip side, if you have an older community and you have 25 units available, suddenly things don't look so rosy, and you start thinking about if you don't renew everybody AND lease some during the weekend, things are going to get a bit scary!  Two situations with the same numbers have markedly different reactions, don't they?  

In preparation for my upcoming webinar, “Effectively Posting on Facebook”, I thought it would help to put together a list of factors that indicate your Facebook Fan Page is floundering.  So many people use their Facebook Fan Page in a “checklist” mentality, where they make a post, mark it off a list, and then consider it a success!  But all too often, if you are seeing these signs, it means that you are not reaching your fans, or they simply don’t care about what you are posting!  Here are five signs your Facebook Fan Page is failing:

1)      The only people who “Like” your page are other industry professionals – Obviously this doesn’t necessarily apply to suppliers, but for apartment communities, this is about effective as having your Aunt Susie as a fan of your page.

2)      You have no engagement – Let’s be blunt.  If you consistently make a post and get hardly any comments or likes, then not only are your fans not enjoying what you have to say, but Facebook may not even be showing them your posts!

It is time that we expect more out of our industry as a whole.  If I hear one more time about a company that still has trouble getting their employees to consistently check email, I’m going to throw my shoe through a window.  So today, I’m going to discuss our industry in broad views, looking past small scale struggles and onto a vision of what our industry can and should be:  Brave.

Individually, I see many brave industry pros treading new ground and sticking their necks out for what they believe in.  But as a whole, our industry tends to come across as an insecure significant other, always so focused on our shortcomings that we rarely boldly take a step towards something truly great.  If there was a color that described our industry it would surely be beige – it tries to go with every other color, but is utterly unexceptional in every other way.  Are we not bored of creating the same “one size fits all” communities?  Isn’t creating a “pretty” community with good customer service just not enough?  We have so much more potential for apartment living, and yet our fear of truly stepping out holds us back from being magnificent.

Pause for just a moment, and think about your most memorable living experience.  What made it memorable?  Why did you pick that particular location?  It had some sort of emotional element to it, didn’t it?  That is what we are missing when we slog through the daily routine without seeing the bigger picture.  We don’t recognize the experience that we could be providing beyond the attractive granite countertops and covered parking.  Those are just things.  Unless the property is truly exception in that regard, most people are not looking back 10 years from now and remembering how great their granite countertops were!  They remember all the experiences they had that left an emotional imprint on their lives!

They always say that the “proof is in the pudding”, and if that’s the case, then this blog should just be one big picture of Bill Cosby with a Jello pudding pop!  When we started Share This Status, our general idea was that we could use our knowledge of social media to help apartment communities find interesting content to share with their residents.  But you never really know whether something will work until… well… it works!  The service is still a little new, so we don’t have all the data we want, but here’s a quick snapshot:

So let me take a second to “translate” what this means, and let’s actually put this into the context of if this was an apartment community – in other words, if an apartment community had done exactly what we had done, what would that mean?  First of all, the “apartment community” had a “reach” of 539 people, which means that 539 people saw our posts during the past week.  But what is amazing is that we only now have 146 official fans!  This means that 393 people who are not even our fans have seen our posts!  In other words, we just got 393 “resident referrals” over the past week!  That 393 people represents the friends of our fans, and because we were able to create really interesting and engaging posts, our fans liked it and passed it along to their friends and family. 

This is going to be a pretty subjective conversation, I am sure, but we have talked a lot about mystery shops, and Billi Jo Suiter made the comment, “If used as a teaching tool I think they hold immense value, however when used as a means for termination and fault finding they then do more harm to a team than any value they could have had.”  We’ve discussed this a lot on here, and my stance has always been that yes, the primary goal should be training, but what about those that are simply bad employees?  For example, there are some people who simply have a bad attitude (not just a “bad day”) or are simply too lazy to try to do a good job.

So the question comes down to, can you train someone on how to have a good attitude or not be lazy?  What if it is not just that the person is going through a rough patch – what if that is their fundamental personality?  We can’t simply let them be, as a bad attitude can be a cancer in any office, so do you all believe that this type of person can be trained to see the bright side of life, or is it something that can’t be rectified and they need to be let go?

For quite a while I have been amassing a list of resources that compares the cost of renting an apartment versus buying a home, renting versus buying calculators, or other articles that detail the advantages of renting.  If you have any other “rent versus buy” resources, please add them in the comments.

CNN:  Renting: The new American dream?

New York Post:  Home Sweet Rental – No Longer Buying Into The American Dream