do you know of any leasing conferences I can attend

Well, i will prefer affordable housing. :) :)

I've worked both sides..Conventional and Affordable...I didn't know there was such a thing as free rent or affordable rent. I thought everyone just worked and paid rent or bought a house. I would only work HUD or USDA if the management company was spot on and the property was in a unique location such as Hawaii or Arizona or maybe Beverly Hills, CA 90210.

Kidding aside; Affordable isn't as difficult as it may seem. You just need to have your ducks in a row.

Either way, it is still a people business. Only with government oversight. Oh joy.

Well, let me put it this way - I love hiring people from the affordable housing industry. They have a great deal of training and have dealt with many crazy situations where they had to keep their cool. According to one of my managers, when she was in affordable housing she had a tenant that was upset about being evicted. His way of getting back at the property was to purchase rats, throw them in the pool, then call the health department and complain there were dead rats in the pool. Fortunately he was caught on video.

Perhaps it's because we have prime properties etc, but the impression I have from them is conventional housing is piece of cake and they love it. As for myself, having worked in affordable housing, I have no interest in it. Does everyone have to leave the unit with their kid's feces smeared on the wall?

Conventional...hands down. I was a property maintenance inspector for a management company with at least three properties bad enough to make it necessary to purchase and carry a ballistic clipboard. The regular state inspections were hard as well. With low paid, poorly qualified techs and low budgets, bringing/keeping these places up to spec just got to be too much.

The only thing I would NEVER do again...student housing. I've done tax credit, conventional, COA mgmt and student housing. There's nothing as stressful as turning your ENTIRE community between the months of May to July.