After almost two decades of property management, I have found myself on a renovation property for the first time. In fact, this property has dealt me quite a lot of firsts: private investment owner, "D" class, troubled residents, you name it. Regardless, the challenge is keeping me going but I'm finding that what might have once worked in my other life is not as effective at this community at this time.
I'm curious about the experiences of others and what they have found to work when tasked with repositioning a very much neglected community. My owner purchased the asset in July 2014 after the prior owner allowed it to rapidly decline both in quality of resident, property upkeep, and everyday management practices. I have only been with the property since October 2014.
So far we are on track to do a complete exterior and interior renovation along with many upgrades that the residents deserve. But the road is long and arduous and I'm running out of ideas. I started with the basics: welcome letter/introduction to the renovation for all residents, immediate implementation of a firm rental criteria on incoming prospects, phone calls/filing on outstanding payment issues, and seven day notices to those in violation of any of the community policies. Periodic updates continue to circulate with each new step in the renovation and we are attempting to remain tough on rule breakers amongst the chaos. It's been rough to say the least.
Now we are in this weird state of limbo where the exteriors are looking better, the demographic has improved, and in-house issues are manageable, but the traffic has declined. There is still so much negative word of mouth in the area and we are not yet ready to re-brand the community as a whole. Some days it feels as though the only interest we are getting is when we offer up concessions which has never been high on my priority list. In fact, just typing the word elicits a bad reaction.
I'm hoping that some of you may have already been through this and have some ideas / insights that you could share. Our market is certainly positioned to accept a quality "B" class community (which we will become) and I know that our current advertised rates are realistic as we scale them based on the renovation progress and the comps. As we all know, patience isn't the strongest attribute of the man/woman behind the curtain.
Referral programs? Outreach marketing? Open houses? Preferred employers? When overcoming a negative past and sometimes disruptive present given the reality of renovations, what works and what doesn't?