Topic: What do you say when a resident comes in as you are leaving for the day?

What do you say at the end of a 10 hour day as you are trying to lock up the office and get home, and a resident comes in and asks to renew their lease?

You say "Absolutely! :) I can help you with that, it will just take me a few minutes to prepare your paperwork."

If the paperwork is not ready; I explain that I have somewhere I needed to be and I was already late. I try to schedule an appointment for the next day and assure the resident that their paperwork will be ready and waiting for them at that time.

If the paperwork is indeed ready; I will go ahead and do the signing and inform the resident that they can pick up their copies the next day.

Thank you for renewing your lease. I'll get the paperwork ready and send it to you to sign. Do you have any questions?

Thanks for renewing!

Bye!

In my state, a verbal lease or renewal is valid.

Valid or not; I prefer something in writing when it comes to a lease agreement for no other reason than to define who is responsible for what in such a way as to not make any (mis)interpretation possible.

I wonder if anyone in your state has shown up on Judge Judy or the People's Court over a verbal lease agreement? What would they say??? :P

I would invite the customer in and do their paperwork. Of course use good judgment because these days male or female there can be issues when you are alone.

The only way I would not take care of the customer right then is if there was a true emergency that I had and really had to go.

My philosophy and of course it is mine and that is my time is the tenants time. They may have a tight schedule themselves, getting ready to fly off somewhere, any number of reasons and I want them to know that my duty is to try and accommodate wherever and whenever I can.

I know it is not always possible, but with today’s technology, sometimes you can give them documents on their email where they can fill it out, print it, sign it, and bring it in and or fax the items to you.

Normally, I would be right with you, Nate; but the problem is that, at least with me, when I get tired after a long day I make mistakes, which I refuse to accept in terms of the quality of my work product. If the paperwork is not ready, then I have to ask when they can come back and make an appointment. I will then use my wireless phone and send a reminder to my email to check for the accurate completion of the paperwork first thing in the morning.

I'm with Johnny on this one. I'm not the most detailed person in the world at the best of times, so signing a lease after a ten hour day would not be a great idea for me; especially completing a LITHC lease. We schedule appointments for lease renewals which seems to work out best and I can dedicate that scheduled time to that residents.

It can be tiresome sometimes, but the payback comes at lease renewal time and on apartmentratings.

:)

My tenants work in so many fields. I have retail, office professional, and shift workers, so their schedules don't always coincide with my office hours. I don't mind accommodating them since my kids are grown I have nothing better to do.

Fortunately, I don't have to deal with LITHC details, and my residents understand that I am human and I do make mistakes, so they are forgiving if I show up at their door and ask for one more signature.

Even without being LITHC, our leases are 25 pages and take nearly an hour to prepare and sign.

I wouldn't be very good at enforcing a verbal lease, but they are illegal here, even in roommate situations.

Ironically, the resident who showed up after hours and renewed his lease lost his job last night, so came in today and withdrew his renewal. :( Since it isn't valid until the 1st, he can do that.

But, he did post a very nice review on apartmentratings. :)

It's almost Friday! :silly:

The fact that our residents can potentially have schedules that are all over the map and not coincide with your office hours is why I advocate setting up office hours as follows:

Staff available to all from 9am to 4pm, 7 days a week.
Staff available to residents only on a walk in basis from 8am to 6pm, 7 days a week.*

* This may require staggering staff if possible to cover the whole day, have some start at 8 and work till 5, and others come in at 9 and stay till 6; assuming an hour lunch. This means that during the 8am hour and the 4pm-6pm hour; you only work with residents on a walk in basis: no answering the phone, no projects, no emails, no tours. Use this time to collect money, create work orders, sign lease renewals. Especially in the summer months; extend this policy to the service teams and have them start their days at 7am, but only working grounds and common areas until 9am before beginning to work non emergency work orders in the units.

@ Johnny,

I really love that idea and still use it. I tell the general public that our office staff is available from 10am-4pm, but I work from 8:30am-5:30pm. My assistant has public office hours from 10-4 on weekends but works 9-5.

Since I don't have kids at home waiting for dinner, it's OK if a resident comes in at 5:30 to sign a lease, then another one comes in at 6:15 for theirs just as we're finishing up.

Even though we notify them six weeks in advance, most of them wait until the last minute. I would rather stay late the last few days of the month and get them done. It makes me look good too, since my corporate office wants renewals entered in the computer by the 1st.

:)

I am glad it is working for you, and I am happy that you are in a position to be able to do your renewals 'on the fly' and late in the day, especially after one of those long 'murphy' days where nothing goes right, and you are in need of a 'grown up drink' ;)


All I am saying is that when I get tired, I tend to make too many mistakes for my preferences (I am pretty anal about wanting my work product to be completed right the first time; I hate redoing my own work, or fixing someone else's mistakes) and this is compounded by the fact that I probably did not get to take my lunch and I am hungry because I looked up and it was suddenly 4:00, seemingly with nothing getting done.

I would try to call those residents 2 weeks before the date the renewal is due and schedule an appointment for them to avoid this. With a little planning and prodding the residents to act; you should never be faced with this. I might even consider setting an internal deadline of the 25th of the month to have all lease renewals signed and ready to turn in.

It would be great to have the ability to set those boundaries and get my residents to come in before the last week...but that's my weakness. ;)

I have just two leases to go for this month, and I even got a lunch break today, for the first time this week! :)

Once after one of those days, I had an evening meeting with our attorney and his professional advice was to "have a drink," but all they had at this grown-up meeting was cookies!

I'm definitely ready for a grown up drink! (but I'll have my husband drive me across town so I wont run into any of my residents!) :P

I would offer residents $5.00 Starbuck's gift cards for renewing their leases early!

We have 4 Starbucks within a half mile! :)

Only 4??? ;P

I also have visitor hours and working hours. I am open 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. but work 9:30 - 5:30. I am also the maintenance supervisor, so I am usually out on the property or filling out work orders in the morning.

When my residents stop in any time of day, I do not get the lease out and do paperwork right then and there. I would have to print the entire lease (17 pages), fill it out then get them to sign it with all of the addenums This would take at least 20 minutes.

I offer early bird renewals. One resident came in yesterday to let me know she and her husband are renewing. Their lease expires October 31st, so I'm not going to drop everything and make her wait for me to print all of the papers, fill it out then have her sign all of them.

Her husband wasn't with her and he needs to sign them, too.

In my state, a verbal lease is valid, but not enforceable. So, if someone came in and told me they are renewing, as long as they pay the rent the first month of the beginning of the lease, they have accepted the terms. However, if they pay the first month's rent then change their mind before signing the lease the "early termination fee" would not be enforceable if they take it to court.

I would never let someone move in without signing a lease and delivering a copy. But, if they pay the rent amount, they have accepted the terms of the lease. It just wouldn't hold up in court. And, dropping rent in a rent drop without handing it directly to staff, is not considered valid payment and can be returned. I like that one.

I would miss A LOT of great traffic and lose out on Leases if I closed the Office from 4-6PM every week day. My Residents would not be provided with adequate service either. I do not recommend this set up for a conventional property at all and would be pretty upset to learn leasing teams were doing this. For Section 8 properties, I have no problem closing an office from 8-10 AM to the public to complete paperwork, file, return calls to vendors, etc., but I found even those Residents will come to the Office later in the day rather than earlier, so I am not missing them. In addition, for my market communities, I will offer extended hours in the summer, too, to meet leasing demands.

When people show up as you are closing the Office, you simply ask how you can help, and depending on their answer, act accordingly. At times, you need to make a judgment call. I will never forget a Grad Student calling the property at 5:50 PM asking us to stay because he needed to lease something before he went back to his home state. My Assistant point blank said she would NOT stay past our closing time of 6PM and the Leasing person was not there, so I agreed to stay over. When the young man got there and we went through the Showing/Tour and we came back to the Office, he said he would go back home and think about it.

"What????? Are you kidding me," I blurted out. I am sure my face gave every indication I was feeling like strangling him. He took a step back and turned to leave. So I said, "Stephen, I stayed late for you, as you know, to show you this apartment. It's exactly what you are looking for; it's the only one we will have - for heaven's sake, it's 820 square feet 1 bedroom WITH a Garage. Where else are you going to get this? Who else are you considering?"

"You're right," he said.

"You are not going to get a Manager anywhere else in this town who will take care of you and help you like I will. So, you can leave, but I will tell you, this apartment may not be available when you decide next week you want it. Is there something you don't like about it?"

He looked at me a minute. I was all calmed down by that point. "Well, I want to talk to my mom and dad first and I didn't want to commit yet."

From that point on, I told myself his decision would not change my mind. I would still stay over if there was a possibility I could get the lease. I just learned to ask the person asking me to stay over whether or not he was ready to make a decision right then and there. By the way, Stephen called the next morning to reserve the unit and he did end up renting there and stayed the whole three years he was a Grad Student in the MBA program. :)

There is a case to be made for that; but I think it is more important for retention to do what you need to in order to provide value to your CURRENT residents as opposed to the MAYBE ones. Perhaps your residents would be better served if you did this only a couple of times per week instead of 7 days, as long as you make it known that these hours are for your team to focus on them alone without any distractions.

Besides, conducting showings alone after 5pm may not be the safest of situations for anyone.

If you have a vacancy issue, a smarter idea is to schedule an open house for one day between 4 and 7 instead.

In the case of the grad student wanting to 'check with his mommy', I would offer to get her on the phone while he was there since it is apparent that she may be paying the bills.

It seems the take-away here is you need to know your community, understand your current and prospective residents needs, and plan/schedule accordingly. One thing I've seen work well at LITHC communities it a monthly renewal party. Once a month they open the clubhouse from 5-8 and invite all the renewing residents to come for pizza and soda, and to complete their recerts.

That renewal party would work better for conventional properties, or situations where you only have a few renewals or recertifications to do. If you have 10 or more (I have had months where I have had 12 or more full recertifications to do needing documentation to support). I am not going to be able to do 12 recerts in 3 hours if my residents are not prepared with the information needed.

Stephani is right - know your community. Renewals are completely different from working with Prospects. But any conventional property that closes its doors at the very time Prospective Residents get off work and are likely to come to look for an apartment will lose leases. Yes, of course, we are here for our current residents, but we must plan for our potential residents, as well. Summer showing hours can be different from Winter showings, of course, but again, the name of the game is providing overall customer connections and service to everyone. Thanks, Stephani for reminding us to plan accordingly! Johnny, it doesn't matter what anyone says, I am all about getting that lease and I am incredibly patient about working with students and their parents! :)

I still feel that I am better off keeping my RESIDENTS happy and not leaving for reasons within my control. I would rather spend a couple hundred dollars doing that than a couple thousand in terms of turning and marketing a vacant unit and lose revenue on that vacancy at the same time. It is great that you are all about getting that lease; but I am more about KEEPING that lease as opposed to NEEDING to get a new one as best as possible.

Don't get me wrong, I do whatever it takes to make prospective residents comfortable enough with me and the community to make them want to spend their single biggest household budget item with me; but there is not much I won't do for an existing resident. My residents know that they can come to me with any issue and I will do my best within company policy and other regulations to resolve it. When I live on site; they know that I maintain an open door policy and strive to be a good neighbor. At the same time, I ask that residents respect my personal time for what it is. Unless whatever is happening is an emergency; they generally allow it to wait until the next day.


I can accept when a resident has reason to need to leave that I cannot control; but if there is something I can or should be doing to keep turnover to the following reasons, I will:

-Household size to such that they exceed occupancy and cannot resolve by offering a larger/smaller unit.
-Employment status/location including military deployment or transfer.
-Loss of income, or increase beyond income limit in affordable.
-Eviction for cause.
-End of school term/graduation.

If my turnover were only these reasons, then I am spending my resources wisely, retaining residents, and lowering costs to turnover.

I stopped reading at "my kids are grown and I have nothing better to do". Good for you; however, that's not the case for everyone. Employees are just as diverse as the residents they serve. We too have busy schedules, prior engagements,and lives! I'm active in my church, I have two pre-school aged children, I'm married, I try to work out 6 days a week. I have a life! I go to work everyday and do my best so that I can afford to live! My husband (who is in apartment maintenance) and myself have often been snubbed by our own employees because we HAD to get off on time to pick our kids up from daycare. The preception that we should be available 24/7 is unrealistic and unreasonable. The best leasing professionals can do is provide flexible office hours. Open later or earlier some days of the week. Stay open for 12 hours one day of the week. Have weekend hours for residents to choose from. Give them enough options to prove "we are doing our best possible".

So very true. Residents, employees, and communities are all very different. We, as managers, must find or set the boundaries that suit our communities and our personal lives. What works for one will not work for everyone.

Here in Oregon, property management used to be the career of choice for many parents. Changes in our state labor laws now prevent that. :huh:

One of the job requirements of every property manager I know is that someone must be on call 24/7. It's just the nature of this business. Sometimes that means my personal life has to go on hold for a few hours. The fact that I love my community and the industry makes this easy for me to accept. I love being needed and useful. :kiss:

We do try to have flexible office hours, but I try not to work 12 hour days. :side: Fortunately those days are fairly rare. And I have an assistant to help out on the weekends. :)

I tell my residents with preschoolers "don't blink, because if you do, your children will be grown and gone away before you know it." I tell my children, "I'm not old enough to have grown-ups" (but I don't think they believe me.) Fortunately, I have 150 replacements (my residents,) so my children visit frequently. ;)

For me, the rewards are worth going the extra mile. :)