Archive for May, 2012

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1.  “Assembly Line”: “You are a number, apartment 5B, and we are here to process you.” Characteristics: timely, efficient, uniform, insensitive, uninterested 2. “Friendly Zoo”: “We are trying hard, but we don’t know what we’re doing.” Characteristics: friendly, interested, tactful, personable, inconsistent, disorganized, no follow up 3. “Winter”: “We don’t care.” Characteristics: cold, impersonal, aloof, […]

A guarantee is a powerful tool—for marketing, leasing and quality service —for five reasons: A guarantee forces you to focus on residents. Knowing what residents want is the sine qua non in offering a service guarantee. A community has to identify its residents’ expectations about the elements of the service and the importance they attach […]

Years ago Multifamilypro conducted  a study with the help of multifamily management expert Ed Kelley to determine whether the time spent shopping for an apartment home had a discernible impact on the length of a resident’s stay.  The results confirmed what many of us have long suspected, and still ring as true today as they […]

We have found that communities across the country have the idea that rent increases in $ 50 and $70 increments are effective because they are  easily  to remember, and the accounting team will have an easier time with those numbers. Unfortunately, rent increases like our rental rates, cause an adverse reaction when they are in […]

The last time you played “let’s pretend,” chances are you were only concerned with the three R’s (reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic). This time, we’re going to play a grown-up game of let’s pretend, where you get to be the Resident or Future Resident -and we’ve got four R’s to contend with (Rentals, Renewals, Retention, and […]

Contributed by Christopher Dembitz, Clark Whitehill Enterprises, Inc. Reward the entire staff, especially maintenance personnel, when someone renews. A key part of our compensation program is the lease renewal bonus.  Everyone at a site gets a monetary bonus (based on their position) when a lease is renewed.  This works very well for maintenance personnel, as […]