by Tami Siewruk

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 of an apartment community's to contend with (Rentals, Renewals, Retention, and Results).

Several months ago, we had half of the employees at a community pretend to be residents, and the other half pretend to be future residents. They were instructed to leave the community, then return as residents or future residents in order to gain some fresh insight.  Their observations might teach you a thing or two about your own apartment community. Here’s what they found:

• There were no clear signs in the parking lot telling future residents where they could or couldn’t park.

• Trees and bushes had grown over the main entrance sign so that both future residents and visitors of current residents had trouble identifying the community.

• When they took a “child’s eye” view of the community, our pretenders found the leasing center clubhouse pretty boring. They suggested hanging photographs of the leasing and service staff, along with a brief statement telling something interesting about them, like their favorite hobbies.

• The signs throughout the community sounded like someone had a bad attitude.

• When the leasing center was closed for a few minutes, there was no place for the visitor to sit and wait, and no system for leaving a message.

• The staff wasn’t prepared for rainy weather, with raincoats or oversized umbrellas to share with future residents; and there were no mats to prevent water and mud from being tracked in when showing an apartment.

• The main entry door to the office was difficult to open.

And the list went on! This very simple exercise identified plenty of areas that needed attention; and focused the employees on what was needed to more effectively deal with their current and future residents.

Try it with your own staff. If you think your staff will have trouble viewing your community objectively, invite the staff from another community to come in and pick it apart. Don’t be defensive; picking your community apart is a good thing. Imagine how much better it will be when you put it all back together—the right way!

Do you recall the memories of some of the most important events of your life, graduating high school, going away to college, landing your first job, getting married and becoming a parent?  In recalling these memories, what also comes to you is the recollection of an emotional experience.  What we remember the most out of our life experiences is the way the event made you feel.  Another life event that is a highly charged emotional experience is finding and moving into your first home.  So are you engaging in the F.U.N. when assisting your customers in one of the most influential decisions they will make?

F.U.N., feelings, understanding and needs are the necessary elements of turning an experience from unpleasant and uncomfortable feared event to a positive memory point.  As leasing professionals, we are all leasing four white walls and a piece of carpet, it is the way that the experience makes them feel that makes leasing from you at your community a positive and influential emotional experience.

Your initial contact with the newest member of your community could be on the internet; are you presenting your prospective resident the information in a succinct, friendly and personalized fashion?  Gone are the days of the flowery details; with 90% of our customers conducting their apartment home search on the internet, they have visited your website, looked at your floor plans, reviewed your pricing and have decided that your apartment home meets most of their criteria.  Make sure your response addresses their specific questions and most importantly, extend an invitation for them to meet you and visit the community.

If a prospective resident calls you, more than likely it will be on a cell phone, and more specifically, a smart phone.  By December of this year, 52% of owners of cell phones will be using a smart phone.  With this new complexity of communication, this places an elevated significance on listening carefully to your clients needs.  Use this new technology to your client’s benefit; text directions from Google maps or Google goggles right to their phone, send a short video that you have made on www. OneTrueMedia.com that shows the view from the balcony of the apartment or send them a link from YouTube of a video depicting the lifestyle that your community has to offer.

You have listened to your client and it is during the tour that you demonstrate your understanding of your clients needs.  Change the emphasis of your tour of the apartment home from those obvious, tangible items to mentioning and creating memory points of features and benefits that will evoke more of an emotional connection.  Mention the frost-free refrigerator is large enough to hold 3 gallons of milk, your skim, your children’s whole milk and your husband’s two percent.  Demonstrate in the kitchen that the cabinets have adjustable shelves and will easily accommodate dinner plates.  In the kitchen, another great feature to mention is the number of plugs for small appliances.  Perhaps the apartment will have four occupants, mention of things like the size and recovery time of the hot water tank will mentally register as a feature that your competition didn’t mention they had.  For our Millenials, be sure to talk about cell phone coverage and internet speed.  To check you cell coverage for a specific location, visit www. cellreception.com.

So how has all of this new technology changed the way we close the sale?  Certainly, you can get clever and add some new and refreshing approaches to closing but what has not changed is that the prospective resident wants you to ask them to become a part of the community.  You have gotten them to come and tour, listened to their specific needs, customized a demonstration that is jammed-packed with F.U.N, so while in the living room of the model apartment, ask a form of a closing question or comment.

Now that you have incorporated all of the newest technology into your phone and demonstration toolbox, how do follow-up on this very savvy consumer; the possibilities are endless.  What we do know is there is F.U.N. in follow-up.  Are you texting a short thank you message as the prospective resident leaves the community?  Use tools such as Google voice where you can schedule a variety of different types of messages over the next 48 hours, direct the prospect to your facebook page to become a fan, find them on twitter and request to follow them and send them a link to a video of their new apartment home that you have personalized.

Use whichever method of this innovative technology you are most comfortable with but be sure you enjoy yourself.  Your FUN will definitely create a memory point with your customer.

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One reason we found was light—a particular apartment that turned more frequently was located in a dark area of the community. We had to tour the prospect through a dark hall, only to enter a dark apartment. By increasing lighting and installing some apartment upgrades, we were able to lease the apartment leased within twenty-four hours.

We now look at our communities differently-and are approaching high-turnover apartments with an eye toward fixing their specific “problems.”

Contributed by Jeff Solliday

Unnecessarily redundant tasks are like weeds in a garden, and eliminating them can help you become far more efficient. Here are a few tips to help you turn your staff into a “mean, lean, operating machine”!

1. Give each member of your staff a stack of index cards. Ask them to consider all the tasks that they perform regularly outside of their basic responsibilities, and other special projects that they’re involved in. Have them write each task on a card, with a brief description, and sign their name.

2. Arrange all the cards so that similar or redundant tasks are next to one another (You’ll need a large conference table or bulletin board for this review).

3. As you categorize the tasks and descriptions, you’ll notice that a number of them connect, duplicate, or overlap each other. Kill the redundancies, consolidate them, or reassign them as necessary or appropriate.

This simple approach can yield tremendous results. Try it, and let us know how well this approach works for you!

(Some Viable Alternatives to Requiring SSNs)

by Nadine Green

An interesting concept has been batted about by various fair housing experts in the past few months, and as is the case with most issues, there is no consensus as to just what is the right answer. The topic is the policy of landlords requiring a Social Security Number (SSN) from prospects in order for them to qualify as residents.

Let’s look first at why a landlord would ask for an SSN to begin with. It is much easier to check credit if you have the SSN of a prospect, and, of course, you like to check credit to determine how well the prospect manages his or her money. And you want them to manage it well, so that they will have the appropriate dollars to pay you your rent, which is pretty fundamental for a landlord. (Of course we know that this process is not infallible; I would place a bet that no landlord reading this article has had every resident pay rent in full and on time without fail!). Is it, then, a reasonable business practice to require an SSN?  Yes, of course, the business rationale is clear. But is this policy free from all possible implications related to fair housing law? Maybe…but maybe not! And here is how we come to the debate about this issue…

Fair housing law provides that it is unlawful to discriminate in the terms, conditions, or privileges of rental because of the race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin of a prospect. (These are the federally protected classes; your state or local government may have provided protection to other groups, and you would be wise to be aware of such.) The law makes it clear that discrimination can occur overtly and with intent, as is most often the case. However, what many landlords do not realize is that fair housing laws can be violated when there is unintentional discrimination. There remains a legal question under fair housing law as to whether a practice or policy that is not intended to discriminate can, in fact, be unlawful if it has the effect of discriminating against a protected class. And this brings us to the matter of landlords requiring SSNs from prospects.

Just who has an SSN? Well, just about every American will have one, even the babies (we can thank our beloved IRS for this). So chances are that most every American will be able to provide this required information. And, of course, there are many legal aliens and residents who have one as well. But, who does not have an SSN? Most likely, a person without an SSN will not be an American, but will be a citizen of another country. In other words, the person without an SSN will most likely have a national origin other than American, and as has been said, herein lies the rub…A policy requiring a SSN is intended as a means to obtain financial documentation, but the effect of such a policy means that most, if not all, Americans will pass the threshold test of supplying the landlord with an SSN, but that most people who cannot pass this test will have a national origin other than American. So the question is, could the effect of an apparently neutral, business-based policy be challenged if it is discriminatory in its effect?

Well, the experts disagree on this (goes to show you that fair housing issues can be so very simple and basic, or so very complex and unsettled!), with some believing that the practice could be deemed discriminatory, others believing that it would not (and who would be willing to serve as counsel defending such a case), and others believing that this entire topic is no less than ridiculous. So what do you do?  First, be aware of the following:

• People are not required by law to have an SSN to be able to rent an apartment. (Often, landlords confuse housing law with employment law. To hire someone, you are required by law to verify their right to work through proper documentation, including their SSN; to rent to someone requires no such documentation.)  Remember that even illegal aliens have fair housing rights and protection!

• Foreign nationals here with a work status will have an alternative number from the Social Security Administration. This should be acceptable and helpful to you for your qualifying purposes.

• In some cases, it is not much more costly or difficult to get a credit report on prospects who have a federal ID number from a country other than the United States.

Now, think about what you are trying to accomplish with an SSN requirement policy in the first place. The point is to have at least some assurances that the rent will be paid. Since that is your point, you could consider alternatives to requiring a SSN.

• If you can’t get an SSN from a prospect and thus check credit, how about offering that person the right to have a guarantor to the lease…someone who does have an SSN and who meets your credit standards. This way, you have someone “on the hook” if the rent isn’t paid or the resident skips out leaving you with unpaid rents and/or damages.

• Another way to help protect your interest may be to require an enhanced security deposit (if allowed by your state law) in lieu of a prospect being able to provide an SSN.

Something to think about…no easy answers here…but remember that while it may not be unlawful to require SSNs, fair housing laws are broadly applied (just look at the issues that have developed in the past decade on federal, state, and local levels…you never thought you would see some of what has developed). Most of the experts agree that it is not wise to refuse to rent just because someone does not have an SSN. By offering alternatives to the requirement of SSNs, you can still serve your business well, and perhaps protect yourself from a fair housing dispute (even when you win one, it’s not a lot of fun to be involved in the first place!). You have also opened your doors to everyone who can provide you with a probable guarantee that you will get the rent…and opening doors is what fair housing is all about!

Nadine Green is Senior Counsel with For Rent Magazine®. The information contained in this article is not to be considered legal advice, and the author and FRM strongly recommend that you consult with your own counsel as to any fair housing questions or problems you may have.