If you work in marketing for the multifamily housing industry, you may have heard Apartments.com has launched community reviews. And, you most likely sit in one of two camps: nervously optimistic or somewhat ticked off (I heard from both sides at last week’s NMHC OpTech conference in Dallas).

Let me explain why we’re going down this controversial path and why we believe it’s the right thing to do: Read More

The attendees of Heartland Mobile Council’s MobiU2012 Summit, held in Chicago on September 24, expected to learn a thing or two about mobile. Despite the fact that I was one of the presenters, I can humbly say the event did not disappoint.

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Kids these days. What do we really know about them? Well, these coming-of-age youths of Gen Y are more technologically evolved than preceding generations, which is evidenced by their behavior: co-dependent relationships with their mobile phones, addiction to social media and video games likely accessed from their tablet. And, apparently, they prefer renting an apartment over owning a home. That’s one of the factors cited by Reis for the historically low vacancy and high rents being seen in the U.S. right now.

In a recent Chicago Tribune article, Ryan Severino, senior economist at Reis, says This generation doesn’t hold home ownership on a pedestal the way prior generations did. Read More

The social media panel discussion I participated in at the 2012 TransUnion Property Management Summit last week in Denver was astonishing for what did and didn’t happen.  What did happen: The audience of multifamily professionals seemed surprisingly – if not a tiny bit begrudgingly – accepting of property ratings and reviews. They’re here to stay and there’s nothing we can do to stop it, was the prevailing attitude.  Begrudging acceptance will never be confused with warm embrace, but what I witnessed was a giant leap from the outright resistance prevalent in the industry up until now.

And that’s a good thing.  There’s plenty of research indicating how important reviews are in making a big purchasing decision, and there’s none bigger than deciding where to live. Read More

According to tradition, lore and law, October 1 is one of the two biggest moving days of the year (May 1 being the other). Let’s take a moment on this occasion to reflect on the data we’ve seen through our industry’s busiest time of year. 

Apartments.com saw record traffic and lead conversion through the summer months, and while I’d like give credit to our recent site redesign, suffice to say macroeconomic trends came into play.  Consider the following: Read More

At NAA this year there was a, let’s just say, interesting session on apartment ratings sites that was facilitated by a group of attorneys and featured a mock trial. What was interesting was that while the trial simulated a disgruntled former resident being sued by a wrongfully defamed property, the real indictment was against the rating sites themselves (in particular, ApartmentRatings.com, not-so-cleverly disguised as “ApartmentDestroyer.com” in the mock trial), and, in a larger – and more discouraging – sense, the entire concept of online reviews and ratings.

Last week Google released a free e-book called  Winning the Zero Moment of Truth. I haven’t read it yet (I’m a pretty fast reader, but not that fast), but will, and recommend that you do, too. Because the “ZMOT,” a concept that has actually been around for a few years now, and that Google has a commercial interest in educating you on, is one that very much applies to the multifamily housing industry. The basic premise goes something like this: There are three stages in a typical buying process, starting with the Stimulus (e.g. advertising), followed by the First Moment of Truth, and finally making the purchase. In our industry, the First Moment of Truth (or “FMOT,” a term coined by Proctor & Gamble referring to the first time you see the actual product, usually on a “shelf” next to other competing products) takes place when the prospective renter first visits your leasing office and tours your property. Read More

Congratulations to Steve Lefkovits and the folks at Apartment Internet Marketing (AIM) for putting on another great conference. As usual, it seems to bring out the best people and companies in the industry. In no particular order, here are my thoughts on my three days spent last week in Southern California …

A social event: Social media once again dominated the conversation. And like much of the buzz on the Twittersphere, there seems to be general agreement that the industry is beyond both “if” and “when” and finally moving into “how.” And that’s when the conversations really start to get interesting, when the “how” isn’t just about how to generate leads but how to manage reputation, build community and brand, etc. Read More

If you’re a regular visitor to, or long-time customer of Apartments.com, you may have noticed the significant transformation of  our site that has taken place in the last week or so.  After years of research, hard work and testing, we launched a redesigned version of our home page and search path!  Needless to say, I’m very  proud of the resulting effort.

What’s important to note is that this is not only a front-end re-skinning of our site, but a complete re-build of our underlying architecture.  The goal, therefore, was not just to improve the user experience, but create a robust foundation for future growth and innovation.  Mission accomplished! That said, the freshest new features are the ones you see on the front-end, the ones that help prospective renters find a place to live, and I’ll enumerate a few of them now: Read More

We have recently come across several conversations online about the value of an Internet Listing Service (ILS), like Apartments.com.  While trying to decide the best way to approach this question, I thought of a popular saying; “you never really know what you had until it’s gone.”  So, that made me think, what would a world be like without ILS’s…?

Let’s say that, for whatever reason, tomorrow all ILSs ceased to exist and no longer appeared in Google’s search results.  Consumers using “long-tail” search terms – i.e. “two bedroom apartments in Chicago” – would probably do alright, because they’d at least get back property websites or Google Place listings for communities in Chicago, even if the quality of the experience varies widely from there.  Consumers using more general terms, like “apartments for rent” (there are about 2.25 million of those per month on Google) would have a harder time, having to go through several individual property management company sites to find a handful of listings that might suit their needs.  It would be frustrating and arduous experience, and only the management companies with the very largest national footprint would have any success in that world. Read More

Big news out of Google yesterday, via Ken Shafer, that the search giant is discontinuing real estate and rental searches on Google Maps, citing low adoption, technical constraints and “the proliferation of excellent property-search tools on real estate websites” (hopefully they’re referring to all the fine ILSs out there). I suspect low monetization might also be playing a part, but that’s pure speculation. What’s not is that Google has no compunction killing underperforming products. Remember Wave? Froogle?

Google and its map-based real estate and apartment search was a hot topic at last year’s AIM conference, and Google will continue to be a player in real estate and apartment search. But clearly they’re retrenching, perhaps focusing resources on their Places product. Either way, I suspect whatever is up their sleeve will be discussed heavily this year at AIM, other conferences and the multifamily blogosphere. Read More