Happy Apartments.com Appreciation Week!

In honor of Apartments.com Appreciation Week, we wanted to thank all of you who have partnered with us and those of you who are considering us as an advertising solution in the future.  As a token of our gratitude, we are giving you a chance to win a brand new Amazon Kindle Fire!*

To win, all you have to do is to be the first to name the tagline of our new advertising campaign in the comments section below. Read More

By now, most of us have heard the term SEO. You might even know it stands for Search Engine Optimization. But, what exactly does that mean? If your response is along the lines of something about showing up in Google, you’re on the right track, but there is so much more! SEO helps your website be found, read and favored by search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Many of us shy away from SEO because it sounds confusing and hard to manage, but it’s not. With a few tips, you can take control of your SEO!

To prove our point, we asked Amado Candelario, SEO Manager of Apartments.com, to host the Apartments.com Training Series Live! webinar on search engine optimization. In this 30 minute session, Amado covered a lot of ground, explaining why SEO is crucial for small business web design, how to implement an SEO strategy and what to avoid. The recorded webinar is available for you to view here. A few of the highlights from the Q&A session are: Read More

While summer may be winding down, things are heating up in the marketing department at Apartments.com! We recently launched an integrated advertising campaign tagged with the line Find your perfect fit. The program plays off the positive feeling people experience when they’ve discovered precisely what they’re seeking in an apartment or potential new resident.  The ads feature a dominant green key representing the power of Apartments.com to unlock opportunities–providing a consistent and memorable graphic hook to help tie together all elements of the campaign.

While the new ads are fun and engaging, our goal is to increase exposure for you!  This summer and fall, the airwaves will be abuzz with Apartments.com.  In addition to print, millions of renters will hear and see our name across a variety of popular media channels, including:
-    Pandora Radio
-    XBOX Live
-    HollywoodLife.com
-    View our three television commercials on networks such as MTV, TBS, Comedy Central, E! and more! Read More

We hear it all the time – I just don’t have the time or energy to stay current with Google or I don’t know the first thing about Facebook marketing, or worst yet, I have a website, that’s all I need to do.

While my post will touch on the latter two points, I am not here to endorse Facebook or scold you for abandoning your website like a bad habit. My goal is to provide you with easy-to-implement pointers on how to build a solid yet simple website that is both search-engine and user friendly without making your web developer burn the midnight oil. Let’s dive right in. Read More

Raising the rent is a necessary reality in the life of a property manager.  If you never raised rents, you’d be out of business before too long.  With retention as a primary goal for many property managers, tackling this topic with residents is a difficult and uncomfortable conversation for many to have.  However, we learned last week, during the Training Series Live! webinar, hosted by Sarah Greenough (@SGreenough), SVP and CMO of Princeton Properties, there are ways of having these conversations.  The key to communicating a rent increase is to deliver the news in a confident, positive manner while keeping the resident’s perspective in mind.

Here are five tips Sarah covered to prepare you when having the talk with your residents: Read More

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

Many savvy renters are continually on the hunt for tips to maximize their living space.  Below are three must-have products to share with your residents to help them create storage even in the smallest bathrooms by using floating shelves, tiered bathroom storage and an over-the-door shoe rack.

Floating Shelves: Read More

As the class of 2012 turns their tassels and leave campus life, savvy grads are finding they still have some homework to do to identify the cities that offer the best opportunity for employment, a place to live and the best quality of life as a young professional.  To help give these newly minted grads a leg up in both a competitive job and rental market, Apartments.com and CareerBuilder teamed up for the fifth year in a row to reveal the Top 10 Best Cities for College Graduates list.  Backed by our expertise in apartments and jobs, we tailored our list to what matters most to new grads—a place to live that affords them a lifestyle they can enjoy and the best overall opportunity.

Check out the infographic below to see the top 10 cities for new grads, average cost of rent for a one bedroom apartment, hottest jobs and more.  Did your city make the list?  Even if it didn’t, tell us why your hometown is a fabulous place for new grads to settle down in the comments section. Read More

We are delighted to announce the launch of the first ever Apartments.com Training Series Live! webinar on reputation management was a success!  The 30 minute session was presented by Ben Watson, vice president of marketing (a.k.a. Social Media Ninja) from HootSuite, a popular social media management system.  The attendee registration was full and we had a lot of great feedback come through! 

If you missed it, you might have some unanswered questions running through your head, like: Read More

In response to recent U.S. Census data revealing homeownership is at a 15-year low, Apartments.com VP of Product Management, Chris Brown, addresses the impact on the Chicago rental market on NBC Chicago. 

Watch the following three-minute segment where Brown discusses the current state of the rental market, cost-cutting tips for renters and neighborhood-specific information for Chicago. Read More