This post was originally written by Kerry Sugrue, former Social Media Specialist at Apartments.com. 

Peak rental season is right around the corner, so I sat down with the Apartments.com Director of Photography, Mandana Namvar, to discuss the importance of photos and what her department can do to get your property spring-time-ready!  If you have any questions for Mandana make sure to comment below and if you would like to talk to someone about scheduling a photo shoot for your apartment community please email sales@apartments.com.  Thanks for watching! Read More

This post was originally written by Kerry Sugrue, former Social Media Specialist at Apartments.com. 

As cheesy as the title is, providing a safe and fun environment for your residents is very important when it comes to a shared fitness center, especially since 77% of renters told Apartments.com that they would be more likely to increase their workouts if there was a fitness facility in their building.  Below are a couple tips to keep all those people healthy and happy in your fitness center: Read More

This post was originally written by Kerry Sugrue, former Social Media Specialist at Apartments.com. 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that, according to credit agency Experian, the lowest credit scores belong to those 18 to 29 years of age. In fact, a recent National Multi Housing Council (NMHC) survey found this age demographic also happens to account for the largest segment of renters in the United States.  In the past, renting an apartment had little to no effect on a person’s credit score, but thanks to Experian’s recent acquisition of RentBureau, you can help residents increase their credit scores by reporting timely rent payments! 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

There’s been a lot of debate about the roll – and the perils – of online reviews in the multifamily space. Mostly, the concern, when boiled down, is about ceding control of the message from the marketing department to the consumer/renter. And that’s a daunting prospect, no doubt. 

Those who know me know I’ve got my own reservations about user reviews, not so much because, if abused, they can be unfairly damaging to a business (that risk is overblown), but because I often find them more confusing than helpful, and don’t like the anonymity factor. (I have other issues, too. For example, have you noticed recently how pretty much every restaurant on Yelp! is now rated 3-4 stars? It’s uncanny how consistent our restaurants are today!) Read More

The November issue of the Apartments.com Multifamily Minutes newsletter in now available.  Check out this issue for stories on chat etiquette, tips for making ads pop using short and descriptive text, survey results on how renters are using social media during their apartment search, customer testimonials on the MyMedia Craigslist Ad Builder and much more!

The following post was originally authored by former Apartments.com Director of Sales, Lisa McQueeney. We wish her the best of luck with her most recent endeavor!

I was so excited to be chosen as a speaker for the 2010 NAA Educational Sessions in New Orleans.  Although I have been speaking to management companies around the country for years, I knew this was would become an unforgettable experience.  I was right! Read More

This week, Tami Siewruk and her team at Multifamily Pro are hosting a terrific event in Dallas – the Social Media Optimization Summits (#OptSum to those Twitter-hashtag-savvy folks).  A companion to the first iteration back in March, Optimization Summits is a great two-day immersion into the nuts and bolts of how to market your brand online.  Having gone in March, I was witness to the terrific array of speakers who covered topics ranging from word-of-mouth marketing to search engine optimization, from tips on crafting emails that deliver results to an eight-hour crash course on understanding and engaging consumers via Facebook.  Though the message during these sessions was universal to all marketers, the multifamily industry was well represented and, as a result, the speakers paid special attention to how apartment marketers could apply these insights. 

Now Multifamily Pro is at it again, bringing back some of the best speakers from March for OptSum, fall edition.  Personally, I’m really excited to hear Brian Solis discuss the principles of the Conversation Prism and Lauren Fernandez detail how social can help us communicate more effectively across generations, in addition to my friends Mike Whaling and Duncan Alney dropping knowledge on Facebook and online reputation management, respectively. Read More

This post was originally written by Catelyn Bergstedt, Associate Product Manager, Consumer Products at Apartments.com

Welcome! Read More