When looking to put an apartment on the market, leasing agents have a responsibility to make the property presentable before potential renters start to view it. Exercising best practices when preparing an apartment for renters will increase the chances of grabbing the eye of a buyer quickly, avoiding long waits on the market that could result in months of lost revenue. Agents and landlords should consider many details and aspects of an apartment when staging it for viewings, such as interior fixtures and floorplan layouts.

Read More

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, it’s the perfect time of year to show your residents how much you care. Dropping a note under their door or handing out goodies in the leasing office can be just the thing to brighten up their day and remind them why they love living in your community! To get ideas for unique thank you gifts for residents, I turned to everyone’s favorite inspiration site – Pinterest.

Here are some of my favorite pins: Read More

Social activities are a great way to build rapport with your residents, encourage them to get to know their neighbors and become involved in your apartment community. If you’re looking for ways to make your property and residents more social, these are some ideas to get you started:

Summer Socials: Take advantage of nice weather and create outdoor activities for your residents. If your property has a pool, invite renters to attend a pool party and grill up hamburgers and hot dogs for the guests. Have an ice cream social one night, or hand out treats to residents as they pass by the leasing office as a nice surprise as they come home from a long day at the office. Read More

A recycling program is a great way to help sustain the earth, but sometimes the hardest part is deciding where to begin. By creating a program for your residents, it can not only help the environment, but also build a sense of community and remove barriers that may prevent residents from recycling on their own.

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

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

Father’s Day is around the corner and it’s a great opportunity to do something special for the Dads in your community.  Most people will want to spend the day with their children, so try one of these fun activities in the days leading up to Father’s Day. Read More

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

Apartments.com has teamed up with Craftsman Experience to provide renters with apartment-friendly Do it Yourself (DIY) videos to help them turn their living space into their favorite place.  These short, three to five minute videos are filmed in the one-of-a-kind Craftsman Experience studio in Chicago and cover topics that matter most to renters.  Keep an eye out for new videos posted to our blog and the Apartments.com Facebook page.  You can share these videos with your residents to help them turn their apartment into a home.  Who knows, you may even learn a thing or two yourself! Read More

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

According to a recent study done by SatisFacts, move-out costs are estimated to average around $3,900.  When presented with figures like that, you have to think what can we do differently so our residents choose to renew their lease instead of leave.  You may be surprised to find that 54% of residents choose not to renew their lease based on controllable reasons such as poor customer service and lack of responsiveness.  You can find simple, inexpensive fixes to reconcile these issues and keep your residents coming back. Read More