Part of the charm of the multifamily industry is that a wide variety of tactics can be used to achieve results, and virtually every operator has a unique strategy. Those divergent methods certainly apply to how operators handle their construction processes, as well.
As the industry gradually rolls out more and more options that enable prospects to create their living experience on their own terms, a significant foundational deficiency has emerged. Many communities offer static, poorly designed sitemaps—and sometimes none at all.
Properties were forced to eschew in-person tours for self-guided, virtual, pre-recorded, live video and other contactless tour options. Now, as the industry moves past the pandemic era, it is determining which of these options to incorporate in the tour process moving forward.
Unlike nearly every other prod think of the early editions of cellphones or high-definition TVs—these AI-fueled bots can learn on the fly. Couple their learning ability with some fine-tuning efforts by their creators, and it should come as no surprise that chatbots are becoming a must-have in the industry.
As apartment operators slowly abandon antiquated pet policies in favor of forward-thinking procedures that reflect the preferences of the modern-day renter, pet owners and non-pet owners tend to agree on several issues that conventional wisdom suggests they’d typically be divided on.
In the apartment industry, you seldom observe organizations that downplay the employee experience. Great results, average culture doesn’t necessarily qualify as a sizzling tagline. Yet while nearly all organizations claim that they are among the best places to work, it can ring hollow in some instances.
According to the Multifamily Pet Policies and Amenities Survey recently released by PetScreening and J Turner Research, 26% of pet-owning respondents indicated they acquired their pet during the pandemic. The rate climbs to 39% when narrowing down to student-only respondents.
More than ever, the rental housing industry understands the value of data-driven decisions. The industry has done a commendable job of collecting the data—particularly in the past few years—but still must make headway in quantifying it and converting it to actionable business intelligence (BI).
Like any industry, residential building operators saw their entire work lives change in a matter of weeks at the onset of the pandemic. There were obstacles aplenty. Managers had to adjust to working with smaller property management teams—or in some cases, with teams almost exclusively offsite.
For decades, pet policies were something of a cookie-cutter concept at apartment communities: Only certain breeds, only certain sizes and a limit of one or two pets per household. Those standard policies, have become antiquated as pet owners constitute one of the fastest growing segments in rental housing.