Whether you are a first time Yardi Advanced Solutions Conference (YASC) attendee or have been to the event many times over, there’s much to learn and gain from the next few days.  You’re surely arriving in Santa Barbara with your own business and training needs in mind, and Yardi’s foremost priority over the next few days is to send you home more knowledgeable then you were when you arrived. (We want you to have a good time, too.) But after you’ve gotten your questions answered, there’s still so much more to learn. Here are our best bets for the time you’ll spend with us at the Fess Parker Doubletree Resort. Find the full schedule of conference events here. Have a specific question about what classes you should take? Just ask at the registration desk. No. 1: Company overview and update: general session with Anant Yardi (Wednesday morning). The Yardi Systems Founder and CEO delivers a comprehensive outlook on the real estate software industry, what’s trending right now, and Yardi’s responsive product offerings. Every seat in the room will be filled for this insight. No. 2: Leasing Pad demo: You won’t want to miss this look at the new, now fully available Leasing Pad, which YASC attendees in Washington D.C. got a sneak peek at earlier this year. Users will be able to access Voyager functionality for guest cards and availability through Leasing Pad, giving you pertinent data at your fingertips while working with prospects anytime, anywhere. Yardi PopCard is also integrated, allowing for easy lead tracking. Leasing Pad and Yardi’s other exciting mobile offerings will be front and center at the conference this week, so stay tuned for more mobile news and insight over the next several days. No. 3: Orion for Sharepoint: This all-encompassing...

Commercial clients attending this week’s Yardi Advanced Solutions Conference in Santa Barbara can focus on maximizing business efficiency when selecting from a comprehensive track of classes. One of many exciting new lead and lease focused applications from Yardi Systems that will be introduced is Yardi Commercial CRM™, which offers commercial real estate professionals the ability to streamline and even shorten the leasing cycle. Cutting down the time spent on property lease up is crucial for commercial property owners and leasing professionals in order to enhance revenues and minimize unit turnover time. Kim Maddox, Commercial Product Specialist for Yardi Systems, explains how you can save the carrying cost of vacant space by shortening the leasing cycle. “For example, let’s say you rent on average 2500 square feet at $37 per square foot.  If you shorten the leasing cycle by three weeks for one lease, you will accelerate $5,336.54 of additional rental revenue on that lease. What factors will help reduce the cycle time?  Examples include saving a leasing agent’s time, easy access to information (available space, existing leases, encumbrances, budget, prior rent and market rent), tenant communication logging, tracking activities and events, facilitating proposal generation, counter-proposals and approvals, facilitating lease drafts and approvals, facilitating floor plan generation and approval, facilitating transmission and approval of construction documents, construction budgets and facilitating tenant build-out.  There is much to be gained through the use of an integrated system to accelerate this process,” Maddox said. Among the features of Yardi Commercial CRM: Prospect and customer contact information is centralized in Yardi Voyager™ and contact history is tracked throughout the leasing process, from first contact to final signing. Integration with Microsoft Outlook and Yardi CRM Mobile means you need never be out of reach of key client data. Automate the...

Remon Amboy isn’t just committed to his work at Yardi as Director of ASP – he has shed blood for the company. Repeatedly. A 23-year-employee in Santa Barbara, Remon began his Yardi career as a part-time temp who answered phones for his first few months (he was also attending school at the University of California at Santa Barbara at the time). Fast forward two decades, and he’s now in charge of 10,000 devices, has helped Yardi open 12 data centers around the world and oversees 70 employees. Those data centers, though, can be a little dangerous. That’s where Remon has managed to cut himself while racking servers and completing other equipment set-up tasks, quickly dashing off to the first aid kit to keep his blood off any equipment. Who knew IT had a sharp side? A native of the Philippines who moved to the U.S. as a teen and attended high school in the Bay Area, Remon’s philosophy of work is simple but smart: Do the job at hand, and do it well, and other opportunities will likely follow. “The formula in this company for success was for me, and for others as well, do the job that you’re doing and do it well. If you prove yourself to this company, opportunity will be there. Do your job well, and do it efficiently and good things will happen,” he said. He jokes that he earned a master’s and PhD at Yardi University. At UCSB, he earned his bachelor’s degree in political science. Creating opportunity has worked well for Remon at Yardi Systems. His first official job here was in the now-phased out MLS department, where he helped create regular real estate listing digests for regional MLS’. Pre-photo scanners, the work was repetitive and involved...

Whether you are a veteran of multiple Yardi Advanced Solutions Conferences or are attending your first in Santa Barbara this month, there is something for everyone at YASC. Scheduled for Oct. 17-19 at Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort in Santa Barbara, YASC is an opportunity for Yardi clients to learn about the latest and greatest things Yardi products can do for them, train in-depth on the software that serves your business, and troubleshoot any technical glitches with the help of on-site Yardi personnel. While just about all Yardi employees contribute to YASC in some way, whether by teaching classes at the event, producing and supporting the products presented, or assisting clients onsite, no one does more than planners Nancy Bogg and Anna Markman, who work year round to ensure that both YASCs are a success. From details like the type of food service that will be provided – the Santa Barbara conference will move to a buffet lunch this year – to what classes are scheduled, Nancy and Anna handle all of the coordination necessary to produce a fantastic event. Their mission is to leave send YASC clients and attendees home better trained, informed, and less hungry and thirsty than they were when they arrived. If you happen to get a bit of a tan while lunching outside under sunny Santa Barbara October skies, all the better! We asked for a few first timer tips geared toward those attending what can sometimes be an overwhelming event for a first time attendee. There’s such scope and breadth to the information being presented that it can be hard to know what to focus on if you don’t have a set plan in mind. 1. Don’t hesitate to ask for help. “It might feel overwhelming because there’s a...

Life moves way too fast. The same can be said for the Yardi Advanced Solutions Conference. For three days next week, real estate industry professionals will gather in Santa Barbara, Calif. to learn everything they can about the latest Yardi software offerings for their vertical. New products will be announced and demonstrated, the inside track on forthcoming updates will be revealed, and secrets may circulate. This website: yascinfo.com,  is where you can glean some of that insight without being onsite, and the only place where conference news will be shared real time. We’ll be feeding the posts we write here on The Balance Sheet directly onto this site, and there will be photos, Twitter feed updates, and more. Even veteran conference attendees say that it is near impossible to keep up with the flow of information that will be delivered at YASC, no matter how many classes you attend. “It’s overwhelming,” says a veteran of many of these events. “You want to be there because there’s so much to learn, but every session will have an impact and you simply can’t go to them all.” Don’t leave YASC without a full picture of what happened. Come back to yascinfo.com daily during the conference, so you don’t miss out on any of the real scoop that you won’t get anywhere...

If you think you aren’t utilizing a cloud computing solution, think again. There are clouds everywhere. In fact, they are so ubiquitous that we may not realize we are using them nearly constantly as we navigate our professional and personal lives. Just like A.A. Milne’s Eeyore with his little gray cloud always following him around over his head, the cloud that houses our digital data is ever-present today, even if you haven’t set up your own personal cloud or have yet to transfer your business data to a cloud-based solution. But it turns out that plenty of people still don’t understand what cloud computing is all about, and may not want to admit it. If this is you, read on. Here’s what you don’t know about the cloud. 1. Despite the fact that we just used that really cute Winnie the Pooh analogy, cloud computing has nothing to do with clouds in the sky at all. It’s a term referring to software and data that’s hosted on a remote server network,  and accessible by you or your employees without requiring a direct wired connection to that information.  Where did the term cloud come from? “IT professionals have used a cloud icon while drafting network diagrams forever to symbolize the Internet,” explains James Beane, Manager of Cloud Services for Yardi Systems.  “Eventually organizations starting taking data out of the local environment and putting it into ‘The Cloud.'” 2. If you use web-based email, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or YouTube, photo sites like Flickr, Tumblr or Instagram, software hosting services, or just about any computer service that utilizes the Internet in some way, you are uploading data onto clouds all day long – you just don’t think about it. Where do you think...

When Alfonso R. Trujillo visits the affordable housing communities that he oversees as Director of Property Management for the César Chávez Foundation, he remembers his own childhood.  The son of immigrant farmworkers who came to the U.S. in 1972, Trujillo grew up in a Boyle Heights, Los Angeles Affordable Housing Complex. He recalls playing baseball with his friends in the street and the lack of laundry facilities – his mother would hang hand-washed clothes in the common area between apartments.  It was a safe place to call home, but there were none of the programs and services that are a priority for the Chávez Foundation, like the Si Se Puede Learning Centers (SSPLC) where kids can get help with homework and learn with their peers after school. “When I visit our SSPLC programs at our César Chávez Foundation affordable housing communities, I’m elated by it,” said Trujillo, who became the first member of his family to earn a post-secondary degree from Cal Poly Pomona. “I’m glad we’re able to give back.” He’s made supporting the families who live in Chávez Foundation’s communities a priority. Rather than outsourcing the running of laundry facilities to a third party vendor, it is now handled in house with profits going to the onsite SSPLC to supplement grant funding. The centers serve students from Kindergarten through sixth grade, and are a vital linchpin between school and home, especially for working parents. Founded by legendary farm worker activist César E. Chávez , the Chávez Foundation’s Housing and Economic Development Fund has developed or refurbished over 4,300 units of housing in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Portfolio size has grown from $16 million in 1992 to $328 million today. The Chávez Foundation is a Yardi client, using Yardi Voyager to manage its affordable portfolio. Sixty...

If you keep an eye on the latest news from the multifamily industry, then you probably already know that apartment renting is the current hot housing option of choice for Americans from all walks of life. The recent recession helped fuel renters’ desires to downsize, cut down on commute times and steer clear of massive mortgages, and the result has been high demand for apartments and low vacancy rates (as well as higher rents). Our friends over at the RentCafe blog, sister site to the apartment leasing service RentCafe, put together this good looking infographic which gives a clear look at who lives in these new renter households, why they’re renting and what these trends mean. The data is clear: the resurgence of renting shows no signs of slowing, and new construction apartment starts are steadily climbing back toward pre-recession levels. The figures are good news for the multifamily industry and could signify a collective shift in our national real estate mindset. What do you think? Will apartment renting stay as popular and trendy as it is today? Or will this be a post-recession reaction that could later reverse? Courtesy of:...

The saying that if it bleeds it leads has been around for ages, but with TV stations and various news channels competing with the internet for attention it now seems that there’s less emphasis on fact and more emphasis on first to run. Rushed stories are reported as news without taking the necessary time to check sources and ensure that, in the best interest of the audience, the information is factual. One such example occurred last night when news outlets everywhere reported that Facebook had released a new membership price grid and that to avoid paying for membership you simply needed to share a message with your friends, otherwise you would be forced to pay the next time you logged in. This was a hoax and you can read all about it on Mashable. This was very easy to decipher as false and further brings into question the credibility of news outlets to report accurate information. If this hoax was reported as actual news what else slips through?  Is every news channel going to go the way of Huffington Post: report it now and ask for forgiveness and editorial changes later? One final item to consider is that with the rush to get all these stories out as quickly as possible, it does become increasingly challenging to decipher between fact and fiction.  Something mentioned every other day in the news is Facebook privacy settings. With Facebook currently at 1 billion plus users, the quantity of information at the fingertips of Mark Zuckerburg and his board is astounding, so here are a few facts you should know. Here’s four Facebook “did you know’s”: 1. There was a report a few weeks ago claiming if you choose to make a post only visible to “friends” but one...

Some folks go to the gym or take an extra walk around the block when they are trying to stay fit and healthy. David Hull and Alex Lewis, employees in Yardi’s Raleigh office, decided they’d rather try to outrun some zombies. On a quest for improved physical fitness, the friends – who started their Yardi careers together back in January 2012, David as an associate applications specialist and Alex as a commercial account manager – decided to try a unique fun run trend that’s been sweeping the nation. Why just run when you can run with a zombie trying to chase you? Other obstacle-style events include even more dangerous challenges – the Spartan Beast, for example, features a fire pit jump, barbed wire crawl and electric fence. Participants must sign a waiver releasing liability in case of death to be able to race. Motivated in part by the popularity of the TV series The Walking Dead, zombie-themed events have sprung up all over the south, especially in and around Atlanta, where the dynamic drama is set and filmed. Involving obstacle courses, mud, and live zombies/volunteers, flag belt-wearing participants attempt to make it through the course, typically a journey of several miles, without getting “killed.” Make it back with at least one of your flags (out of three) and you’ve survived. Alex and David decided to take on the Raleigh Zombie Escape at Panic Point without doing much running at all. They’d been training for several months on the Insanity workout, a rigorous high-intensity interval training plan that stresses the whole body. It involved intense cardio but not much distance running. Nevertheless, David and Alex decided to go for it and recruited a few other Yardi Atlanta employees to join them. They also agreed to...

The city is the place to be, both for trendy apartment dwellers, who are choosing skyscrapers over suburbs, and the businesses and residences that will serve them. As a result, cities nationwide are experiencing an increase in urban infill projects. The developments sprout between existing buildings, filling gaps or replacing run-down, outdated or unsafe structures. What they may lack in square footage they make up for in accessibility, eyesore reduction, and green features. Such developments have been generally received enthusiastically by city planners, neighborhood committees, and consumers alike. Square footage isn’t always an issue. Once a wondrous architectural feat, the 2 million square-foot Sears, Roebuck  & Co. building in Atlanta, Ga., became a gargantuan scuff mark on Ponce de Leon Avenue. As it accumulated a collection of graffiti, broken windows and squatters, few foresaw that the behemoth would soon regain its status as an icon in the Southeast. The largest brick structure in the region is being reborn as Ponce City Market, a mixed-use development. The news has drummed up positive buzz throughout Atlanta and beyond. Planners, relieved that the site will no longer serve as a harbor for illegal activity, can’t wait to witness the building’s transformation into an active hub of commerce. Hip young renters are snagging the lofts of the upper floors, without even waiting to see renderings of the designs. Eco-minded urbanites are excited to see the structure built on previously developed land; they’re nearly ecstatic about how much of the current structure will be recycled. Foodies and shoppers have literally popped open champagne bottles as commercial spaces fill. Similar stories are happening throughout the United States. Even smaller cities, like Santa Barbara, Calif., are seeing an influx of infill. The coastal SoCal tourism destination is seeing previously stalled projects...

Chicago’s South Loop is about to change for the better. The Roosevelt Collection, a mixed-use residential and retail development owned by McCaffery Interests, will bring an exciting new shopping experience to Roosevelt Road in early 2013. It’s been a long journey for the Roosevelt Collection project, which was acquired by McCaffery, a leading development, retail leasing and property management firm, as a short sale in 2011. It was built by Centrum Properties in 2007, but the retail portion was never leased. Before leasing and moving retail  tenants into the plaza area that will anchor the Roosevelt Collection’s public space, McCaffery completely revamped the area between the shops, which is also home to the ShowPlace ICON theatre, consistently ranked as one of the nation’s top movie houses. McCaffery tore down buildings that had previously been centered in the middle of the plaza, creating a more dynamic, open air space that feels like the perfect place to forge community connections. At a recent Institute of Real Estate Management (Chicago chapter) event, 140 IREM members enjoyed food and beverages in one of the ShowPlace’s private VIP lounges, where moviegoers can enjoy snacks and drinks while they watch the latest blockbuster film. A bar and restaurant are also contained within the theater. Then the group moved on to a tour of the Roosevelt Collection space, which includes green features like a living wall in the Roosevelt Lofts lobby, common gathering areas, creative landscaping, and 340,000 square feet of retail space. There is a 1,500 space parking garage on site that will be shared between the retail and residential property. Though retail tenants haven’t yet been announced, Yvonne A. Jones, CPM, CCIM, Managing Director of Asset and Property Management for McCaffery, told us that the project is nearing its...

This week we are pleased to welcome all of our new readers to the Yardi Systems corporate blog, The Balance Sheet.  This is a place where you will find interesting profiles about our clients and employees, technology news, insight into real estate industry trends, and more. As an industry leading technology companies, Yardi wants to bring you closer to the dynamic personalities and happenings from the world of real estate. You may have heard that property management is boring – we would kindly beg to disagree. Take a look back through some of the stories we’ve shared so far. Yardi clients are a dynamic bunch, changing the world one property or project at a time. And they also have fascinating interests outside of the office. CBL & Associates’ Jody Bankston is an expert on new devices by day, and a CrossFit reality TV show star in his off hours. Dena Xifaras of Preservation of Affordable Housing moved back to her Massachusetts hometown to help working-class residents attain better homes. And Joanne Massey isn’t just a straight shooter as the controller for Fort Worth’s Sundance Square – she competes in Cowboy Silhouette rifle contests on the weekend. A closer look at our Yardi employees also showcases some amazing folks. We’ve highlighted Yardi employees from around the globe, including people like international cricket star and Orion implementation lead Aditya Thyagarajan. From our Toronto office, Vesna Uljarevic came to Canada on a refugee visa after fleeing Sarajevo during the war – she’s now a technical account manager. And Rose Hiebert heads up the Raleigh office’s food drive each year for personal reasons. Before she came to work at Yardi, she struggled financially and had to ask for donations to eat. Find all these stories and many more...

There’s more good news for the multifamily construction sector from the National Association of Home Builders rental market survey results, released this week. Paul Emrath, VP of Survey and Housing Policy Research for NAHB, recently released a video summarizing the results of the national Multifamily Market Survey. You can watch the video here: To summarize, the overall multifamily vacancy index (MVI) increased to 36, a tremendous improvement over the recent high of 70. While 36 is not a record low, it is a significant improvement on recent history and shows that the vacancy rate for existing properties is headed in the right direction. Class C properties, which had been lagging behind, have experienced improvements that bring performance up to par with Classes A and B. In the multifamily production index (MPI), new multifamily construction starts are up to 54. As investor confidence grows,  expect to see more new developments take shape in the form of apartments and condos. Market rate rental continues to hover above 60, and for low rent units, MPI crested 60 for the first time ever. To date, multifamily starts have increased to 200,000 a year, a notable improvement compared to previous years, though not back to the 300,000 average seen before the economic downturn. Though the market shows overall signs of fortification, the recovery has not been as evenly geographically distributed as builders and economists might hope. Texas has risen as the leader in new construction, both single family and multifamily. All four of its major cities—Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio—topped the US Census Bureau’s growth charts. Washington D.C. and New York were also strong performers. Conversely, Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland continue to lag in new building permits. Unsteady economic growth could pose future challenges, but Emrath’s optimism is...

For Ryan Mitchell, the attraction of small-sized living hit home after a layoff. Despite an advanced degree and strong performance reviews, the Charlotte, N.C. man lost his job as a corporate recruiting consultant in 2008 due to the economic downturn, learning abruptly that “a job isn’t always a guaranteed thing, even if you’re a hard worker,” he said. The aftermath of the layoff led Mitchell not just to change his career path, but to reconsider how he’d live his life in the future. Now 27, the New Hampshire native works in non-profits, runs a successful blog, The Tiny Life, that focuses on small space living, and is about to custom build his own tiny house, which will be mobile. Immersing himself in the growing discussion and dialogue around living smaller and smarter has been eye-opening for Mitchell, and has revealed that he’s not the only one who wants to downsize. With a new job in the non-profit sector, he’s been saving up to build a house with a utility trailer as its foundation, so that in the future he can move anywhere for work if needed. He’s found that many of the visitors joining the discussion on The Tiny Life are retirees or soon to be retirees who are trying to figure out how to stretch their savings and retirement funds further. “Even if they have weathered the economic storm, they may have not saved enough, and life expectancy is so much longer now that money has to last longer. Retirees are trying to wrap their head around the question: ‘How am I going to have a good retirement with the money I have available and still have good quality of life?’” said Mitchell, whose highly-trafficked blog gets attention from around the world. One...

Fay Chester hasn’t always been a competitive athlete. Heck, she hasn’t always been an athlete.  A member of Yardi’s Professional Services Group in London, Fay told us she “was very much the person to avoid sports at school…but this situation changed and I realized taking up a sport and an interest outside of work was most needed, and have absolutely loved every minute of it.” With the encouragement of close friends, Fay joined a running club, the David Lloyd Redway Runners Club in Milton Keynes, UK.  Just a few weeks after joining, she participated in a Duathlon/Triathlon training run lead by Great Britain Ironman specialist Campbell Noon.  While Fay never had the intention of becoming a marathon runner, the thought of combining these three unique sports was interesting, so she decided to go for it. The three standard components of a triathlon are swimming, running, and cycling. Races range from a Sprint event (400m lake swim, 20K cycle, 5K run) to an Ironman (3.86km swim, 180km cycle, 42.2K run). Success demands some of the same dedicated focus that has aided Fay in her 11-year asset management/software career. While she hasn’t worked up to the challenging Ironman distance, this former sports avoider has already competed in a duathlon, which was a total of 4 miles running and 11.5 miles cycling. Then she moved on to her very first triathlon, “which was hell,” with a 750m swim, 10K cycle, and a 5K run. What was so hard about this specific triathlon? The cycling was off-road on a mountain bike! There were a few tumbles and spills (we won’t name names) but in the end Fay said she loved it. And that’s not the finish line of this athletic journey for Fay.  She plans another triathlon Sept....

Ever wondered what happens after you close your browser and end yet another session online? Have you ever felt like you’re being watched – and maybe even gossiped about – by those persistent tracking cookie monsters as you blaze a trail via your browser? If you ask yourself why anyone would care about your interests and what happens to the zillions of pieces of search data generated daily, the answer is simple: information is power. Our personal data is the most valuable asset class of the 21st century. Cookies are not the only way our activities are monitored. Every online action is stored in cyberspace, regardless of the device used, be it PC, laptop, or cellphone. Every transaction is a little piece of puzzle that will generate our consumer profile. Being smart about protecting this data is our new personal challenge – and a far more complicated task than stashing physical valuables and personal paperwork in a safe deposit box. Companies have already started the race to cash in. Azigo, Mydex, The DataBanker, and Personal.com are offering a cloud-based hub that allows users to safely store and/or remove their personal digital information from everything from medical records to music and financial reports. For many users, the biggest complaint about the online environment today is privacy concerns. But we still manage to be pleasantly amazed by search engines that “read our minds,” returning suggestions extremely close to what we’re looking for after typing in just a few letters. (These “miracles” are made possible through browsing history and cache. This data is now available across all devices, so it follows you from phone to laptop to tablet, as long as you’re signed in to your Google or Apple account.) Another common complaint is the stream of...

As the owner and principal broker of a full service property management firm in Lafayette, Indiana, Jennie Kirby has insight into every sector of real estate in her Midwestern hometown. She and husband Aaron, associate broker, work with all types of real property at Kirby Property Management, from shopping centers to student apartments to single family homes to storage units and even fraternities. Their dedication to personalized service and client satisfaction has allowed them to grow their business quickly. And as a result of the hard work, last month the Kirby team was honored by the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce as the Small Business of the Month. Working with four employees, Jennie and Aaron Kirby manage 35 single family homes, three shopping centers, a self-storage facility and the Sigma Nu fraternity at Purdue University. They also handle leasing and sales for commercial and residential, and tenant advisement. What binds all these sectors together? A need for quality customer service, which is one of Kirby Property Management’s focal points. “Really helping people find a home or a location for their business, representing tenants in any way shape or form is my favorite thing. I love to see the reaction they get when they finally get the lease signed and there’s that sense of relief that it’s done and they can make that next step in their life and move forward, whether it be with a business or a residence. That’s really a refreshing thing for me,” Jennie Kirby said. Delving into so many different real estate sectors certainly has its challenges, especially when it comes to maintenance. “Nothing’s ever the same – every day it changes. We don’t know if we’re going to be hanging a picture for a residential tenant or fixing a...