Summer is here! Rental communities across the nation have speckled their event calendars with group fitness classes, barbecues, and game nights to entertain youth and adult residents alike. While such events may seem to serve only one purpose—fun!—they can be an important tool towards improving tenant retention. By hosting resident appreciation events on the property, owners and leasing agents can establish the sense of community that many tenants crave. Residents mingle, form friendships, and cut loose with a few light-hearted games and activities. Additionally, the property has the opportunity to showcase premiere amenities such as the pool and sundeck, media room, clubhouse, and fitness center. Resident appreciation events remind tenants of the community’s best features and reestablish the value of the property. Take a look at a few resident initiatives that cater to success: Apartment Communities Kick-Off Summer with a Splash Perhaps the most popular summer solstice celebration is the pool party and cookout combo. It’s the quintessential way to demonstrate resident appreciation in the warmer months. Residents are invited down to the community pool to cool off from the summer heat. Leasing office staff members serve tenants burgers, hot dogs, chips, and live music by a local DJ. To promote a more relaxed atmosphere, staff may decide on a themed event involving decorations and costumes. Stonegate Villas opted for a luau theme to their summer kick-off pool party. Student Housing Celebrates Independence Day Student communities near university campuses are hosting a variety of events for Independence Day, providing students with party options close to home. By bringing live entertainment, fireworks, and budget-friendly meals onto the campus, many student housing committees aim to decrease risks to student drivers while simultaneously forming a tighter sense of community among residents. As a Resident Life and community...

You never know where life’s journey will take you. Jo Marie Ziegler didn’t start life as a Michigan resident or envision a career in the property management industry, but that’s where she ended up. In 1990, Jo Marie and her husband, Amos, moved to the Great Lake State so he could study at Michigan State University.  22 years later, Jo Marie has become a veteran property professional. Based in Lansing, DTN Management Company’s portfolio includes 6800 residential units, mainly in the Lansing and East Lansing area.  This includes a significant number of properties serving Michigan State University students. A “can do attitude” is at the forefront of the DTN company values, and it’s a quality that Jo Marie exemplifies. She’s always ready to pitch in no matter what the need.  For student housing providers, move-out and move-in is an “all hands on deck” time of year. Jo Marie described it as, “long hours and you’re constantly busy but it feels really good when you’re all done.” During move-out, her job transitions to managing the rehab and freshening up of numerous DTN properties. Armed with a spreadsheet and well-versed in how to communicate with contractors, she works to turn the units as quickly as possible. The rest of the year, Jo Marie’s job has a very different focus. A self-described “Yardi Guru” who helps with Yardi support and internal training, she has a natural knack for databases. Here’s how it started: “When we converted our property management software to Yardi, one of the owners asked if I would move from the Cedar Village hub to the corporate office so I could help get that conversion to Enterprise up and running. From there, with the help of our Spartan-Net IT department we progressed from 5.0 to...

Executives making long-term plans face an interesting juxtaposition: Significant changes lie ahead, but at the same time history is sure to repeat itself. How best to handle this? Move cautiously, but stay open minded and don’t be afraid to try new things. Never has the industry faced as many big changes simultaneously as those coming down the pike. The creation of the real estate investment trust vehicle, the advent of commercial mortgage-backed securities, the introduction of 1031 exchanges—certainly, all these and other big changes have had an impact on the market. But in the Digital Age, change is advancing ever more rapidly and is layered together with sustainability pursuits, new corporate office preferences and changing demographics. Technology by itself represents a big cog in the advancing real estate industry machine. Broadband and wireless communications capabilities and programs to track and analyze operations are only in their beginning stages—and represent only a portion of the possibilities that will impact workplace, housing and consumer venues. A new study published by CoreNet Global predicts that technology will soon be able to adjust the temperature, lighting, sound and other aspects of the workplace to the emotional state of its occupants. Elements as non-technological as the fire extinguisher may be monitored via an embedded microchip. And the U.S. General Services Administration is now mandating that its property managers receive information technology training. On the sustainability front, efforts are now focused on how to analyze all the data being collected on energy use, as well as ways to make small changes in operations that will have a big impact, according to Marc Heisterkamp, director of strategic assets for the U.S. Green Building Council. Municipalities are striving to determine methods of incentivizing greater compliance among property owners within their communities, while...

Eyesight: it enables us to take in the world around us, navigate our daily lives with ease, and appreciate beauty. If your eyesight was taken from you tomorrow, would you be able to continue to function in your daily life? One of many non-profits that receive corporate philanthropic support from Yardi Systems, Inc. is Surgical Eye Expeditions International, (SEE) a Santa Barbara, Calif. based global organization that sends doctors to assist those in need of eye surgeries around the world. Since 1974, SEE’s eye surgeons have examined more than 3.2 million patients and performed over 400,000 sight-restoring operations. SEE International’s volunteer eye surgeons donate their time and pay for all their own travel expenses. During each clinic (approximately five days long), sight is typically restored to 50 to 200 people. “SEE has been thrilled with Yardi’s responsiveness and willingness to support our mission of restoring vision around the world,” said Rachel Johnston, Grants Coordinator for SEE International. To date, the company’s donations have aided more than 300 vision restoration patients in India. The patients who benefit from SEE’s clinics are adults and children.  Nearly all live in developing countries, and 48% are blind because of cataracts. Thanks to SEE, they are often able to achieve vision restoration – 80% of the cases are avoidable or treatable. SEE also works in its home community of Santa Barbara. The Santa Barbara Vision Care Program was created to fill the need in Santa Barbara County for those who cannot afford vision care and have no medical insurance. Over 51,000 patients have received free eye screening in this local program. Yardi Systems encourages you to make a donation to the non-profit of your choice this year....

We’ve frequently shared news with you here about Yardi Systems’ numerous donations to various philanthropic causes that help people across the U.S. and beyond. Today we’re focused on an effort of people power by Yardi employees in our Dallas, Texas office. Led by Michael Sheaffer, 20 people from the Customer Service Desk gave their own time on a recent Saturday to volunteer at the North Texas Food Bank. This organization supports hungry families and individuals throughout the North Texas area with healthy and nutritious meals. “Our team discussed options and we all agreed that we are very fortunate to have jobs and to work for Yardi.  We determined that we needed to do some sort of outreach where we could directly impact those that were not as fortunate and give back to our local community.  The North Texas Food Bank is a very reputable organization that relies on volunteers to ensure they maximize their food and financial donations to help reduce hunger in our local area,” Sheaffer said. During their volunteer day, the Yardi team was packaging nonperishable food items for delivery to seniors. A regular box delivered to these seniors in need helps them supplement limited foodstuffs that they’re able to afford. In just three hours, 16,000 meals had been packaged for donation. “We chose the food bank based on individuals in the group volunteering individually in the past and the impact they were able to make.  Our thought was that we would give up a Saturday once a quarter to give back to our community and make sure that we see that there is more to our lives than just the normal 8-5 that we work for Yardi,” said Sheaffer. “Surprisingly, we had almost perfect attendance from our group and we even...

With a commitment to deliver the most relevant, up-to-date insight and technology available for the commercial real estate industry, Realcomm attendees typically seize the chance to investigate the latest tools. With over 100 vendors, searching for a product with the breadth and footprint to fit your business was a top priority for many attendees at this conference, held June 13-14 in Las Vegas. The vendor expo was alive with buzz, and hot topics included smart building technology, CRM, and mobility. Historically, a major hurdle for commercial real estate has been the brokers’ reluctance to share their contacts.   After all, a positive (and often long-term) client/broker relationship has consistently proven to be a driving force behind closing deals. For brokerage firms, this has been a constant obstruction to the industry’s adoption of technology: figuring out how to secure the information available inside a CRM to a point where brokers feel their relationships can remain intact while still allowing the firm to access the decision making information they need. Fortunately, improved technology has led to convergence: being able to see the pipeline, discover possible closes, and most importantly increase revenue by lowering vacancy rates all the while maintaining a secure database of clientele that’s available on the go. Mobility is transitioning from a luxury to a necessity and as a result was an equally hot topic.  In part due to increased security concerns brought about by the recent mobility and BYOD (bring your own device) trends have left commercial real estate IT executives in perpetual problem solving mode.  There’s a lot to think about when it comes to incorporating the consumer driven tech fads we see today; security being at the forefront.  At our recent user conference, Yardi Voyager clients learned about the syncing and wiping...

With a wealth of experience in the apartment advertising industry, Lead Tracking Solutions wanted clients to be able to know exactly which of their ad campaigns had generated leads, prospects and phone calls – without a margin of human error. Paper guest cards, hand-entered into a database, were just too antiquated and unreliable. The result is what’s now known as the Yardi PopCard, an automated guest card that automatically populates when a prospect contacts a property. Yardi PopCard is fully integrated with Yardi Voyager, meaning leads and follow-up opportunities can’t be lost and automatically appear in Voyager once received. Yardi acquired Costa Mesa, Calif. based Lead Tracking Solutions in April 2012. In addition to having a very cool name, the PopCard gives multifamily firms more control over the lead management process, and LTS’ support staff helps clients maximize their advertising budget in an effective way. “With lead management we can go back to clients with reports, and whether per ad campaign or employee performance or region or we’re going to give you all the tools and management capabilities to say ‘cancel, upsize, downsize,’ your efforts,” co-founder Brian Maguire explained. LTS also offers the tools to track follow-ups by leasing agents, so you can view how many inquiries they are receiving from prospects and how quickly they’ve responded to prospects via email. “Many of our clients say: ‘I wish I had this information before. It’s simple if you think about it, but nobody’s ever done it before. Now I know exactly what’s going on at my sites without having to be there,’” Maguire said. LTS’ audit and success team helps clients interpret the results and make good business decisions based on the information collected. Major multifamily firms using Yardi PopCard include Riverstone Residential Group, Pinnacle,...

Your favorite Apple devices – the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad 2, third-generation iPad, and the fourth-generation iPod touch – get a makeover with the new iOS 6 upgrade that will be rolled out this fall. The announcement, made during the keynote speech to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, went into some detail about what we can expect from the newest iteration of the popular operating system: 3D maps. This is a big leap forward for Apple, and a shot across Google’s bow in the increasingly bitter rivalry between the two companies. Designed completely in-house, the new iOS 6 maps function utilizes a vector-based engine to render locations – this means ultra-crisp graphics, fast and smooth panning & zooming, and ample incentive to explore. Functionality includes turn-by-turn navigation, real-time traffic information and alternative routing, fly-over mode with photo-realistic 3D views, full Siri compatibility, and a host of local search options. More Siri. You’ve probably already seen the cute commercial featuring John Malkovich chatting with Siri. iOS 6 expands Siri’s range of functions. Instantly receive sports scores, stats, and schedules. Find movie locations, showtimes, and much more. Browse restaurants with a host of sorting options and make reservations effortlessly. More languages supported than ever before. Full social networking without having to type a word. Updated phone & email. New calling features allow you to respond to declined calls with a text message or a reminder, or turn on a “Do Not Disturb” sign that only lets through your most important callers. Email interface is streamlined for ease of reading & writing. New Passbook app. Keep all of your boarding passes, retail coupons, movie tickets, loyalty cards, and more all in one place. At-a-glance organization of balances, important dates, and updates. Leave your wallet...

From his high-rise office in downtown Denver, Dave Woodward has a great view of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains just beyond the Mile High City. He’s also taking the long view with his new company, CompassRock Real Estate. Formerly the CEO of the Laramar Group for 12 years and prior to that a senior vice president at Archstone, UC Berkeley grad Woodward has spent his career as a property management executive. He’s now using those years of experience in a new firm that focuses on properties from special servicers, lenders and other institutional owners. “One of the things that’s really exciting for me is that CompassRock isn’t just a multifamily company, we are providing property management and other services to all real estate product types.”  Dave told us. “CW Capital is my initial financial partner, with six other clients also signed up. They will help by contributing some of the management assignments in their portfolio.” The initial portfolio will be comprised of distressed assets, mostly taken back through foreclosures. In some cases, CompassRock will also be stepping in as court-appointed receiver while the properties work their way through the foreclosure process.  Generally a two to four year window to maximize values, clean up the assets and position the properties for sale is common. “Our plan is to manage a lot of these properties and then retain management when possible upon sale.  In addition, we’ll be managing for longer-term owners as well.”  Dave explained. His business model at CompassRock will maximize efficiency with two key best practices he’s identified over the years for cutting down costs: -A shared services system for back office human resources, accounting, information technology and risk management will streamline those functions across all management categories. -Outsourcing some lower-level services, such as monthly...

Our friends at Property Shark have put together a great slideshow that displays homes built over the last 200 years in New York City’s Greenwich Village and Brooklyn Heights. Unless you happen to live in a particularly old and historic part of the U.S., it might be hard to find a home more than 100 years old in your neighborhood, but in this part of New York City they are very plentiful. You’ll probably notice a lot of similarities in the architectural styles displayed in these slides – rectangular shapes, flat fronts, short-walk ups, uniform windows and always the inference that inside the front door, you’ll probably be heading up a flight of stairs. Visit Property Shark for more insight into the world of New York City real estate, including in-depth market reports, blog posts, foreclosure and sale listings, and individual property...

Last week we told you about the growing national trend of apartment communities that are prohibiting smoking altogether, rather than limiting smokers to certain apartments, and have been backed up by legislation in some states that OKs the restrictions. This month, Yardi client The Towbes Group of Santa Barbara, which has multifamily and commercial properties on California’s Central Coast, announced that it is going smoke free in all of its apartments. New renters moving in will be prohibited from smoking in their units, and any existing tenants are required to cease smoking on Towbes properties by the end of the year. The incentive for the change? Financial. Towbes vice president Jim Carrillo told the Los Angeles Times that the company spends considerably more rehabbing apartments for the next tenant if the previous occupant has been smoking in the unit. Residents with concerns about secondhand smoke and residual smoke that saturates walls and carpets will certainly welcome the change. With 13 apartment communities and nearly 2100 units, Towbes is the first major California property manager to institute a total on-site smoking ban. What do you think about the new legislation that offers landlords the chance to ban smoking? Would you prefer to rent in a smoke-free community? Or do you think the new legislation is too restrictive?...

Oh, those hard-to-pin-down, picky renters and their hearts’ desires. Every year, major research and development dollars are spent by trade associations and independent companies to try to figure out what will make renters choose one property over others, pay more rent for certain amenities, and stay on as long term residents. What’s being most closely scrutinized is the predilections of the “Millennial” apartment renters – the kids of Baby Boomers, ranging in age from recent high school grads to those in their early 30s – who are expected to favor renting over home ownership. As a result, some have changed their generational label to the “Rentennials.” Is it accurate? A recent National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) panel that looked at these trends expects these renters to want urban-proximate multifamily housing, with easy access to efficient public transportation as well as walkable neighborhoods, for ease of commuting and lifestyle convenience. NAHB is betting that the Rentennial trend will be a source of income for their industry in the years to come. We decided to take this research one step further and ask a group of Millennials/Rentennials how they feel about renting, home ownership, and what they want in their “ideal” apartment building. Here’s what they said. The perfect apartment? According to the NAHB, it’s the location of a property that will be the pivotal factor in attracting most renters, who dislike traveling long distances to their jobs. This insight is accurate, according to the young renters we heard from. And it’s also true that renters today want convenient public transportation access and walkable neighborhoods. “It’s all about the lifestyle for today’s renters. They want the urban experience of less commute time and immediate access to various activities,” said Jeff Kayce, vice president at Bozzuto...

Dr. Bob Holmes, executive director of the Colorado Springs-based Homeward Pikes Peak, isn’t trained as a social worker. He has an MBA and a background in education. Holmes is also a Vietnam veteran who fervently believes that job training, support and residential stability is the way to get homeless Americans back on their feet. His innovative model for doing so, Homeward Pikes Peak’s Homeless Outreach, is one of three programs Holmes oversees that support the homeless population of Colorado Springs. The Homeless Outreach effort focuses mainly on women and kids, and has served 1,868 homeless in the last 27 months. “Our total helped toward self-sufficiency is 1,409 or 75% of those entering our program,” Holmes said. “The program budget is $217,200 per year and I raise this through the generosity of foundations, such as Yardi; faith-based organizations and individuals.” Once jobs are found, the families are allowed to stay at the Aztec long enough to build up their savings for a deposit and first month’s rent on an apartment. Average residency time at the Aztec is two to three months.With room for up the 80 residents at the Aztec Motel, a struggling local property that agreed to rent exclusively to the program, Holmes and his team of 2 full time, one part time case workers assist their residents not just with housing but identifying job skills, seeking out interviews and support. Homeward Pikes Peak adults must make multiple job contacts daily, and they also participate in cooperative child care and eight hours of community service per week. Children – there are 42 at the Aztec this week – must be in school. The success stories come from all sides of the spectrum. One resident, a jobless tech worker, landed a position at Hewlett Packard....

America today is a veritable melting pot of demographic trends. The first Baby Boomers have arrived at senior citizen status. The population’s balance is shifting, with the historical white majority on its way to becoming the minority, while certain minorities are on their way to becoming the majority through a combination of organic growth and immigration. A huge pool of new graduates is pouring into the market. And urban centers are exploding at the expense of the suburbs. While this flood of significant shifts is impacting virtually every property type, perhaps none is more influenced than the retail sector. Successful retailing requires layering preferences, price points and geographic placement—and tracking how these are changing to better address them with the right offerings in the right locations. Complicating this targeted planning is the growing influence of technology, in particular the competition from online retailing—so-called etailing. Retailers and retail real estate owners alike are striving to sort through all this to make the best decisions, and the array of data available to them continues to grow.  Arguably, they are getting ever better at following it, although not perfectly—after all, while a variety of new retail concepts have come out, over-retailing continues to impede the industry, only to result in shutdowns and bankruptcies during lean years, as has occurred in especially large numbers during the most recent recession. There is still room, however, to pursue new opportunities, and some interesting ones are emerging. Take, for instance, the potential in the generation now crossing the retirement threshold. While retailers are generally focused on younger shoppers, drawn by their huge numbers and propensity to develop brand loyalty, older Baby Boomers actually constitute a better option, according to Nielsen Co. data. Per capita, their average expenditures are noticeably higher—at $25,952...

With an international background in accounting and property management, it makes perfect sense that Shridhar Sheshadri landed at Yardi as a Senior Consultant in the Professional Services Group, based in Yardi’s Toronto, Canada office. His career has spanned four continents, taking Shridhar from his home country of India to the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Australia and New Zealand, Dubai, and now to Toronto, where he and his family have lived for nearly seven years. The opportunity to work for Yardi came along after his Canadian immigration paperwork had been approved. Shridhar told us he was struggling with the decision to leave Dubai, since he had a good job there as a controller for a large property management company. But after being referred for an interview by his brother-in-law, everything fell into place. “It was lightning speed. I think it was providence,” Shridhar said. After spending much of his life moving and also traveling for professional reasons, he hopes that Yardi Systems will be the company he retires from. His widely varied experiences, from his career start as an accountant in India to his oversight of factories in Nigeria and property management of one of the world’s largest residential towers in the Middle East, have given Shridhar a unique perspective that comes in handy when he visits Yardi clients. He travels to assist clients in the U.S. and Canada with their professional implementation processes. “This position has allowed me to mix my past experiences, my background of being a Chartered Accountant, all of my professional experience – and sit across from a Board of Directors and discuss their business rules, how their entire organization works, and try to translate how Yardi programs can best help them,” Shridhar explained. The move to North America has been advantageous...

As the multifamily industry moves forward, many firms are choosing to create sustainable housing that also fosters a healthy lifestyle for its residents. Firms select sites with easy access to public transit and bike lanes. Communities receive fitness centers, walking trails, and programming like exercise and yoga classes. Many of these health-related amenities welcome residents to participate at will. A tenant’s decision to work towards better health has not, in large part, affected anyone other than the tenant. A new wave of health-conscious legislation may force tenants to take personal responsibility for the health of their neighbors. Residents say that they want to live in smoke-free environments, but they’re not willing to pay extra for it. Industry leaders and health officials have teamed up to evaluate the effects of secondhand smoke in multifamily housing and the hospitality field. As research mounts in favor of smoke-free residences, managers and owners are forced to make the tough call for their properties. Should smoking be banned? Numerous multifamily developments in Hawaii have already enforced smoking bans throughout their premises, including outdoor public areas such as lanais and barbecue shelters. A few California cities, such as Elk Grove, have also followed suit. They are forerunners of California legislation that may soon become law, permitting the widespread banning of smoking in apartment complexes. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has also moved in favor of smoke-free legislation. In all three states, the legislation has been consistent: none of the proposed bills would forbid smokers from smoking altogether, nor do they ban smokers from all public housing. Instead, individual properties would have the right to include no-smoking clauses in their contracts and lease agreements. The biggest change proposed by the legislation is that non-smokers should have the option to live in...