For our valued Yardi clients who will be coming to Santa Barbara for the Yardi Senior Living Forum this week, we are excited to share some of the most popular local options in dining and sightseeing that our beautiful city has to offer. While we know that your focus during your stay will be training on Yardi products and networking with other industry professionals, there should still be a little time to have fun. Perhaps you are even adding on a day or two to your stay to further enjoy one of Southern California’s favorite tourist destinations. If you are looking for additional recommendations on dining, sightseeing and recreational opportunities in Santa Barbara, please don’t hesitate to leave a question in the comments section. We’ll have an answer for you in no time. Sightseeing For a full guide to Santa Barbara’s many historic and artistic visitor destinations, check out these articles on some of our favorite Tourist Attractions from a popular local website. Within walking distance from the Fess Parker Doubletree you’ll find the Santa Barbara Zoo, acclaimed as one of the best small city zoos in America. You could also meander past the Zoo to the Andree Clark Bird Refuge, a scenic estuary with lots of wildlife. If you followed the story of reclusive NYC heiress Huguette Clark, who passed away in 2011 leaving numerous mansions behind, the refuge is named in honor of her sister. The Clark Estate, with its future still to be determined (Clark requested that it become a museum), is across the street from the bird refuge, but not open to the public. Santa Barbara’s best known places to visit include Mission Santa Barbara, its adjacent Rose Garden, and downtown’s architecturally impressive Courthouse. You might enjoy taking a short boat ride on the cute water taxi Lil’ Toot from Stearns Wharf to the harbor, where you’ll find the Maritime Museum. A longer tour on the amphibious Land Shark combines a short jaunt into the harbor as well as a driving tour. Or you might also just head for the beach and put your feet up, enjoying a short break from the office. Jogging/walking routes As we described above, an easy walk from the Fess Parker’s Doubletree is to head south (take a left out of the hotel, while facing the ocean) toward the Zoo and continue along the edge of the Clark Bird Refuge. If you’re looking for a longer trek, you can cross the street at the end of the refuge and take Channel Drive past the Santa Barbara Cemetery. Up a slight hill, you’ll reach a short bike and pedestrian path along the coastal edge that takes you to Butterfly Beach, the Four Seasons Biltmore, and the Coral Casino. (While on the bike path, look to your left to see the home of Beanie Baby mogul Ty Warner.) To lengthen your route, continue into Montecito and explore the lower Village or South Jameson Lane. Alternately, if you’d like to add a hill to your workout, head right along Cabrillo Blvd. after leaving the Doubletree. Paths on both sides of the street will take you through Chase Palm Park. You ‘ll pass the coastal hotel district, Santa Barbara Harbor, and Santa Barbara City College. Then you’ll climb up to Santa Barbara’s Mesa via Shoreline Drive, passing through Shoreline Park. Hiking trails Santa Barbara’s front country mountains offer extensive options for hiking on picturesque trails. Many are quite steep, so be prepared with proper shoes, supplies and fitness condition. The closest trailhead to the Doubletree is Montecito’s Cold Spring Trail. (You will need a vehicle to get to the trailhead, which is located on East Mountain Drive.) Find more details about Cold Spring and other local hiking options at the Santa Barbara Hikes website. Watersports From the Santa Barbara Harbor, you can rent stand up paddleboards, kayaks, and small sailboats at the Sailing Center....
YASCSB 2014 Photos
Memorable moments
It’s bittersweet to look over these images of our last Yardi Advanced Solutions Conference in Santa Barbara. However, we are looking forward to hosting YASC next fall in a larger location to accommodate more attendees. Thanks to all of the clients and Yardi staff who made this year’s event one of our most memorable. Find registration information for upcoming conferences on...
YASC Highlights
Santa Barbara, Fall 2014
Friday, Oct. 10 – The Fall 2014 Yardi Advanced Solutions Conference concluded Friday with a final half day of classes and panel discussions, covering everything from advanced report writing techniques to the advantages of choosing a single solution stack for property management. Representing both the commercial and multifamily industries, clients from Post Properties, Tribridge Residential and Arcadia Management Group spoke positively about the benefits realized when they transitioned from a disparate, multiple vendor approach to a Yardi technology stack. “We replaced our numerous different vendors and eliminated the hassles that came along with that,” said Dan Ma Gill, Director of Information Technology for Atlanta-based Tribridge Residential. “It has been a really good experience.” The switch made it possible for Tribridge to achieve a paperless business model, seamlessly access data housed in the Yardi Voyager 7S database, and achieve myriad other business efficiencies. Single sign-on, ease of implementation, and eliminating integration headaches were among the benefits Ma Gill singled out. For Gary Shaw, President/Owner of Phoenix-based Arcadia Management Group, a commercial fee manager, mobility, enhanced reporting capability, and efficiency have been the major benefits of moving to a single solution stack for the 6.5 million square feet of retail real estate his company cares for. “In 2013, I had an epiphany at YASC. I realized I was using maybe 1 percent of the software capability that Yardi offered me,” he said of his reasons for moving forward with new products. “(The change) has consolidated a bunch of different processes.”‘ Shaw uses Yardi’s CommercialCafe to allow tenants to make online rent payments and markets available properties using the CommercialCafe ILS. He’s a big fan of Yardi PAYScan and estimates that it has reduced the cost of paying an invoice to a vendor from $3 to $5 per transaction to just 70 cents. And being able to approve payables using a mobile app? Well, that’s practically priceless, in his view. “It gives you the ability to be out in the world, and not be tethered to your desk,” he said, providing an example of how just the day before, he had quickly reviewed and approved an urgent invoice for one of his staff members back in Arizona. At Post Properties, an Atlanta-based company with 22,000 units of multifamily real estate, Janet Ham and her team moved to the single solution stack after conducting a comprehensive review of their digital strategy. “I had 40-plus products, pieces of middleware, and tasks that someone had to make sure were running correctly every day. All it took was one system upgrade, and it was time to check on every other piece to make sure they were still going to work,” Ham said of the pre-Yardi software landscape. The company’s technology stack includes Voyager 7S, Yardi Procure to Pay, PAYScan, RENTCafé (online leasing/resident services), Yardi Payment Processing, LeasingPad CRM, Yardi Energy Services, ResidentShield insurance, Maintenance for Mobile, Inspection, and VendorCafé. Since the product suite has been implemented, “I’ve done the happy dance around the office about 10 times,” Ham said. Both Ham and Ma Gill said that using a single solution stack has allowed them to eliminate drop boxes for rent checks and automate late fees when payment aren’t received on time. At Post, residents began signing up to pay rent online even before an official announcement of the service’s availability was sent out. “Whether you have an A, B or C class property, the residents want to have electronic communication with the leasing staff,” Ma Gill noted. Opening Session Wednesday, Oct. 8 – Fall YASC 2014 kicked off with a full house for Wednesday morning’s general session at the Fess Parker Doubletree Resort in Santa Barbara, Calif. Founder and CEO Anant Yardi announced, admittedly “with a little remorse,” that 16 years after its inception here, the conference is the company’s last to be held in its corporate hometown. Requests to attend YASC have outgrown the capacity...
WinnResidential
Award-winning Management
Unstable growth and slashed funding in affordable housing would suggest that the sector is no longer a lucrative investment. But demand soars higher and countless companies are showcasing just how rewarding affordable housing can be. Yardi client WinnResidential, the property management arm of WinnCompanies, reigns as the nation’s largest affordable multifamily property management company as ranked by the National Affordable Housing Management Association (NAHMA). WinnResidential is also the nation’s sixth largest residential property management firm overall. In the right hands, affordable housing can be an asset to any growing portfolio. In his 20 years with WinnCompanies, Senior Vice President Brian Kean has witnessed the company’s growth despite major cuts in federal and local funding for affordable housing. With outside resources limited, WinnCompanies has to focus on other factors to ensure continued growth. The company’s large scale success with affordable housing development and management comes in part by responding to what consumers want: affordable rents, sustainability, and stellar customer service. To keep development costs low, WinnCompanies often seeks to renovate existing apartment complexes rather than pursue new construction. This approach reduces the amount of costly building materials needed while increasing the availability of quality affordable housing. WinnCompanies works hard to make operations as efficient as possible given limited resources. From a corporate level to onsite staff, the company operates on Yardi Voyager Affordable Housing in conjunction Yardi Budgeting and Forecasting to promote efficiency and accuracy. The software requires fewer employees to get involved in the paper shuffle. “Budgeting has been helpful because previously we were doing it offline on a large linked spreadsheet, which worked fairly well but we had to take the budgets and manually load them into Yardi. It was quite inefficient,” explains Kean. “In this way, if there are any last minute...
Welcome to YASC
Learn, Connect, Share
Yardi would like to welcome our valued clients to our fall Advanced Solutions Conference in our hometown of Santa Barbara, Calif. We hope you enjoy your stay in our beautiful beachfront city, but more importantly, we hope that the conference is a valuable learning experience for you. This morning, the day begins with Anant Yardi’s General Session remarks at 8:30 a.m. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from our CEO and one of the industry’s most respected technology innovators. The General Session will be immediately followed by the Spotlight Sessions, market-specific overviews for Commercial and Investment Management, Multifamily, Public Housing, Affordable Housing, and Marketing. Here are a few brief reminders about resources and things to remember during your stay. Should you have questions or need assistance with anything during your stay, simply ask a Yardi staff member wearing a blue polo shirt, or contact us at the Hospitality Desk. We’re happy to help. To connect with us on social media during the event, please visit our YASC Page. Here you’ll find access to all of our social media channels, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and of course, this blog. Don’t forget to tag your tweets and posts with #YASCSB so they can be seen by everyone looking for conference observations and insights. This year, course materials and handouts will be available for you to download and save electronically. Follow along in class on your tablet or laptop, and save to share with your coworkers when you get back to the home office. Find all of those items right here. You can also find them after the event on Client Central. And finally, looking for fun things to do outside of the conference venue? Find our locals tips for Santa Barbara right here. Thank you...
The Graham Companies
Versatility + Growth
The story of Yardi client, The Graham Companies, is a lesson in adaptability. When life handed him lemons, founder Ernest Graham made more than lemonade. He transformed a failed sugar cane plantation into a profitable town with commercial and residential properties as well as farms for dairy, pecans, and beef. Nearly a century later, The Graham Companies continues its success by embracing versatility. Graham arrived in south Florida in the 1920s to manage fields for the Pennsylvania Sugar Company. The Great Depression quickly ended that career. Instead of fixating on his losses, Graham took inventory of what he had: thousands of acres, plenty of dairy cows, and a wife who was a great business partner. The two soon opened Graham Dairy Incorporated, which became one of the largest dairy farms in the state. The family faced another dilemma less than thirty years later. Nearby Miami began to outgrow its original city limits. Developers made enticing offers on the Grahams’ farmland. Rather than bow to the pressure, the family decided to develop their land on their own terms. The concept of Miami Lakes took root, including multi-family, mixed-use, commercial, industrial, and hospitality properties. The town has been growing ever since. Miami Lakes is a predecessor of New Urbanism, providing its 30,000 residents with pedestrian access to more than 1,100 businesses, 99 parks, and numerous amenities. The town has received honors as an All American City Finalist and one of the top 100 Best Communities for Young People. “The reason Miami Lakes is so successful is because the quality of our properties is much higher than all of the surrounding areas,” says Andre Teixeira, Executive Vice President and CFO of The Graham Companies. “Everybody wants to live in Miami Lakes. They want to work in Miami Lakes....
Senior Star
Raising the Bar
Yardi client Senior Star offers independent living, assisted living, memory support, and nursing care for seniors at 13 communities throughout the heartlands of the United States. Senior Star has increased its portfolio by a third and its staff base by 43 percent in just a few years. The growth signals the company’s successful staff training that focuses on distinctive customer care as well as the adept implementation of software to facilitate efficiency. Beyond memorizing the five corporate values and task-specific skills, Senior Star cultivates empathy as part of staff training. Distinct educational programs help trainees learn to walk in the shoes of residents both figuratively and literally. The company’s dementia care training, for example, guides employees through a disorienting sensory wonderland that replicates the challenges that some seniors face. Holly Hoover, Senior Financial Analyst at Senior Star, explains the training experience, “Well, you come in and you are outfitted with various common things like your gloves on backwards and goggles that you can’t see through. You may have really hard spiky things that you’re asked to put on your bare feet. You’re led into a dark room where loud noises and various lights and other stimuli are presented to you with these hindrances so that you can experience the sensations that a dementia care resident might experience.” Trainees are then given basic tasks to perform. The disorientation caused by the stimuli and the physical discomforts help trainees to understand the struggles of residents suffering from dementia. Senior Star also requires onsite personnel to familiarize themselves with residents. Personalized care is a basic key to customer service but the approach also forges bonds that will promote healthy recollection skills for residents with dementia and Alzheimer’s. Hoover explains, “One of the things that begins to fade very quickly with a dementia care person is a memory of basic things: memory of people, memory of objects and events in their life. And the more we can tether them to that memory through our programming—through finding out, you know, as much as we can about that resident and having daily activities to help reinforce those things—the better chance they have of maintaining health. That’s, you know, what we’re about. That’s our culture of customized service to a resident.” Senior Star employees are able to focus on empathy and customized service because they are less burdened by the minutiae of daily operations. Configurable software improves the efficiency of the field staff, allowing members to focus on resident wellbeing. Senior Star currently uses Yardi Voyager, which consolidates data across the company’s portfolio, providing easy access to detailed information on each property without paper trails and time delays. Multiple types of reporting for assisted care living, memory care licensing, census-type reporting, building inspections, rent rolls and more, are all accessible with customizable permissions for those who need it. “We are able to provide that information out of the system. Our users onsite can use that without requesting from the main office and waiting,” says Hoover. “Being able to call it up in Voyager at a moment’s notice is necessary.” The time saved on reporting is then diverted to staff support and resident care. After attending YASC , Hoover is convinced that the company is just beginning to tap into all that Yardi has to offer. “We’re going to examine the electronic health records (EHR) and we are certainly looking forward to Senior CRM that we saw here at YASC today,” she says. “This is kind of where EHR comes in: you know, if you have a new employee that maybe hasn’t known the resident, we can get something in our systems that enables us to bring a new staff person up to speed very quickly on this resident, what affects her, what she dislikes, what she needs, what her daily routines are, what programming she responds to–anything that we can implement to that effect that makes that...
Buckingham Companies
Marketing in motion
Buckingham Companies may have forged its identity as a leader in commercial real estate but its multifamily properties have established their own reputation. In 2013 alone, the company received 19 awards for its singular properties. Spreading the word about Buckingham Companies’ award winning properties is an equally distinguished marketing department. The staff was honored with a Prodigy Award for Best Overall Marketing Program, another for Best Color Advertisement, and the Bronze Adrian Award for Complete Campaign and Posting. Nicole Crosby, Marketing Manager, believes that the trick to modern marketing is for the department staff to quiet its own assumptions. “It’s less about what we have to say and more about what customers have to say. We’re just trying to do a better job of monitoring what our customers are saying and leveraging that feedback to use in our marketing campaigns,” says Crosby, pictured at right. “We can’t rely on what we think is great about our communities. We have to listen to what our customers have to say and use that as our marketing message.” Buckingham Companies’ approach appeals directly to Millennials, whose social media usage serves as a direct line of communication to the marketing team. The team’s attentiveness has paid off. From feedback and observation, Buckingham Companies decided to capitalize on the popularity of Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants and a common housing woe: roommate dysfunction. “We did a marketing piece where we gave the students one of the BW3 wet naps attached to a little card that went out with the to-go orders that said, ‘Things are about to get messy. We’re here to help.’ Then on the other side of the card, we mentioned, ‘Now let’s talk about your living situation,’” laughs Crosby. The card gave students details about local properties....
Maintenance Mobile
Time management solution
When J Turner Research released its list of top ten apartment resident complaints, three of the top five complaints reflected renters’ dissatisfaction with onsite staff’s responsiveness; poor grounds upkeep, disorganized staff and lingering maintenance requests lessen the chances of lease renewals and referrals. One community has discovered how Yardi Maintenance Mobile keeps staff on top of resident concerns before they become complaints. During Wesley Fonseca’s time as a maintenance tech in the Atlanta area, he has worked at several apartment communities offering varying degrees of customer satisfaction. He has observed that time management directly affects a team’s ability to meet residents’ needs and provide top quality service. “The toughest part of our job would be time management,” says Fonseca. “Being able to schedule work orders is important, so important. That will make or break a maintenance team. I’ve seen teams that were exceptional in time management and other teams that were just not and the property was in chaos.” Without a convenient maintenance app, techs may miss out on details such as move-in dates, establishing a bad first impression when new tenants arrive to a unit that isn’t ready. Techs must also return to the leasing office several times throughout the day to sign off on completed assignments and pick up new ones, wasting precious time that’s better used out in the field. With few ways to handle scheduling conflicts, pop-up emergencies, and other delays, techs may arrive late to scheduled work orders or miss out on some entirely. At Fonseca’s current community, Post Glen in Brookhaven, his team implemented Yardi’s Maintenance Mobile with great success. “I’ve seen my time management get so much better with Yardi because of how I’m able to access the work orders on my smartphone. Maintenance Mobile has helped...
Against the Wall
Limited Affordable Options
Michael J. Novogradac, a managing partner at Novogradac & Co., estimates that available affordable housing lags behind demand by as many as 20 million units. The funding simply isn’t there. Without it, low-income families and affordable housing providers are running low on options. Aubrey Fakalata, Resident Manager of Yardi client Burbank Housing has experienced the dire need for new construction firsthand, “That was one of the reasons why [Burbank Housing] built Logan Place (pictured, right), was for the homeless. When the company advertised that they were opening a brand new affordable housing property, they went straight to the homeless shelters. A majority of our applicants were from the shelters throughout Sonoma County,” she says. Without adequate housing availability, low-income families are relegated to shelters or the streets. Competition for one of the few affordable housing units becomes desperate. There are several factors contributing to the decline in available housing. Primarily, the building costs have increased while equity has remained the same for decades. There are also fewer gap financing offers and tax credits, with less money flowing from HUD in programs such as the HOME Investment Partnerships and The Community Development Block Grant. Lastly, equity investors aren’t seeing the returns that they would prefer, making affordable housing an unappealing option. “There is always a shortage of federal and state tax credits to go around,” begins Jeanne Taylor, CFO of Preservation of Affordable Housing, a Yardi client. “After the economy hit a few years ago, the tax credit arena wasn’t as plentiful…and the investors became a little stricter in their requirements.” Future tax reform could further tighten investors’ purse strings. Any legislation that includes lower rates and longer depreciation would damage the industry’s bottom line. Novogradac & Co. proposes that the industry would see as...
