First, rentership for citizens over 50 years of age has been rising. In 1990 the rate was 23% and today the rate has risen to over 26%. The recent financial crisis should drive this percentage up significantly on wealth loss alone. Further, the effect of the crisis has sharply reduced the expectation that the home is a good repository for wealth. The two factors together could push over 50 rentership by 10% to 15%. We expect the percentage is likely to increase from the 2006 level of 26% to a leve that could grow to 35% or more over the next few years.
Archive for the ‘Get a Tenant’ Category
Senior Renting in the Coming Decade
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009Tips for Leasing Apartments Online
Monday, August 31st, 2009Great Article by Garland Pollard at BlackCow Press
Categories: Content Development, Web
So you have an apartment to lease. Either a weekly lease, monthly or yearly. And you’ve done all the things, including newspaper, CraigsList, local apartment guide, even a few fliers to neighbors. And you still have some un-rented inventory.
What’s next?
Make sure your web site and total online presence is where it needs to be, from email to website to Google Adwords to Search Engine Optimization for Google, Bing and Yahoo. A few ideas:
- Make your photos real. So often, websites show canned or old photos, and have non-descriptive language. If you can’t afford a professional photographer, get out there with a camera yourself and take lots of creative angles. You can hundreds of photos with a digital camera; shoot away. Be creative. Yes, you want images that show the room, but you want the images to POP out at the reader.
- Show floor plans. Potential tenants want to imagine what they will be getting.
- Make sure the right numbers are on your website. Yes, you want the office number on the site, but do remember to keep the rest of the telephone numbers on your website. A few minutes delay might mean you miss out on a tenant.
- Make it Melrose Place: No, we aren’t saying that Heather Locklear will need to be there. Instead, what we mean is that you need to “brand” the name and place as a community and way of life. If your clientele is just out of college, you want to play up the social aspect. If it is mid-life folks, then there is another approach to take. Go around and talk to the people who have lived in the apartments the longest, and like it. They will give you the scoop on what makes your place unique. Remember, outside of the signage and the architecture, your “brand” is the people who live and work at your complex. Consider having a web-page where you only list former tenants and what they loved about the place. “I lived there in 1973. Gosh those were some great days at Piney Apartments!”
- Meet the staff: Do you have a lawn company or maintenance man? Show them on the site. Not only does it give them a boost, it tells the potential tenant that this complex is a place where the staff is valued. That message will translate to the potential tenant as this is a place that will take care of me.
- Talk to Realtors. Realtors who do relocations might be a good source of referrals.
- Use Google Adwords. With Adwords, you pay for clicks, not exposure. That means that your apartment community or resort gets exposure even if you don’t pay.
- Use lots of noun-based copy. Search engines can only find your information through words, and adjectives are not as important as nouns. So use lots of words and descriptions for your apartments. Don’t use lots of descriptive words. Instead, use facts, such as size, color and amenities. For instance, you would say “oleander-lined walks” rather than “pretty” walks, or you might say “brick-lined paths” rather than just nice landscaping. This might sound extreme, but you can even mention paint colors, flower beds and the like. Read our tips on Search Engine Basics for ideas.
- Have faith! While the economy is in an awful spot, everyone’s in this mess so just keep at it and you just might even build up a waiting list.
- Know your architecture: At some point, someone designed your apartment buildings with a vision, however modest. Make sure you know that. For instance, if it is a complex built in 1962 by a local architect or developer or contractor, mention that on the site. People have confidence in other people; you are trying to differentiate yourself and every tidbit of information helps.
- What are the benefits? Find benefits where you don’t think there are benefits: If you have shaded parking, that’s a benefit. If you have a pool, make sure that it is an”intimate” pool or a “jungle” pool or a pool with “dozens of deck chairs and card tables where residents play chess every Tuesday.”
- Take advantage of Social Media. You can spend a lot of time in social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, promoting your apartments. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes not. But even a little bit of effort helps to get search engines like Google and Bing to find your name, and associate your apartment name with keywords.
- In the neighborhood: Don’t be afraid of old fashioned shoe leather. Yes, the web is powerful. But make sure you make yourself known to other nearby apartment communities and businesses that are near to your apartments. They will certainly be able to refer people if they know of someone.
- Post the rules but be flexible: When new tenants are hard to find, you need to keep the ones you have. Better to train an old tenant to be a good tenant than to have to find new ones. That being said, a person who finds your apartment over the web wants to know some of the expectations. For instance, are guests quiet at the pool after 9 p.m., or is there a Friday night pool party? How many parking spaces?
- Make sure your site is running properly. Look at your site on different computers and browsers. Does it load quickly? Do you have analytic software installed so you know where your traffic originates and what they are looking for? Do you have all the pages up that you need?
More info on Hispanic Marketing Focus
Monday, August 24th, 2009We’ve hit many times the fact that Hispanics are the fastest growing resident demographic. However, did you know that Hispanic Internet usage is growing 50% faster than the general market? Do you have a strategy for this market area?
If not, keep in mind that most Hispanic searches are in English. The fact is Hispanic marketing in fact any demographic marketing focus is a cultural item. For example are you aware that a Hispanic household is 3.5X more likely to respond to a direct mail item than a non-Hispanic Household. This is particularly important when you understand that they only receive 10% of the mail other households receive.
About 55% of Hispanics respond well to ads in Spanish. Also, Radio and television is generally the best mode of advertising based on selling results.
When you considers Hispanics are $860 billion dollar market segment, ignoring this segment is at your own risk. This will be an even greater fact as the segment is expected to grow to over $1 trillion by early in the coming decade.
Good sources for this post were:
Great Sales Pages
Monday, August 17th, 2009Many apartment complexes have web pages and with over half of prospects beginning their search on the Internet, this figure will grow (according to a National Multhousing Council Report). Making good use of those pages is an important skill.
You may find the attached websites a useful source for the purpose:
http://streetguidetocopywriting.com/blog/writing-copy/10-steps-sales-page
http://ezinearticles.com/?Tips-for-Building-Great-Sales-Pages&id=779658
Looking forward to sharing new ideas.
The Apartment Guy.
A Seismic Demographic Shift in Housing
Sunday, August 16th, 2009A Demographic Housing Seismic Shift
At apartmentmarketingsolutions.com, we’ve identified some key areas where properties can differentiate themselves. One of the least exploited is ethnic differentiation. Over the next decade this is an even more significant fact as more than 72% of new households will be minority according to the 2009 Joint Housing Study. This implies a seismic shift in the proportion rental homes for the nation. For the first time since records have begun U.S. homeownership is on track to move below the historic average of 62% toward a low 50% range (and this does not consider impact of the housing crisis driven recession on homeowner trends).
Since minorities have lower incomes and in general rent at a greater rate than whites. In fact, if we break this down further, U.S. census data shows that blacks rent at a greater than 50% rate compared to home ownership. This jumps to more than 60% for the Hispanic Latino population.
Where does this lead? It turns out that of new households, Hispanic Latinos are 36% (50% of the 72%) of the total. If we extrapolate from this point we know that of total household figures:
If this trend holds, homeownership will fall below 50% over the next decade or two a fact no study has explicitly recognized. Should this trend hold the course, besides indicating drastically reduced single family household growth there will be a equally large rise in multifamily housing requirements. Further, management companies that do not address winning larger portions of this demographic will struggle to maintain occupancy. Apartmentmarketingsolutions.com sees Spanish leasing and marketing tools as a critical step to address this trend. Further, apartmentmarketingsolutions.com believes that beyond the steps taken that research understanding these trends are key competitive differentiators.
After Hours Support Makes All the Difference
Monday, August 10th, 2009The staff at Occupancy100 has invested a lot of energy into researching what works and what doesn’t in the world of multi-family housing marketing.
We have come to the conclusion that inquiries and applications that are responded to within an hour are more likely to result in leases (close to 50% of the time). Many properties find themselves tied to their operating hours—when potential tenants call or email after these set hours they do not receive responses until the next business day, often resulting in them continuing their research and looking elsewhere. By the time their inquiries are responded to, the likelihood that they have found some place else to live has increased exponentially.
It is a proven fact that many potential tenants do most of their apartment hunting after the five o’clock hour—once they’ve arrived home from work. Multi-family renting is a business in itself though, with most properties ending the work day at five o’clock, as well. You see the problem, and so do we! Because extending office hours is often a hassle for many businesses, Occupancy100 offers an after-hours call service that guarantees a response from our professional leasing agents at our central office to more than 90% of all applications submitted between the hours of 8 p.m. and 2a.m. We ensure that responses will be made within an hour of receipt of the inquiry or application so you can rest easy—and of course, you only pay per result! Even more of a reason to rest easy—there’s nothing to lose!
Free Tips to Increase Traffic from Potential Renters
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009Leads and leases are the name of the game for multifamily owners, managers, and leasing agents. Good advice on specific ways to WIN WIN WIN in the leasing game is rare.
You need new apartment residents. As important, they need the homes you can offer them.
I am offering FREE help unraveling the renting puzzle in the Internet Age. Simply fill in your email address in the box just below:
Online vs. Print Advertisements
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009Advertising your multi-family property may seem like an arduous task considering the myriad of options (and expenses!) available these days. At Occupancy100, we’ve learned that online advertising is the most practical option when pitted against print advertising in terms of ROI and the infinite number of potential renters these types of advertisements are able to reach.
Print ads tend to be incredibly expensive and with a low return on investment. Brochures, pamphlets, newspaper/magazine ads, billboards, etc. require high monetary investments in order to fund design, printing, distribution, storage, and postage, and potential error modification. After such an outflow of money, the geographical restrictions for distribution are incredible—often these types of advertisements are seen mainly by the older generations who are less likely to use the Internet, and skip over those younger generations who rely mostly on the World Wide Web as their main source of information.
In comparison, online advertising costs are often limited to website hosting—which costs a minimal monthly fee—and the individual advertisements can be seen by any person with a computer, whereas print ads are generally limited to their specific geographical locations. Online ads are capable of reaching an infinite number of potential tenants with a larger overall profit margin per consumer in contrast to print ads. Additionally, errors can be easily corrected with online advertising whereas correcting any printed mistake requires an entirely new printed product—re-establishing the original costs.
After trying print advertisements for ourselves with minimal results, we tried our hand at advertising on the web, and what a difference it made for us and our company! We want to help you utilize these tried and true techniques for your own business! With our Successful Website, Search Engine Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization services, we help your business gain the top spots in organic and paid search results and we help you to expand your properties’ marketing opportunities as a whole. We even gather monthly reports so you can track the progress and traffic of your advertisements in conjunction with tenant acquisition at your properties. The best part? You only pay for results! Check us out today!
Introducing, Apartment Marketing Solutions!
Monday, July 13th, 2009Hey everyone,
We at Occupancy100 are pleased and proud to announce that our new website, Apartment Marketing Solutions, has been completed and is ready to serve all of your marketing needs!
In these hard economic times, we know how difficult it is to generate potential renter traffic, let alone sign leases. Having previously struggled with lagging occupancy in our local renter market due to the military “surge” overseas, our staff had to create new and innovative ways to generate traffic through our apartment complexes. Having already experienced our services’ success for ourselves, we’re now here to help you! Check out all of our services, proven to generate leads and sign those ever-elusive lease agreements, and you only pay if it works!
Our Tenant Lead Generation solution generates 2-3 new calls per day by weekly updating your apartment ads on various websites such as Craigslist and Whitepages, and other forms of targeted marketing. If you sign up now, you get 10 leads for free — a great way to test our expertise for yourself!
We also offer an Online Rental Application–a secure, rental application that potential occupants can fill out online without using a pen, printer or fax–and you receive it immediately. This service option has proven itself time and time again, offering 3-5 new applications per week to our customers! Try it now and receive your first 4 applications for free! Additionally, our Online Rental Application is accompanied with our “Know Your ROI” feature that allows you to gauge which advertisements are creating the most traffic through custom pie chart displays.
Through our experience, we have learned that rental applications that are responded to immediately produce a signed lease at least 50% of the time. Since potential tenants often fill out rental applications upon returning home from work, we offer After Hours Leasing Support from 6pm-2am to field any incoming applications during this time! Potential renters are happier (and more likely to sign leases) knowing that they are responded to in a timely manner! Get your first 2 responses free if you sign up now!
Accompanying these amazing services are our auxiliary services, including search engine optimization, monthly reports, and more! To view everything for yourself and/or to contact an Occupancy100 representative for further detials, visit www.apartment-marketing-solutions.com.
We look forward to serving you and your apartment rental business!
