Archive for the ‘Latino Prospects’ Category

How to Win Online Prospects.

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

I recently wrote an article highlighting some key points for lead generation online on ezines.  The address is:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Online-Apartment-Leasing-Leads—How-to-Find-Them-and-How-to-Win-Them&id=2884453

You will find this article different because of the focus on what the process is in the prospect’s head while working with the Internet during the apartment search.  I’d recommend checking out the UrbaneLab for some good ideas regarding how to further decipher this process.  Their address is:

http://www.apartmentveteran.com/

More info on Hispanic Marketing Focus

Monday, August 24th, 2009

We’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:

MK Blog

The Latino Journal

Online Hispanic Trends

A Seismic Demographic Shift in Housing

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

A 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, 2009

The 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!