The annual Houston Apartment Association EXPO was held this Wednesday at Reliant Center in Houston, Texas.  This year’s theme was Small World Big Business and hosted over a thousand industry professionals to a day filled with information and FUN! This event was a free educational opportunity for property managers and supervisors from all across Houston to connect with 840+ suppliers, their products and their services.

Prior to the EXPO commencement, the Houston Apartment Association offered 4 different educational seminars covering a variation of topics: CYA: "Consider Your Asset (Manager)", Social Media 2.0, The Ten Commandments of Maintenance, We Built this City, and an hour long general session: Make the Right Choice,given by the interactive and hilarious speaker, Joel Zeff. 

The Social Media 2.0session was co-hosted by our very own Multifamily Marketing & Training Director, Stephanie Graves, along with Brent Williams, founder of Multifamily Insiders. The duo delivered an enthusiastic presentation of the Top 10 Mistakes in Social Media Today. The audience was encouraged to keep their cell phones out and browse through their own properties’ Facebook pages while Stephanie and Brent covered the Top 10 Mistakes and ways to avoid them.  If you were unable to attend the seminar, no worries, I have the top 10 mistakes that you need not be making on your social sites today!

1.  You have created Facebook and Twitter Accounts and then never touch them again!
2. You have created a friend profile rather than a fan page.
3. You have no idea why you are doing this!  You have no social media plan!
4. Lots of posts but no feedback!
5. If you build a page, they will come but nobody comes…
6. ME, ME , ME – GET ME more leases.. Get ME more renewals!!!
7. You are posting specials and discounts; rather then engagable content.
8. Who is trained to be the face of your company?
9. Social Media efforts are TEAM efforts. There is no I in Social Media…Well there is but there shouldn’t be!
10. Ignoring on-line reviews!

If you have questions about how to defeat these Top 10 mistakes, feel free to email us at assetnews@assetpluscorp.com and we will send you the complete PowerPoint from Stephanie and Brent’s session.

Many of our Houston team members attended the EXPO educational seminars and met with HAA member suppliers to discuss the most beneficial and cost effective services and products available to their properties. All in all, the 2012 Houston Apartment Association EXPO was a BIG success!

Sterling Crossing Apartments are located in Houston, Texas and offer a variety of floor plans and amenities including: an onsite laundry facility, controlled access gate, outdoor pool, walk in closets and much more.

Sabine Park Apartments are located in Orange, Texas and offer residents the option of a one-, two-, or three bedroom floor plan. Sabine Park also provides residents the luxury of two outdoor swimming pools, a full size competitive basketball court and walking distance to Lamar State College.

Two Quick Tips on Determining Your “Market to Target”- Marketing Mondays with Stephanie Graves, Marketing and Training Director, Asset Plus Companies

If you have chatted with any marketing professionals regarding your property you’ll hear them say something like, “you must properly analyze your property to determine your target market and demographics for effective marketing”.  But what does that mean and how do I do it, some of you may be asking (truly the ones that are asking are probably not reading MI, but I digress)?   Here are some tips to quickly get you thinking about your “market to target”:

1. Calculate the right income earners.  Take the average rent of your apartment homes and multiple it by your qualifying income level.  For ease of math, let us say my average rent is $500.  I require that my residents make three times the rental amount to qualify.  I can quickly calculate $500 X 3 = $1500 per month or around $10.00/per hour is what my typical resident needs to make to qualify for my apartments.  Use this amount to base your marketing efforts.  Target those clients that are about 10% higher and 10% lower (roommate possibilities) than this amount.  You’ll want to look for businesses or jobs that pay about $10.00 per hour, as this is the average income of your typical client.  Does this mean that people making less or more will not lease with you?  Of course not, but this gives you a good base to start so you are not just randomly flyer marketing. 

Think about this, if your average income is $10.00 per hour than you probably will not target doctors or nurses right?  But you would target possibly hospital janitorial staff or front desk clerks at a hospital right?  As you approach hospitals and market, target your efforts to those that are within your target income, rather than to the higher income earners.  Make your flyers or give away appeals to the right income earner.

2. Survey your residents to determine their psychographics.  What did you call me?  Simply put, while demographics are what makes up your target market psychographics are what your target market does.  While demographics are very important I like to focus on psychographics because those tell me what my target market DOES, so I can go where they go and do what they do.  How do you determine that? Ask them!  Make your questionnaires fun and include questions like:

a.      It’s Saturday night and you are hungry, where would you go to grab a quick bite?

b.     You are on a ‘date night’, what romantic, yet economical restaurant would you take your sweetie to?

c.     What grocery store do you shop at?

d.     If price was not an issue would you shop anywhere else?  Where?

e.     Which of the following can you NOT live without

            i.      Monthly hair appointments, who do you recommend?

            ii.     Mani or pedi appointments, who do you recommend?

            iii.    Weekly happy hour, where do you recommend?

            iv.    Daily work out, where do you recommend?

This is a great start to target local businesses that your current residents already frequent and can solicit a few more!

This is an excellent start to your marketing efforts.  Is it all encompassing – NO!  But it is a good start to your efforts and it is a plan!  Your supervisor will be impressed with your thought process and efforts when you tell him/her how you targeted your businesses based on income and your current residents’ patterns.  More importantly I believe you’ll see more results by targeted efforts.  

Top 4 Things You Can Do to Make Sure You Are Replaceable! - Marketing Mondays with Stephanie Graves, Marketing and Training Director, Asset Plus Companies

So did I get your attention?  I know, I know, you don’t want to be replaceable because then they will… replace you!!!  YES they will because you will be PROMOTED because you are so awesome!!  So in preparation for your promotion to assistant, manager, director, supervisor or whatever title you are striving for you must make sure your team is ready to take the reins and RUN!  Here are 4 things you MUST do to ensure that they are prepared:

1. Let them stumble, and even fall!  I said it, let them fall – it is okay to have them make a decision about something that may not have been the decision you would have made or that is the absolute best decision for that time.  Of course you want to mitigate the losses and ensure that you are not losing money for the property but let them make a decision about a customer that is upset about a rental increase or one that has been late for the 10th time and still wants you to refund their late fee.  Having your employees make bad decisions is a teaching moment for you to not only gauge how they think about tough decisions but also to see how they react when they are confronted with making a bad decision.  The best inventors made 100 different prototypes of the wrong thing before they stumbled upon the right one!

2. Show them a budget!  Yes, share your budget with your teams.  Help them understand how you derived your numbers, what they mean and what happens when you hit those numbers or miss those numbers.  Make sure that you help them understand the cost of every concession, the cost of every turn and how much a lost renewal can cost the property and how it all relates together.  Understanding the budget is part of developing a ‘career employee’ rather than a ‘this is my job employee’.

3. Find teachable moments every day!  Look for opportunities to teach your teams something new.  It could be as simple as a touring with them to build a better demonstration or a quiz on the lease to make sure they know every aspect of it.  Find ways to refresh skills and build new ones DAILY!

4. Ensure your supervisor knows and spends time with your team – not just you!  We are all busy and have a list five miles long.  Supervisors may come into the office and you and him/her get down to business with your property walks, budget talks and no nonsense meetings of what and how things are progressing and what needs to be done.  It is okay for you to have your supervisor spend some time with your team, after all if you can teach them a one thing daily think of the knowledge that he/she can share with them too.  It makes them feel special that the property supervisor is investing time in them and it sets up your promotion plan because your supervisor will feel more comfortable promoting someone that he/she has spent some quality time with.

Don’t be threatened by a fully informed leasing agent or assistant manager – relish in the amount of delegating you can do when they actually understand the business and not just their day to day duties that constitute of 1/10th the property management business.

With Asset Plus headquarters located in Houston, Texas, many of our employees volunteer their time outside of the office serving on different committees that help make the Houston Rodeo such a success!

The Houston Rodeo is the world’s LARGEST rodeo and is a charity which benefits the Youth of Texas.Since the Show's beginning in 1932, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo has contributed more than $283 million to scholarships, research, endowments, calf scramble participants, junior show exhibitors, School Art participants, and other educational and youth programs.

We are proud to support all of our employees who volunteer their time to such a worthy cause!

5 Things to Remember When it Comes to Evictions

Often times property managers have questions about evictions and notice to vacates, so we put together five things to remember when it comes to knocking on your resident's door.

1. You must list EVERY lease holder on your eviction notices. You will have to pay a fee for each lease holder; however this is the ONLY way the eviction will hold up in court. Use the NAA Notice to Vacate for further instructions.

2. When you are filing at the courthouse for evictions make sure you list on the documentation the following:

“Should I have to hire an attorney I am requesting attorney fees be paid.”

3. Your Notice To Vacate MUST list that you want possession, rather than ‘pay or quit’ verbiage – this can be found on the TAA Notice to Vacate Form.

4. Always list the FULL address of the community along with the specific unit number on the eviction notices.

5. Notices should be delivered by at least 2 people. Bring both copies with you upon serving and indicate the method served on both copies at the time you serve the resident.

a. NOTE: YOU MUST serve someone over the age of 16 and/or post INSIDE the unit, you may NOT post outside the unit.

This Friday we are featuring one of our student housing teams, Legends at Canyon, and how they are calling all of their residents, friends, and family members to make a difference for many others.

The team located in Canyon, Texas, came together in making a 6 minute video to promote our company's efforts to raise money for Charity Water.  Every staff member takes part in the video by stating facts and raising awareness to their community on why it is so important to help others receive clean drinking water.

The Legends at Canyon team has a goal to raise $5,000 by April 8th, 2012 - we believe this video will help them communicate the importance of their fundraising and wish them the best of luck!

The Houston Apartment Association held its first annual 5K Fun Run & Walk benefiting the Post-Traumatic Stress Foundation of America. Property managers, vendors, and their families showed up in the 30 degree weather on Saturday morning to support the cause.

Some of our own Asset Plus employees volunteered, walked, and competed in the 5K fun run race including Mark Lindley, Senior Vice President of Construction, Julie Clay, Financial Analyst for Asset Plus, and Tyler Johnson, Project Manager for Asset Campus Housing. Completing his 5K in 18 minutes and 47 seconds, Tyler Johnson brought home first place at the first annual HAA Fun Run! Congrats Tyler and thank you to everyone who came out to support the great cause!

With Valentine’s Day rapidly approaching, it is nearly impossible to ignore all of the pink, red and heart shaped paraphernalia on sale at the grocery stores, convenient stores and shopping malls.  Even at our own apartment communities we focus our marketing themes around the infectious love themed holiday, i.e. “You will LOVE living here! We LOVE our residents!”

Over lunch yesterday afternoon, a few Asset Plus employees discussed their favorite Valentine’s Day memories ranging from dinner at Perry’s Steakhouse to ordering in and watching a movie. On the contrary to all of the feel good memories, there were definitely some discomforting Valentine’s Day memories that we had all either heard of or experienced firsthand. While debating which was worse, being dumped in person on Valentine’s Day or via a text message, one employee brought up the scenario of being broken up with via Facebook. Have you ever known this to happen to any of your friends or co-workers?

College students reported sending an average of 96 texts per day and 106 minutes on Facebook per day according to Dr. Rey Junco’s research in “Social Media in Higher Education.” A simple status change from “In a Relationship” to “Single” broadcasts in real time to your entire network of friends and online followers that you are now on the market. Our society works, plays and communicates on social networks like Facebook regularly, is it so out of the norm to be broken up with via Facebook and a simple status change these days?

In relationship to the property management business, we sometimes see apartment renters thinking it is completely fine to publicly “change the status” of their lease agreement via a Facebook notice. We have seen residents simply post a comment on the property’s Facebook Fan Page saying they plan to move out or “please take this is as my 30 day notice.”  However, unlike Facebook relationships where you can change your status instantly online, you cannot do this kind of cancelation for a lease agreement. 

All residents must give advanced written notice of their move-out date according Section 37 of the Texas Apartment Association lease agreement. You legally cannot accept a move-out notice from a resident via Facebook.  Here is a copy of the TAA Move-Out Notice Requirements:

37. MOVE-OUT NOTICE.   Before moving out, you must give our representative advance written move-out notice as provided below. Your move-out notice will not release you from liability for the full term of the Lease Contract or renewal term. You will still be liable for the entire Lease Contract term if you move out early (paragraph 22) except under paragraphs 10, 16, 22, 23 or 31.

• We must receive advance written notice of your move-out date. The advance notice must be at least the number of days of notice required in paragraph 3 or in special provisions—even if the Lease Contract has become a month-to-month lease. If a moveout notice is received on the first, it will suffice for move-out on the last day of the month of intended move-out, provided that all other requirements below are met.

• Your move-out notice must be in writing. Oral move-out notice will not be accepted and will not terminate your Lease Contract.

• Your move-out notice must not terminate the Lease Contract sooner than the end of the Lease Contract term or renewal period.

• If we require you to give us more than 30 days written notice to move-out before the end of the lease term, we will give you a written reminder not less than 5 days nor more than 90 days before your deadline for giving us your written move-out.  If we fail to provide a reminder notice, 30 days written notice to move out is required.

If you are not located in Texas, we advise you to check with your local apartment association and verify what deems a legitimate notice to move-out. Hopefully you will not encounter too many residents notifying you of move-out via Facebook, but in the off chance that you do, you will be fully prepared!

We are proud to announce our most recent multifamily management assignments in Houston, Texas!  

 Casa Miranda

Casa Miranda Apartments and Cypress Ridge Apartments joined our portfolio in January of 2011 and have increased our presence in the Houston market with the addition of 580 units.

 Cypress Ridge

Casa Miranda is located near Beltway 8 and Highway 59, while Cypress Ridge is located near Interstate 45 and the Sam Houston Tollway.  Both properties offer a variety of one, two, and three bedroom apartment homes along with multiple community amenities.