With all the different means of communication available to residents on our student housing properties, YouTube continues to be a popular way to connect with the targeted demographic.

The Pointe at 3636, an ACH student housing property located in East Lansing, MI, recently used YouTube to invite residents to their upcoming Block Party. Not only did they inform residents about the event details (time, location, food, prizes, etc.) but they also used their property mascot, Pointy the Penguin, to help promote the event. 

ACH student housing properties nationwide have different property mascots that are used to draw attention to their respective properties. Whether the mascots are walking around campus passing out flyers, being seen on the jumbotron at the university football games or making appearances on YouTube videos like such, they are extremely helpful during the leasing season!

We will share more photos and videos of different property mascots in the near future - stay tuned!

When welcoming a prospective resident to your community, there are 5 things that are essential to include in your property marketing video.

• Captions.

Every slide, photo or employee needs to have a detailed caption.  This helps prospective residents know which features are onsite as well as become familiar with employees' faces that they will be interacting with on a regular basis

• Timely Transitions.

Often times we see videos that rotate photo frames too quickly.  We recommend spending at least 5 seconds on each photo you highlight before transitioning to the next.

• Music. 

Nothing is worse than a beautiful video with smooth transitions and great photos, but has NO music. The video needs to have background music that is appealing to your target demographic - multifamily and student housing videos' music may differ slightly.  Contact us if you would like to see further examples of our music selections on student housing or multifamily videos.

• Call to Action.

A strong marketing video ends with a call to action.  You want to keep the text short and sweet because chances are, if they are watching a video about your property - they don't much want to be reading about your property.  A powerful call to action will include the property's phone number and website along with any current promotions.

• Contact Information.

Every video you can upload includes an area to fill out information about your video - DO NOT overlook this step! This is where you can include all of your property's contact information AND your property's website URL.  This will provide an easy way for prospective residents to find you if they do not make it to the end of your video, or if they like what they see in the first 20 seconds and want to contact you immediately!

Hosting a Casino Night at a student housing community is a great way to get residents, staff and the local community excited and involved with your property. Most of our student housing properties host a Casino Night at the beginning of the spring semester (usually end of January/early February) and attract a wide range of guests including: residents, non-residents, prospective students, community members and ACH corporate team members.

Spending weeks ahead of time planning the event, our staff is responsible for hiring a third party Casino Party Rental Company to bring in the poker tables, poker chips and professional card dealers and requesting local vendors to donate prizes for our attendees during the Casino Night. In the past, we had one property collect over $5,000 in donated prizes! Other essential elements to consider when planning a successful Casino Night include: food & drinks – must have some delicious hand food & bubbly soft drinks at all time during the event, decorations – follow a generic Casino theme and delegate your most creative staff member(s) to be in charge of cost effectively turning your property into the Wynn Casino, and lastly promotion – you have got to sell this event to not only your residents, but also their friends and the entire University student body. Promoting this event will be easy if you have everything planned and organized; you will be able to let everyone know the prizes they could win, the games they can play (Roulette, Craps, Poker, Black Jack, etc.) and what they will be served! 

Our team at Gateway at Lubbock is hosting their annual Casino Night this coming Tuesday and has created a YouTube video to promote their event.  Watch their creative promotional video below:

The Heights at Tallahassee, a student housing property located near Florida State University, often receives questions from their residents on what it is like to be a community assistant. The staff told us that they wanted to be able to provide feedback to their residents through examples, so they have created a series of YouTube videos called “True Life - I’m a Heights CA”.

Our community assistants attend university full time and serve various roles on a day to day basis; leasing agent, bookkeeper, mail-sorter, outreach marketer, community liaison and maintenance assistant. With their ability to manage all of these tasks while maintaining a positive attitude, these young adults are true role models for their peers as well as their corporate team members. We applaud all of our student workers and look forward to learning more about what it is like to be an onsite CA through the series: “True Life – I’m a Heights CA”.

All of the multifamily and student housing properties that we manage are held accountable to host at least one monthly Resident Event.

Resident Events provide all tenants a time to meet their neighbors and their property management team.  It is important that we as property managers not only provide our residents with a great place to call home, but also a place where the ENJOY living.  These monthly events are free for residents and we encourage them to bring their friends and family members.  Most events include free food, drinks, music and planned activities that involve everyone.

The team at Knights Circle made a YouTube video that gives you some "Tips For Throwing A Good Party" if you need some ideas, check it out!

This Friday we have a fun video from the team at The Domain at Tempe in Tempe, Arizona.

The Domain at Tempe is one of our student housing properties that features luxurious amenities like a 4,000 sq. ft. fitness club, exclusive tanning salon with stand up beds, a rooftop social lounge with firepits and a gameroom with pool tables, shuffleboard, and LCD TV's.  In order to highlight all of their stand out amenities, the team created a short video that included ALL staff members dancing to the ever-so popular 90's hit, The Macarena.

Check out their fun video right here:

This Friday's YouTube video is sent in from our student housing team at Knight's Circle in Orlando, Florida.

Students that have never lived on their own before, often have difficulties learning the ins and outs of living independently. Thus, the Knight's Circle staff decided to make an educational video on YouTube, teaching residents how to turn off their water in case of an emergency.  For example, if your toilet is overflowing and maintenance is on their way, students will know how to readily turn off the water and stop any additional overflow.

Check out this two minute video on "How-to turn off your water in case of emergency."

Not only can YouTube be used to invite students to resident events, but YouTube can also serve as a virtual scrapbook for students.

With the advancements in technology today and the philosophy "less is more", we see a trend in less students printing off photos from Target or Walgreens, and instead uploading all of their photos to online social networks such as Facebook and Flickr.  Here we see a student housing property in College Station, Texas (The Cambridge) using YouTube as an online scrapbook to share with residents.

The Cambridge at College Station is known for hosting an annual Thanksgiving Flag Football Tournament where each Resident Advisor is responsible for a team of 15-20 residents.  The teams compete in a full day of competitive flag football and every year the event is voted by residents as their "Favorite Resident Event."

The resident advisors got creative this year and instead of simply printing the photos off and hanging them in their halls, they decided to combine all of the photos AND videos that were recorded this year and create one video on YouTube with music in the background, visual effects and much more.  Now this video can be shown to residents, their parents and even other prospective residents who would like an idea of how the staff and the residents interact with one another!

Check out the video below:

Student Housing is a very competitive industry; therefore our teams have to constantly stay in touch with their market and research the best ways to communicate with students. Thanks to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, we are able to communicate instantly and memorably with our residents. 

Last week we showed the video of Knight's Circle and the CAs using YouTube to promote their resident events, this week we are going to show you how one of our properties used YouTube as an online marketing brochure. 

Legends at Stephen F. Austin is a new student housing development located in Nacogdoches, Texas, scheduled to open for residents in fall of 2012. Legends at SFA recently hosted a Grand Opening event at their club house and had an overwhelmingly successful opening day by signing over 100 leases! Since the property did not have any completed units to physically show, the staff created a YouTube video that functioned as an engaging online marketing brochure. The video has renderings of floor plans, amenities, and exterior photos as well as captions on each so that you know what is what. In the background of the video, our team picked a catchy song that would capture the student's attention and keep them engaged to learn all about the property.

Even though every prospective resident was given a brochure with images and floor plans, every single one of them still stopped to watch the video displayed on the flat screen TV! YouTube is a great way to capture the student housing residents, and it is also FREE - if you are not on it now, you are missing a great opportunity to capture your audience's attention! 

After 25 years in service, Asset Plus Companies, a nationwide real estate property management firm specializing in maximizing value and revenue generation for property owners, developers and investment partners,  has recently been recognized on the 30th annual Inc. Magazine’s 500|5000 list as one of America’s fastest growing companies!  

Asset Plus Companies is one of 52 real estate companies that made the 2011 list and is the only Houston real estate firm to receive such an honor.

To select companies for the Inc. 500|5000 list, the magazine assesses each business over a period of three years and also researches their industry, metro area, revenue, and number of employees.  According to Inc. Magazine, the honorees on the list are recognized for their “creativity, dedication, and hard work” that they put into building their companies.  

“We are honored to be recognized on such a prestigious list of America’s fastest growing companies and share this recognition with all who have played a pivotal role in the company’s growth including our customers, clients and employees” said Michael S. McGrath, President and Chairman of Asset Plus Companies.

Today, the company oversees a portfolio of close to 200 properties located across the nation. This portfolio contains approximately 32 million square feet of space representing property values of over $1.5 billion in multifamily, student housing, office, industrial, retail, and other property types.

Congratulations and thank you to everyone that has been a part of Asset Plus' success and growth over the past 3 years, we could not be more excited!