Rental Housing Journal Colorado
October 2017 - Vol. 9 Issue 10
2. Why Your Apartment Reviews and Digital Curb Appeal Matter 3. 10 Hottest Hipster Markets in America 5. 4 Ways to Keep Up With Changing Compliance Laws in Rental Housing
DENVER • COLORADO SPRINGS • BOULDER
www.rentalhousingjournal.com • Professional Publishing, Inc
Monthly Circulation To More Than 7,000 Apartment Owners, Property Managers, On-Site & Maintenance Personnel
Maintenance Check Up: Is Your Rental Housing A Target For Bird Nests?
Is Your Property Management Compliance Training Working? By Ellen Clark
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he Grace Hill training tip this month focuses on compliance training and the importance for landlords and property managers of keeping up with ever-changing rental housing laws at federal, state and local levels. The holy grail of compliance training questions: Is the training working? Being able to answer the question, “Is my compliance training program working?” requires thoughtful planning, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Breaking it down can help, so over the next few weeks we’ll provide a series of tips for structuring a good compliance training evaluation plan. Measure the effectiveness of your
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he maintenance check up this month, provided by Keepe, asks whether your rental housing may be a target for unwanted bird nests. You wake up on a Saturday, make yourself some coffee and a bagel, open up the newspaper and start reading. Suddenly, you hear the dreaded beeping of your phone. It is the tenant at your rental property complaining about bird poop all around the front porch and backyard. A bird family has set up nest inside the vent. Your tenants can’t use the microwave oven or the vent fan for fear of hurting the little hatchlings. You decide to call bird control to remove the nest. But one thing weighs on your mind you really don’t want to hurt the birds or their babies. Maybe they will just fly away in a few weeks? Bird nests common in the Northwest This is an all too common scenario in many parts of Seattle and the Greater Northwest. It may be time for a maintenance check up to focus on nests. Migratory birds (robins, tree swallows, tanagers, etc.) nest during late
Professional Publishing Inc., PO Box 6244 Beaverton, OR 97007
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continued on page 4
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compliance training program using these five simple steps It may help to think about your plan in the five components below. Each one represents an important program evaluation pillar. Collectively, the information will help you understand what’s working and what isn’t so you can target improvements to your compliance training over time. Even if an evaluation doesn’t show positive results, it is a success if it provides the information you need to make things better.
No. 1 - Implementation of compliance training Did employees complete the training? continued on page 7
Empty Nester Housing Key As Baby Boomers Keep Working
mpty nester housing is a key as the surge in full-time workers over the age of 65 means that folks born in the 1950s are going to continue working well past the traditional retirement age, according to a new report from John Burns Real Estate Consulting. “The workaholic baby boomers continue to redefine employment, even as they reach the traditional retirement age. They created the surge in dualincome families that ended in 2000, and now they are creating a surge in full-time workers over the age of 65,” write Chris Porter, Chief Demographer, and Mikaela Sharp, Research Analyst, for John Burns. Burns calls this group born in the 1950s, and ranging in age from 58 to 67, “The Innovators” and the have delayed retirement, driven by economic
necessity in the wake of the Great Recession, a desire to keep working, and a realization that they will likely live longer than any generation before them.
"The Innovators" will need empty nester housing “The Innovators” are now outside the “prime working years” category (ages 25–54) that many economists use. The 55+ age group now holds 22% of all fulltime jobs—a significant increase from only 11% in the mid-1990s. • Large in numbers. 66% more people were born in the 1950s than the 1930s, and immigration over the years has added to their size. • Hard working. They have had the highest labor force participation rates of any generation after age 35, continued on page 7
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