Rental Housing Journal Valley
January 2016
4. Desire to Buy Strong Despite Affordability, Economic Concern
6. Dear Maintenance Men – Pest Control & Preventative Care
5. 4 Faces of Leadership and the Importance of the Vision Thing
EUGENE · SALEM ·ALBANY · CORVALLIS WWW.RENTALHOUSINGJOURNAL.COM • PROFESSIONAL PUBLISHING, INC
Delivering a Dynamite Digital Experience: Best Practices for Satisfying the Needs of the Multifamily Wi-Fi Lifestyle By Eric Markow
Build Community in Three Steps
By Jen Piccotti SVP Education and Consulting, SatisFacts and ApartmentRatings.com
A
s an industry, we’re consistently focused on developing a sense of community. A critical budget line item is Resident Events. And yet, participation in our pizza parties, breakfast-on-the-run, Disney movie singalongs, or Super Bowl viewing parties are minimal, at best. To make matters worse, when asking residents about their satisfaction with “Sense of Community,” the national average is 3.40 on a 5-point scale. That translates to a “Warning” classification on our rating scale. Ouch! Lately, as we’ve been presenting workshops and seminars, we poll the audience by asking, “As you think about the upcoming weekend, how many of you are looking forward to hanging out with your neighbors?”
The typical response from a room full of around 150 people is 3 or 4 raised hands. After a year of conducting these non-scientific experiments, we feel convinced that what we’re seeing in the classrooms is not very different from what you’re seeing on-site. Yet why are we convinced our residents feel any differently? According to the 2015 SatisFacts Index, when asked why residents weren’t “Very Likely” to renew, “Neighbors” was in the top 5 reasons. And when asked what could be done to improve the community, “Better Residents” ranked in the top ten. Let’s face it, residents are not welcoming each other to the community with goodie baskets and borrowing cups continued on page 3
Do-it-Yourself Landlords May be Working Below their Paygrade
T
remendous New Opportunities for Property Owners Many apartment buildings, housing sub-divisions, and other contained communities have driven incremental revenues by creating interesting services for their residents, including newsletters, events, parties, and interest groups. Today’s property owner can take this concept to an entirely new level. By bringing high-speed connectivity to the Internet into your property you can distribute it to every unit under complete control. Contracting with the right continued on page 2 Professional Publishing Inc., PO Box 6244 Beaverton, OR 97007
T
he economic conditions of recent years have led many Americans to look to the real estate market for investment opportunities. Considering there are now nine million more renters than there were a decade ago and rental rates continue to increase, now may seem like the time all those property investors have been long awaiting, right? PRSRT STD US Postage PAID Portland, OR Permit #5460
Unfortunately, what many property investors fail to realize is the high cost and demanding lifestyle that accompanies their investment if they choose to self-manage as a do-it-yourself (DIY) landlord. Approximately 80 percent of investors who lease single-family residences
manage their property themselves, subsequently taking on the responsibilities of rent collection, regular property inspections, tenant issues, repairs, maintenance, and occasional legal action. Real Property Management, a national property management franchise, released findings that suggest many DIY landlords may be working below their pay grade, spending too much money and time managing their rental properties, and ultimately receiving minimal return-on-investment (ROI). The findings are from the company’s online Landlord Calculator, a resource that allows landlords to input how much time they’re spending on each aspect of property management, in comparison to overall income money spent. continued on page 7
Advertise in Rental Housing Journal Valley Circulated to over 6,000 apartment owners, on-site and maintenance personnel monthly. Call 503-221-1260 for more information