Ah! With budget season coming to an end, it will feel good to ease my way back into the blogging world. It’s been way too long. So, if I am rusty with words and concepts bear with me.

To kick it off, I have decided to start and ongoing series dedicated to questions that I ask myself throughout the course of any given year.

The subject matter will be all over the place but central to the ongoing operations of an apartment management business.

I hope to keep the posts brief and to the point [200 words+/-].

With that, let’s see how it goes…

To start: What do you do to streamline your budget process?

Every year from September until the later parts of December we nearly stall our home office operation to write our property operating budgets. To me it is one of those necessary evils of doing business. That is to suggest that the end product is a well thought through playbook for not only the year to come but the ten to twelve years beyond that.  As such, it demands prudence in its preparation. But, what suffers?

Nearly all the fundamentals get the semi-thoughtful but certainly not mindful once over review. Everything is surface and there is little time to dig in to the really important stuff. In all fairness this year was the best one on record. That said, we are always looking to approve.

Would love to hear your feedback on the subject.

Trusting you will have an amazing 2012.

M

Clarity trumps persuasion. – Dr. Flint McGlaughlin

I have written about the subjects of brevity and clarity on a number of occasions. The concept came to me from a senior leader at Equity Residential some years ago and has stuck with me ever since. At the time I had the propensity to provide reports that were beyond the time necessary to digest them and I had the knack of going on and on in my descriptions of strategies and results. That is despite all the customary body language queues that would have guided me otherwise; had I been paying attention to them.

Principle: Brevity and Clarity

When thinking about apartment marketing, exercise the principle of brevity and clarity in your print ad copy, website copy, brochure offerings [if you still do this sort of thing], Facebook posting, blog posting and the such.

It’s not sage or unique advice but nevertheless a good reminder; we live in an attention economy. As such, we have to be compelling in our remarks and mindful of the clarity in our brevity.

One of my favorite blogs, one I read everyday without fail, is Valeria Maltoni’s – Conversation Agent. First rate content always.

Apartment Blog Trunk

I gave up on RSS feed reading about a year ago as I spend more time in my inbox. Nearly every blog I read is done through Outlook now and as such I give more time and attention to the things I read. In other words, I generally do not skim the headline and move on.

About a month ago Valeria made the decision to truncate her email subscription delivery meaning we only see a portion of the message and are forced to click on a link to see the rest.

Result: I read fewer of Valeria’s material to the end. Sorry Valeria.

I understand the reasons for cited in her Saying it in 200 Characters post  back on Aug 10, 2011.

My question – should apartment marketers truncate their blog post offerings? We are trying it a Mills [Shameless plug - the Mills Blogging Team is Putting a Dent in the #STL market place].

Would love to hear this communities thoughts? And, thank you in advance for taking the time.

I am even more intrigued with their brand as a result…

How about you? Good? Bad? Indifferent?

The biggest mistake we see companies make when they first hit Twitter is to think about it as a channel to push out information. – Tim O’Reilly & Sarah Milstein – The Twitter Book

For those veterans out there in the media space this seems like a no brain-er but in a world steeped in tradition, it seems like the right thing to do. Take a new medium, insert old practices and principles and voila, we experience success. Except that we don’t.

Apartment Twitter Marketing in Saint Louis

We have Amazing Apts...

Just this week, I followed up some new #STL Twitter handles [new apartment deliveries in the city proper]. I will admit, I was very encouraged to see their use of the medium included push marketing. Special after special, floor plan after floor plan, us – us – us & look at me copy – it all makes me smile inside.

It makes me smile because I don’t think it’s what those who use the space expect or even want to see. In other words, it’s a big turn off and at best it’s ignored and left to rot in a digital dump-ground way off over there in the dark ‘Cloud.’

Not that we at Mills Properties have it all figured out and are knocking it out of the park as a result. That being said, we do seem to experience a ton of participation from the people that work with and for us, the people that they serve in our some fifty properties in the Saint Louis Apartment Market and our coaches and mentors in the multifamily industry. All by using just the opposite approach and all for which we are immensely thankful. We keep experimenting, failing, learning, tweaking, experimenting & thanking those who give us feedback along the way.

Push Marketing on Twitter

Back to the point at hand; is there a time and place where this works? Have we reached that point or are we approaching a time where the masses that frequent Twitter, Facebook and the like expect, heck even desire to see some push marketing for goods and services? 

You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new. – Steve Jobs

For the span of my professional life; I have believed in the act of getting your companies vision down on paper. It’s a must in the way of creating a proactive culture as opposed to a culture of reaction. It’s also a way of making sure that you are out ahead of your constituents.

Random thoughts on creating vision

Penned in no particular order and in no exhaustive manner…

- It creates the ‘bigger than self’ that motivates people to get juiced about the work they do. In other words; people in the multifamily space, like people in other industries, want to know they are working on something bigger than anything they could accomplish as an individual. And, they want to know their time is spent in a meaningful way. And, if you are lucky enough, they think it’s cool too

- You spur a proactive approach to all aspects of your business. In the absence of vision people just make it up as they go along. Zig Ziglar sums it up like this; “you can not hit a target you do not have.”

- It sets the stage for future-casting. In other words, you give your team the ability to look out into the future and anticipate, with a good deal of accuracy, what your constituents really want

- You build meaning stuff

- You build tough stuff in an simple and efficient fashion

- It becomes your battle cry

- It is the way in which you imbue an owner’s mentality on the minds of the masses

- It is the way you evaluate talent

- It is the beacon of light when times get tough. And, times will get tough

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below

And, thank you for taking the time to read…it means a great deal to us.

Shop your comps – not for the reason of selling to meet their level of product or service but rather as a way of discovering ways to sell beyond their offerings.

Your budget should reflect not what it takes to compete but rather what it takes to crush. Or, what it takes to create a completely different experience for people to fall in love with.

Happy budgeting…

Focus on the core problem your business solves & put out lots of content & enthusiasm, & ideas about how to solve that problem. – Laura Fitton

Book of Solutions

Want tons of followers or fans? Write compelling content that is easy to read, packed with good actionable advice and be personable.

No sage advice there, right. I concur.

Apartment Content Marketing

As it relates to marketing apartments; I subscribe to the school that thinks you provide content beyond the good or service. In this case the actual apartment itself.

Rather look for opportunities to provide content that solves the following [no premise for the categories or the order of]

1. I can’t decorate to save my life

2. I need access to solid and reliable transportation

3. I want to walk to work

4. I want to walk to the coolest pubs in town

5. I need ideas on what to do tonight

6. I need ideas on what to do to this weekend

7. I want to be the first to know about the next ‘thing to happen in my neighborhood’

8. I want to know where to take my dry cleaning

9. I want to know where to get a good glass of wine

10. I want to know about a good alternative to Starbucks

11. I want to what I did last night….hmmm, maybe I don’t want you to solve that problem

12. I want to know how much you care before I buy from you

Have a smashing and amazing weekend; make it compelling too…

M

Loss to Lease

There is a question floating around our office along the lines of, “What do you book in loss to lease line of your budget?” Also, “On a percentage basis, where do you like to see that number trend?” With that question comes a number of schools of thought but no real definitive answer. And, that being said, I am not sure there is a right way or a wrong way to look at it. In the end, it all shakes out in the Rental Income line. That said, there is value in tracking the discount from new vs. renewals and even budgeted rental increases that drive the loss to lease margins.

Our current practice is to book both discounts from new sales and renewals to a single loss to lease line. And, we try keep the loss to lease number at two to three percent of the the gross potential or top line – if you will.

Here are a couple of schools of thought to throw out there:

What gets booked in loss to lease?

1. The only thing that gets booked in the loss to lease line is discounts from market on new leases only. Renewals that maintain any discount from the top line should be booked as a concession.

2. Any discount from market gets booked as an upfront or recurring concession – be it a new lease or a renewal that transacts at a rate lower than the top line.

Where should loss to lease trend as it relates to the top line?

1. The number should be maintain between two to three percent of your top line

2. The number will trend at nearly ten percent of your top line

Is there real value in tracking loss to lease as a line item?

If it all shakes out in the rental income number – is there any real value [up market or down market] to tracking this number?

I’m curious to hear your thoughts. I am really curious to hear from those of you that are utilizing LRO as I think you have done away with the concept of loss to lease – correct?

Technorati Tags: @mbrewer, mbrewer, mike brewer, apartment operations, loss to lease, gain loss,

Your culture is your brand. TONY HSIEH - CEO, ZAPPOS.COM

Over the years much has been written about Zappos and Apple as it relates to culture. And, for good reason. Both companies enjoy massive success with customers around the world and continue to do so despite the ups and downs in the economy.

I have to believe it is due, in large part, to happy employees and more specifically the collaborative nature of their culture. I believe, in my heart of hearts, that a happy employee is a productive employee. And, a happy employee is, in part, is a byproduct of a superior culture. And, one that is customer-centric and based on a premise of trust.

Building Multifamily Culture

When I think of building culture; I think of the often quoted line out of: The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. The first sentence of Page 1 Chapter 1 reads “Life is difficult.”

Culture is difficult. When you think about it, you are attempting to meld a medley of individual cultures under the spirit of one unifying culture. The nuances are mind boggling.

Might I suggest that it bolis down to one word – Trust. Work on trust and the rest will fall in to place. Understand that it will take time, understand that there will be mistakes. Exercise patience with the former and reward the latter.

The health of your business depends on it.

What do you do to build up, maintain and push the edges of your culture?