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Now before you unpack the boxes, click on the infographic to check out our suggestions of things to do before getting settled into your new apartment.
And remember to inform these contacts of your new address.
We all have a list of what we look for to find the “perfect” apartment. From a gated community to one with a pool, and from the neighborhood to the distance to work, we all have some idea of what we’re looking for. Generation Y is no exception. They judge an apartment on more than what’s inside of it; they check out the social environment, entryways and community decor, as well as the amenities of the community. If you’re looking to market your community to the 80 million young adults who are entering the apartment rental market, consider their must-haves.
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Apartment rents across the country are on the rise — and they’re expected to continue to climb in 2013!
Don’t be shocked if you find that, this year, the cost of renting in your city is higher than it used to be. While the single family housing market is still recovering from the crash of 2008, apartment rents across the country are rising — and they’re expected to continue to climb in 2013.
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So what’s driving the nationwide increase in rents? There are a number of factors influencing rental markets.
• Job growth influences renters. As the job market continues to recover — particularly in the South and West, where recovery is strongest — young people who were previously saving money by living at home with parents are striking out on their own.
• Anxiety leads to conservative housing decisions. According to MSN Real Estate, renters who could afford to be homeowners are staying in apartments longer, waiting out fluctuations in the housing market until they’re sure that home prices have stabilized again.
• Mortgages are harder to get. Since the housing crash, lenders are giving out fewer mortgages, and they’ve created stricter standards for those hoping to qualify, particularly for first-time homebuyers. A bigger pool of folks who can’t qualify for mortgages means a flood of renters driving the cost of apartment living higher.
• Renters want more space. While many chose to save money by living with roommates during the recession, more renters are now desiring their own space and choosing to live alone.
You may be surprised to find that, while a record number of foreclosures did force many former homeowners to become renters, it’s not families who are driving rents higher. Families who once owned homes are now renting freestanding homes, according to the New York Times. It’s single people and young professionals who are occupying the majority of multifamily apartment units.
The Times also notes that construction on multifamily apartment buildings is back to its pre-recession peak. Because landlords can demand higher rents, new units continue to pop up, especially in the largest metros.
An up-side for renters
If you’re looking for an apartment right now, the abundance of new construction apartments is actually good news. While you can expect to pay more than you would have in 2010 or even 2011, you’ll likely be renting a newer space. You’ll find, also, that builders are responding quickly to a new generation of renters who are demanding high-tech amenities, green space and communal gathering areas. Apartment developers are also building more one-bedroom units to accommodate individuals who prefer to live alone.
Worried that you’ll get stuck paying a high rent you can’t afford? Keep in mind that there are always deals to be had, especially for smart apartment hunters.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock / Victor Correia
Use these tips to make the most of any apartment audition.
Once you have narrowed your list of potential apartments to a few viable candidates by searching online or using your mobile device, it’s time to schedule in-person apartment visits at your favorites. But before you head out the door, think through each visit carefully.
Here are some tips on how you can make the most of any in-person apartment visit.
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Set an appointment
While apartment communities are typically happy to accommodate drop-in visitors, it may be to your advantage to make an appointment for your apartment visit. First, it shows that you are an organized individual, which should make a good impression on the apartment manager. Second, an appointment allows the apartment manager is plan for and set aside time to take you on a proper tour.
Make an apartment visit kit
You will want to take a few items with you when you visit an apartment.
• A list of questions to ask the apartment manager
• A pen and paper (or digital instrument) to take down the answers and make any notes
• A digital camera to take pictures of the apartment
• A folder or binder to collect any printed materials
Dress for success
Arrive at your in-person apartment visit looking your best. You want to make a good impression on the apartment manager, so show up in clean, professional attire. Think business casual, or job interview-light.
Ask all your questions
During your visit, move down your list of questions, making sure you get all of them answered to your satisfaction. Check them off as you go, if you like. You want to get all the information you need to make an informed decision about which apartment to choose, after all.
The more details you can capture about different apartments, the easier it will be to distinguish between your options when you compare them later. Your questions are ultimately how you evaluate and find the best apartment unit and community for your needs.
An apartment manager will be happy to answer any questions you might have. Chances are, they have heard them all before!
Request marketing materials
Ask for brochures or floor plans you can take with you. These may give you more information about the amenities of the apartment community or the dimensions of the apartment unit or units you are considering, for instance.
Give the apartment the once-over
Don’t be afraid to poke around a bit during your apartment visit. Open closets and check the water pressure, for instance, gathering as much information as you can. (Do be polite and ask for permission first.)
If you properly plan your in-person apartment visit, you should walk away with much of the information you need to know in order to make an informed decision. You’ll find a little planning goes a long way in the apartment search process.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock / StockLite
Let your voice be heard! Share a constructive review about living in your apartment community from your unique perspective.
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If you were asked, would you post a review of your apartment living experience online?
Apartment reviews are important both for other apartment hunters and your apartment community’s staff. What would you like to share about apartment life in your community?
Consider these tips on how and where to compose constructive apartment living feedback.
Who reads online apartment reviews?
If you think no one pays attention to apartment reviews, think again. Internet research shows that there are plenty of people paying close attention to online comments about apartment reviews. These folks can benefit from your thoughts, as well, if you share them.
When it comes to your fellow renters, 50 percent of apartment hunters say that they utilize online feedback to research apartment communities before choosing a place to live. These apartment hunters check sites like Facebook, Craigslist, and Yelp, looking for information and opinions about apartment communities. Two popular apartment review sites are ApartmentRatings.com and ApartmentReviews.net. A more recent entrant to the field is DoNotRent.com.
While it’s obvious how writing a review of your apartment might benefit other renters, you might not realize that writing a review can indirectly help you, as well. What you may not know is that many apartment communities rely on residents’ online reviews as a kind of market research. Property management professionals are constantly monitoring apartment review sites to hear firsthand how their residents feel about their experience. After all, they’ve got a vested interest in your satisfaction, and seeing your comments helps them understand what matters most to you.
If you post a review — whether positive or negative — property management may make changes or improvements based on your feedback. They might also reach out to you for clarification and could potentially help you resolve an issue you’ve been unhappy with.
But in order to be effective, apartment reviews need to be constructive. That’s why it’s important to know how to write a review that’s well-composed.
Tips for writing apartment reviews
The way you present your feedback can help make the most of an apartment review. Whether you need to share praise or a complaint about your living experience, it’s important to focus on constructive apartment feedback.
Here are a few ways you can do that:
• Be specific. When you’re writing about your apartment living experience, the more specific you can be, the better. If you’ve had a positive experience with the way that your apartment manager responds to maintenance requests, cite a specific example. If you particularly enjoy a certain member of the office staff, mention that person’s name and give them some kudos. Likewise, if you’ve had a negative experience, give specific — and fair — details about that situation, too. (Avoid making defamatory statements about specific individuals, however.) The more you can support your opinion with facts, the more helpful your review will be to readers.
• Offer solutions. Have a gripe about apartment life? That’s fine, but don’t resort to an endless list of complaints in an apartment review. It may make you feel good to vent, but your opinion will go farther if you offer up a potential solution to the issue you are dissatisfied with, as well.
• Discuss important aspects of apartment life. You might want to split your review into sections in order to cover all the bases. You might use a paragraph or bullet point to discuss each of the following: apartment management/staff, apartment grounds, community amenities, interior features of your unit, the neighborhood and the rental price value.
• Check your grammar. In online reviews, grammar counts. The more care you take to craft complete sentences that are free of misspellings and other grammatical errors, the more credible your opinion will appear.
Now that you know how important apartment reviews can be, let your voice be heard! Share your living experience to help potential neighbors make an informed decision. You may bring grateful friends into your apartment community with your post.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock / wavebreakmedia
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Understanding the way you make decisions might help you with your apartment search. Does one of these personality types sound like yours?
We know how our personality type affects the way we interact with others and with the world at large. Have you ever considered how your unique personality traits might also affect the way you search for an apartment?
Understanding the way you make decisions just might help you conduct a better, more efficient, even more enjoyable apartment search. Does one of these personality types sound like yours?
Achiever
The achiever is driven by a strong inner desire to reach goals. Achievers tend to prize efficiency first and foremost, so much so that they may speak quickly or be quite blunt or direct in conversation. Because they like seeing results quickly, they also tend to be very decisive and make decisions fast.
Achievers are easily able to ask tough or important questions because they’re driven to see an objective through from start to finish. Achievers who need to find an apartment are likely to conduct an apartment search quickly. If you’re on a tight timeline, having an achiever personality should come in handy, for instance, as this type is likely to do whatever it takes to make sure she gets all her questions about a potential neighborhood, apartment community or lease answered, so she can move forward.
If you’re an achiever, make sure that your desire for efficiency doesn’t cause you to move too fast, however. Explore all of your options carefully, and don’t rush the apartment search process.
Analytical
Analytical people are serious thinkers. Those with this personality type tend to be systematic, logical and very calculated. In apartment searches and in life, in general, analytical types tend to seek out the facts first, and they like to see concrete proof to back up claims and figures. Once they know the facts, analytical types enjoy pouring over the details and making deliberate decisions.
In an apartment search, being analytical is helpful because you’re able to take a step back and consider all the information that’s been presented as you compare apartments. You’ll likely not take anything an apartment manager tells you at face value, choosing to do your own research to learn if, for example, a particular neighborhood seems safe or convenient. You’ll likely also use all of your resources — including personal contacts, social media sites and online apartment reviews — to do research and find apartments, all because you love gathering information.
If you are an analytical type, be careful not to let your analytical skills derail your search. In your quest to make the most thoughtful decision and find the best apartment, you may get so hung up on analyzing the details that you miss out on a great place because you took too long to make a decision.
Dreamer
Practical things like facts and figures just aren’t that important to a person who’d describe himself as a dreamer. These outgoing and enthusiastic personalities are very expressive. They love socializing and talking about great ideas, though they may not see those ideas through to completion.
Dreamer types looking for an apartment will enjoy chatting up apartment community staff and residents in their search for the perfect place. They’ll enjoy getting to know their new neighbors and envisioning themselves taking advantage of apartment amenities where they can network or be social butterflies.
If you’re a dreamer type, you may need to take extra care to set hard deadlines for yourself throughout an apartment search, however. You might even need to pair up with an achiever type to make sure you get all the facts and keep yourself moving towards a set move-in date.
If you don’t feel like you fall squarely into any one of these personality type categories, don’t worry — that’s normal! Almost everyone is a mix of several categories. But as we all tend to have one personality trait that’s more dominant than others, remember to keep an eye out for how your dominant traits affect your decision-making style. That knowledge can help you make sound decisions as you search for the best apartment home fit for you.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock / Aaron Amat
Let’s face it – you spend half of your life sleeping, so the bedroom really is one of the most important spaces in your apartment. Creating a comfortable atmosphere in your bedroom is key, but it’s also an opportunity to make unique, highly personal style choices. If you don’t have a lot of space in your room and aren’t sure if you can fit in a massive headboard for your bed, never fear – you can still achieve maximum visual impact (without spending the $$$ associated with traditional headboards). Style and space can both be yours with these unique headboard ideas.
Tip 1 – Get crafty with a stenciled canvas or folding screen. Overstock.com has DIY folding screens that are quite inexpensive (in the $100 range). Paint a folding screen instead of a wall to go bold and bring color into the space with zero commitment (no need to give up your renter’s deposit!). Get creative with your own design, or create a bold, graphic pattern by using a pre-cut stencil. The result is a perfectly unique headboard that can move when you do. Or, pick up an inexpensive painter’s canvas from Michael’s and create your own instant artwork to hang over your bed in place of a headboard. All you’ll need is a yard of your favorite fabric and a staple gun. Both of these décor options are instantaneous and create a huge impact.
Tip 2 – Play with texture and pattern with framed wallpaper. I am a wallpaper fanatic, so I especially love this tip. If you are a commitment-phobe, you can apply wallpaper to a large-scale painter’s canvas, or just frame it like art. No muss, no fuss, and none of the headache of applying wallpaper throughout the entire room. You can even create large panels of wallpaper by using tall sheets of Masonite (roughly 8-by-4 foot sheets) as your base. This is also a great opportunity to splurge, without breaking the bank. Buy that gorgeous (but really expensive) wallpaper you love, because you only need one roll with this method! No huge financial investment here, meaning you’ll get to satisfy your champagne taste on a beer budget!
Tip 3 – Add DIY excitement with a reclaimed mantle. Mix up the purpose of items in a space to make décor exciting. An upcycled or recycled piece like a mantle has unexpected character when used as a headboard- it will bring your space to life and keep your décor interesting. You’ll also have the added benefit of reducing your footprint by using a recycled piece. You can find great, gently used pieces at your local thrift shops, antiques store or flea markets. Go one step further and line the mantle with tea lights or hang photos above to create depth and add layers of interest.
Want to reach students looking for apartment rentals? Moving “outside of the box” with your marketing efforts could help you tap into the high demand for college apartments.
Online search is key
Generation Y renters – most of today’s college students — seek out infrastructure to support their tech-obsessed habits. Knowing that technology plays a huge part in their lives, it’s not hard to see how going online with your marketing might be the best way to reach student renters.
Many rental property marketers have seen success using the following online marketing tools to reach students:
• Social networks like Facebook
• Facebook ads targeted to local students
• Craigslist
• Online classifieds in the college newspaper
• General searches on search engines
According to Catalyst, a Texas-based marketing firm that specializes in student apartments, general apartment searches conducted through Google were the single most popular method for student searches. This research indicates that amping up your web presence and paying attention to the SEO value of your online platforms is essential to reaching a young, targeted renting audience.
Thinking outside the box
But don’t hang your hat entirely on technology as the only way to market student apartment rentals. As the saying goes, everything old has a way of becoming new again, and these traditional marketing methods can also prove effective in garnering student apartment referrals:
• Setting up a kiosk at the student center of a nearby university
• Placing ads in the college paper
• Word of mouth from student to student
Word of mouth in particular is an extremely effective way to market student housing. To help encourage word-of-mouth referrals, you may want to reach out to the student housing office at the local college. This office may provide students with a listing of nearby off-campus housing, and that’s a list you definitely want to be on.
Don’t forget about the parents
When you’re talking about marketing college apartments, it’s important not to forget that mom and dad are often key decision makers in a student’s apartment search. In many cases, the student may do the legwork involved in the apartment search, but it’s the parent who really pulls the trigger — and pays the bills.
So don’t count out parental influence and bias as you market student rentals. As Forbes Magazine points out, parents are playing a large role in the student housing boom. Concerned moms and dads want to know that their young students — particularly their daughters — are living in private, secure spaces. And the wealthiest of these parents are willing to pay high rents to ensure their children are safe and sound in off-campus housing. If you’re marketing to college students, it may be advantageous to consider which brand differentiators and marketing vehicles could best convince their parents to sign on the dotted line.
Who are Generation Y? Members of the group may well be your next residents, if not your current ones. Find out how to appeal to the renting interests of this young and upcoming demographic.
The next generation
Generation Y, also known as the Millennials, are those born in the mid-80s, and after. Members of this generation have grown up in the digital age. Their love of technology is partnered with an environmental sensibility.
Generation Y tends to be savvy, well-read, well-traveled (either in person or virtually) and ambitious. Theirs is a generation that knows it can bend the world to its needs in some ways, with flexible workplaces, remote jobs, apps that do everything, and information available on multiple platforms 24/7.
The members of Generation Y recently graduated from school into the workforce and are poised to make their mark in the world using the latest technologies, while also having experienced the privations of the prolonged recession. They realize that unemployment, debt and little or no savings is a current reality.
What are they looking for?
Millennials are an interesting combination of entitlement and practicality. They expect access to information and activity via their phones, pads, computers and televisions. Generation Y renters may be willing to put up with limited square footage to save money (much of their life is spent virtually, which makes it more compact) in return for amenities like a hip location, Wi-Fi, community activity, smart design, high-tech fitness centers and green rental community practices.
What should you offer?
The option to personalize their spaces and opportunities to socialize are high on the list of what Gen Yers want in their next rental. Wall-to-wall Wi-Fi is a must, since dead spots in reception leave these tenants cold. Consider built-in iPod and iPhone docks in units.
Beyond wiring, look for ways to make rentals stylish and modular. Moveable track lighting, hardwood floors that residents can cover with their choice of modular floor coverings, accent walls painted the color of their choice, open floor plans and sliding partitions are all appealing to these tenants.
But what if you’re not developing a rental community and you can’t choose the floor plan? For property owners working with more conventional or existing housing, living appeal for these residents can be provided in shared aspects of the rental community, such as rooftop hangouts, Cyber Cafes, and wired laundry rooms. A redesign of a main entrance featuring modern furnishings and a hip sensibility can set the right tone.
As green living is important to these tenants, consider installing smart elements like rooftop catchment for rainwater, community gardens , energy-saving appliances, gray water systems, composting and, of course, plenty of recycling opportunities. Generation Y prides itself on doing things the smart way and will appreciate living environments that reinforce this self-perception.
Gen Y is also very attached to their pets; consider the benefits of being pet-friendly and offering a portion of your grounds as a pet park.
How to reach them
Begin your approach to reaching these renters using their own milieu: go online. Post vacancies on online listing sites, as well as in major social media outlets.
Online rental applications are a must for this group of tenants, especially because they’ll want to know whether they are approved as soon as possible. Consider, too, that many Generation Y prospects may need cosigners for their loans, so be prepared to work with them.
Generation Y is the world’s fastest growing group of tenants, and they will likely be your bread-and-better for decades to come. Get to know them and what they’re looking for in a rental now so that you can make them your next happy residents.
