Management, Marketing, Tech: Multifamily’s Top Trends

AIMx, The Apartment Innovation and Marketing Conference’s Vendor Partner Discovery, event took place on Thursday, Oct. 13. Industry experts from companies including RentCafe, ICONIQ Capital, Real Estate Business Analytics and Airbnb discussed trends surrounding multifamily housing, property management of the future and new technology solutions.

The Property Management Company of the Future – Progress Report

Heather Wallace, managing director at Bozzuto, along with Carol Enoch, CEO of Enoch & Co, and Jaja Jackson, senior vice president at ICONIQ Capital, talked about how management companies can better position themselves to better aid their clients.

Tips for property companies, or PropCo, provided in the virtual event included being flexible, listening to consumers, building partnerships with aligned incentive structures and getting in the weeds.

Jackson spoke about the property management company that ICONIQ utilizes as well as partially owns, Sentral. After realizing that innovations could be made in the multifamily market, and that there was not yet a property management company that could fully provide what ICONIQ needed in one location, Sentral was started. Jackson noted that a deep partnership stems from a collaborative relationship as well as access to centralized key information.

“Having more access to better information more quickly produces a greater respect bond between the owner and the operator. It is that change that creates the inventive for deeper partnership,” said Jackson.

Other trends spoken about in this part of the conference included virtual tours.

“Virtual tours are here to stay,” said Wallace. Enoch and Jackson agreed, adding that a high percentage of tours now are virtual and will continue to remain this way. Elements such as virtual tours are one way service providers can move themselves closer to an owner’s mindset in terms of their offerings.

Budget Season: How to Determine and Justify your SEO Budget

Esther Bonardi, vice president of corporate marketing and head of REACH by RentCafe, gave a presentation on understanding the impact of search engine optimization and how to make the case to include it in future business decisions.

Bonardi noted that to justify the case on why SEO is so important, one should look at the financials. She said that the return on investment for professional SEO marketing is much larger than other forms of paid advertising. Case studies show that organic leads from optimized versus unoptimized websites are much higher. Return on ad spend is often in the triple digits for SEO, while other sources of advertising frequently only have a return on ad spend in the single digits.

Good SEO providers will have automated ways to track and analyze volume and data from click through rates, query data, bounce rates, etc. SEO providers are constantly working.

“SEO is not set it and forget it. It is ongoing,” said Bondardi. She continued that SEO is the lowest cost and highest producing paid marketing source that is available.

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Data Pain to Data Gain: REBA

Owners, operators, and asset managers need to make smart decisions quickly. Meaningful insights come from analyzing rich data. In rental housing, property technology capabilities have increased, creating more data that can be time consuming to sort through. Donald Davidoff, co-founder and CEO of REBA, said that a single source of data and truth is possible through REBA.

Davidoff showed how REBA creates 3D building models as opposed to charts and graphs so that business owners can look in one place for resident, financing, maintenance and management data.

Furnished Rentals, Short-Term Rentals and the Future of Living

Lisa Tully-Lavian, SVP of marketing at Sentral, and Curtis Palmer, EVP of acquisitions and capital markets at Dreamscape Companies, discussed post-COVID initiatives surrounding flexible short-term rentals and the future of what consumers want.

“We want to disrupt what is happening in the industry. We understand that today’s renters are looking for something new,” said Tully-Lavian. She said that Sentral offers any length of stay to residents. Sentral is backed by ICONIQ as well as Bozzuto.

“Lisa said the future in short-term rentals. I think it is the present,” said Palmer.

There is a misconception that residents are against short-term rentals in their residential buildings, noted Tully-Lavian. Home share, as an amenity, is a way to have flexibility and monetize lifestyle. There is a value prop in long term rentals as well as short term rentals and home sharing, depending on what residents are looking for. This is just one of the many ways to attract and retain renters.

“There is no expense for home sharing,” said Palmer. Dreamscape Companies and Sentral are embracing changing times and bringing home sharing and short-term rentals as an additive into their management structures in multifamily buildings. Layering in these types of options into traditional rentals is their business model.

“Flexible living is the future, and the people that are going to move first on it are going to do the best,” said Palmer.

Maximizing Real Estate Asset Value

Jesse Stein, global head of real estate at Airbnb, and Steve Lefkovits, executive producer of Joshua Tree Conference Group, discussed how multifamily is benefiting with new innovations and shifting trends. Airbnb is working with partners that are owners of apartment communities to create tools and initiatives to benefit residents to earn incremental income when they travel.

“I think the best example is a property we launched in San Diego earlier this year,” said Stein. He continued to describe a property where residents are able to rent out their homes while the property owners have controls and transparency as well as a dashboard. He noted that hosts in this property are earning enough through Airbnb in incremental income to pay for 61 percent of their rent. This benefits both residents as well as owners. Residents that live in the asset full time open up their homes and earn money. In addition, property managers collect a small commission on that revenue. There is additional flexibility and earning potential for both parties.

“At the end of the day where the puck is going is people are looking for flexibility. In addition, costs are rising, and people need a place to live, but people also want to travel,” said Stein. He argues that this is a way to create a unique property experience as well as a unique residential experience.

“We are always iterating and coming up with new concepts, and we are scaling those concepts,” said Stein. “We will be growing”.