“What Renters Want” With Jessica Fiur
What Renters Want with Jessica Fiur: Goodbye, 2014: Apartment Trends We’re So Over
As a real estate editor, I see my fair share of apartment trends. Some are pretty awesome—guest suites! package management systems! Frozen sing-alongs! [insert some pun here to ‘let it go.’ I’m not feeling creative]. But for some trends, well, can’t we just “let them go” already? (Yes! Nailed it!) I’m sure some people still love these things we see over (and over, and over) again at apartments, which is why we’re still seeing them. But, it’s almost 2015, and I personally am ready to see what the new year has in store for apartments. So, while we’re all making resolutions…
What Renters Want with Jessica Fiur: The Importance of Package Management
Packages. They’re not something we normally think about, until we’re waiting to get one. (And, since it’s the holiday season now, it seems like all the time.) It doesn’t seem like that sexy of an amenity. I mean, give me a virtual golf simulator, a concierge that can get me restaurant reservations, hell, even a standard pool sounds sexier than “package storage area,” amiright, folks? But, no. Packages are the thing. This was a huge topic at the recent NMHC OpTech conference (read the transcript from our recent Twitter chat that addressed some of these topics). Rick Haughey, vice president, industry…
What Renters Want with Jessica Fiur: Celebrating Thanksgiving at Your Student Housing Communities
It’s that time of year. Time for turkey, stuffing, and young adults coming home to their parents’ house with a mountain of dirty laundry. Around Thanksgiving, many students head home, which will probably leave your student housing community pretty empty in the coming week. Before everyone clears out for the holiday, here are some things you can do around the community to make the holiday easier. Offer shuttles to the bus/train station. The week of Thanksgiving, since many of your student residents are probably going to be traveling, a great feature you could offer your residents is a free shuttle bus…
What Renters Want with Jessica Fiur: Should Your Community Have a Guest Suite?
There are amenities, and then there are amenities. Sure, gyms and car changing stations and swimming pools are all well and good. But what about a guest suite? An amenity that will prevent that weirdo friend from college (whom you haven’t talked to in 15 years but is going to be in town and wants to catch up, which you just know will involve lots of tequila on his part while you can maybe have one or two, but, seriously, there’s work tomorrow, and you have to get the kids to school and oh my god, when did you get…
What Renters Want with Jessica Fiur: The Simpsons, Family Guy and Multifamily Community Outreach
You are either a Simpsons fan, or a Family Guy fan. Sure, they both have similar premises, and they’ve both been running forever. But The Simpsons used to be is clever and offers an endless supply of quotable lines (ex: “You’ll have to speak up! I’m wearing a towel!”), while Family Guy is meaner and always gets that stupid Bird is the Word song stuck in your head for like a week (sorry about that). So you wouldn’t think there’d be much overlap in terms of marketing, etc. They both have their audience, and they do their own thing and…
‘What Renters Want’ with Jessica Fiur: Are You Doing This Crucial Step for New Employees?
In high school, I got a job at a well-known undergarment chain store at the mall as a sales associate. My first day at work, I was given a tape measure to wear around my neck and was told to stand in the front of the store. I knew nothing about the different fabric or styles or even prices. I had never worked in a store before, let alone with customers. As the day wore on, both the customers and I got more and more frustrated as they would ask me for help finding a particular item, and I had…
‘What Renters Want’ with Jessica Fiur: Using U2’s New Album Strategy for Multifamily
A lot of new and surprising things were revealed during Apple’s announcement this week, besides the fact that we’re all throwing out our current functioning phones to get the iPhone 6 (which is neither new nor surprising, but rather old news, and, at this point, frankly a cliche): We can soon pay for everything with the same device we use to send people requests to play Candy Crush! We will be able to send our resting heartbeat to our friends via our watches, for some reason! And U2 is releasing a new album and giving it to everyone for free!…
‘What Renters Want’ with Jessica Fiur: Kids of Today’s Renters are Tomorrow’s Renters. Here’s How to Get Them.
When many apartment marketing teams put together their marketing plans, they usually target adults. OK, sometimes student housing communities will target the students, but really, even then it’s mostly to their parents. But why shouldn’t they? Adults are the ones with the money. Why bother marketing to kids? After all, they’re noisy and messy and usually can’t afford the rent. Teenagers are even worse. Completely useless! (Trust me, I used to be one.) Except… Except that the kids will grow up to be teenagers, who will grow up to be adults, who will, in general, want to move out of…
‘What Renters Want’ with Jessica Fiur: 5 Reasons Renting Trumps Owning (As Told by a Former Renter)
To [poorly] paraphrase that old commercial for bald guys, “I’m not just an editor for a multifamily publication, I’m also a renter.” Or, at least I was. Recently, I bought a house. So, bye bye, renting, at least for the foreseeable future, and, hello, bright pink walls if I so choose (not that my husband would necessarily go for that, but he’s the only hurdle), growing equity (fingers crossed) and lingering guilt about ordering a $4.30 carmel macchiato when I have mortgage payments to make (totally worth it though). And, though I was, and am, focused on the positives of…
‘What Renters Want’ with Jessica Fiur: Why You Should Steal the Coca Cola Marketing Plan for Your Apartment Community
Diet Coke is amazing.* You know that as a human being with taste buds, and if you somehow don’t like it because you don’t drink soda and are, in fact, a robot, then you know people who like it. Either way, you definitely know the brand. Coca Cola, if the company chose, probably wouldn’t even need to advertise anymore and could still turn a profit. Yet, it still advertises. And its new marketing plan is genius. You’ve totally seen it: The bottles say “Share a [Diet] Coke [Zero] with” and then they have a name. Have you found your name?…