Customer Spotlight: BlueGreen- a [B]last Resort

Friday, January 13

BlueGreen is one of my favorite colors clients. A world-class resort, BlueGreen (NYSE: BXG) operates a little differently than our core of Corporate Real Estate clients. Their idea of tenant satisfaction is installing a 75,000 square-foot pool oasis.

BlueGreen’s specialized industry of leisure and tropical escape required a flexible approach. You see, rigidity and structural confinement are generally seen as antithetical to the resort culture, especially when their slogan is “Colorful Places to Live and Play.” The resort’s unique needs prompted us to rethink our platform’s capabilities.

A client of ours since November 2009, BlueGreen has worked with us to develop a creative property management solution. Here are some of the ways they have optimized the flexibility of the platform:

They have thought outside the sand box in terms of their “Buildings.” In their account, a pool, playground, grill area, or any common area is considered a building, with its own work orders and scheduled PMs. This helps them gain accurate reporting around where the highest demands are. (They are generally wherever the highest concentration of New Jersey vacationers are.)

“Tenants” are essentially room numbers. They have a very specific work order issue list that they use to gain accurate reporting as to the types of issues being reported in their rooms. E.g. “Too much foam in my chocolate hazelccino” or “There is an alligator in my villa.”

Given the size of the resort, the mobile application has become crucial to improving productivity and time management across 54 acres of serene setting. The engineers in the field are able to track, comment, and close work orders without having to return to a computer and spend time closing out the work they have done. More time for the H2O arcade and bar.

You know, I think it’s time for an on-property meeting…

Echo-Boomers’ Booming Impact on Rental

Friday, January 13

Property managers must be echo-friendly if they hope to survive in the rental market. According to a recent GlobeSt.com article (whose inspiration and information derives from a panel at the RealShare Apartments Conference in LA), the youngest generation of renters are posed to set standards in the market.

Echo-boomers, the 20 and 30-something children of Baby Boomers, are entering the rental housing market and making demands. Demand making is generally seen as characteristic of this demographic, who is largely known for their technological savvy (and/or dependence) and sense of entitlement. Also known as Generation Y, Generation Next, and Millennials, Echo-boomers are predominantly renters and “nimble” – they are swift to relocate if their demands are not being met.

What does this mean for standards in property management? To satisfy and retain members of Generation Y Stay Here and Generation Next Apartment: requests must be quickly acknowledged, service all online, and technology support fully functional. Building owners and managers should expect fewer walk-ins and phone calls, and more communication with this segment via their preferred methods: laptops, tablets, and smart phones.

According to GlobeSt.com, the trend of conducting business online with these tenants is only increasing, and in many cases resulting in outsourcing for technical-support functions. Essentially, unless property managers want more turnovers than a bakery, they need to watch the boom and cater to this generation.

Echo-Boomers’ Booming Impact on Rental

Friday, January 13

Property managers must be echo-friendly if they hope to survive in the rental market. According to a recent GlobeSt.com article (whose inspiration and information derives from a panel at the RealShare Apartments Conference in LA), the youngest generation of renters are posed to set standards in the market.

Echo-boomers, the 20 and 30-something children of Baby Boomers, are entering the rental housing market and making demands. Demand making is generally seen as characteristic of this demographic, who is largely known for their technological savvy (and/or dependence) and sense of entitlement. Also known as Generation Y, Generation Next, and Millennials, Echo-boomers are predominantly renters and “nimble” – they are swift to relocate if their demands are not being met.

What does this mean for standards in property management? To satisfy and retain members of Generation Y Stay Here and Generation Next Apartment: requests must be quickly acknowledged, service all online, and technology support fully functional. Building owners and managers should expect fewer walk-ins and phone calls, and more communication with this segment via their preferred methods: laptops, tablets, and smart phones.

According to GlobeSt.com, the trend of conducting business online with these tenants is only increasing, and in many cases resulting in outsourcing for technical-support functions. Essentially, unless property managers want more turnovers than a bakery, they need to watch the boom and cater to this generation.

The Einstein Approach to Property & Tenant Management

Friday, January 13

The Einstein Principle:

Accomplish More By Doing Less

Einstein’s theory of relativity was born from a work ethic principled on narrowing one’s focus (for him this unfortunately left out distractions like hygiene, social decorum and his wife). Property owners and managers should take a page from his book (no, not The Evolution of Physics). They should re-engineer their processes to allow them to focus their attention on select meaningful and productive pursuits.

Today, even the best property managers and owners likely aren’t developing one of the greatest achievements of the past century, but they are being more selective with with their endeavors. OK, so they don’t want to spend their time juggling, but what to do with the other balls?

The most successful organizations select a technology partner to provide the critical information, systems, and support competencies that are not central to a property management organization. Enabling technologies help companies accomplish more with fewer resources, improve service levels, attract and retain tenants, manage assets more effectively, and lower business and financial risk.

The adoption of information collection and reporting tools allows managers the time to apply their skill and experience to more meaningful tenant interactions, decision making, outreach, and brand management. Just don’t pull an Einstein and forget to wear socks.

Social Media Musts- the Final Four

Friday, September 09

In the last post, I outlined the uses and benefits of LinkedIn and blogging for  property owners and managers. Excellent professional tools, but I think you can handle more. It’s time to face the media. Here’s how to make it go from so-so, to social.

Four social platforms that best-in-class property management professionals rely on (and advice on their implementation):

 

With over 200 million users, Twitter is an incredible tool to gather real-time information and news. It is a combination of personal and professional messaging, so you can often see the more human side of your peers, prospects, and clients. You have 140 characters to get out your message (a URL shortening device such as bitly is highly recommended), so brief is chief.

How to use:

Follow your clients and prospects that are on Twitter. You can set up lists that follow only the people or companies in them. This allows you to quickly filter Twitter activity by these lists, which may be tenants, CEOs, or whatever you fancy. Thus you can easily monitor a group of tenants and respond to their issues or complaints, boosting customer satifaction levels. You may want to use a personal page rather than company page to build more personal relationships.

Use Hootsuite to monitor different search terms and manage your Twitter activity with other social media communications.

Voice your opinion, share company news, demonstrate your relevance.

 

YouTube is the second most searched website in the world. It beats out every search engine other than Google. Humans are visual creatures, so appeal to their senses.

How to use:

With as little as a flip cam, Smartphone, or iPad, you can create interactive content and make it easy to access. Upload videos of vacant spaces and properties you want to market… for free! Create a customized YouTube channel that links to your website.

 

If you haven’t heard of Google+, you apparently only use the internet to access this blog. With features often compared to Facebook and predicted to overtake it, Google+ allows users to create “circles,” another way to create networks for sharing.

How to use: 

Google Plus is not yet available to businesses, so you must make a private account (this however can still be leveraged by businesses). Use circles to distinguish friends, business associates, industry thought leaders, tenants, and any other group you choose. The message and feed filtering makes segmented communication easier than on Facebook or Twitter.

Sparks combines RSS Feeds, Google Alerts, Google News and other tools to keep you up to date on industry-related news.

 

Gist allows you to correlate all of your contacts and see what those contacts are doing on their social media sites. It keeps records of your e-mail correspondance with clients, as well.

How to use:

Search a prospect or client to find their online presence, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, etc. These are all different venues to make connections that can be more effective than traditional means of reaching out. You get the gist.

Customers increasingly turn to social platforms before corporate websites and traditional sources when looking for information. What does a quick Google search say about your company? The results might surprise you.

Publish or Perish: Social Media Musts for CRE Professionals

Friday, September 09

If you are in the US, odds are that one of the last six minutes you’ve spent online was spent on social media. And you might have been hard at work! Best-in-class property owners and managers use social media as an essential component to managing their online brand, building tenant loyalty, and attracting new clients.

Social media is more than a means of oversharing the minutiae of your life and stalking people. It has become a powerful tool for professionals in the real estate industry. Here’s how property managers and building owners are using two popular social platforms to reinforce their brand and stand out amongst the competition:

 Blogging

Blogging is used for marketing purposes by almost 40% of US companies. Whether you use Wordpress, Tumblr, Squarespace, Posterous, Blogger, or any other blogging platform, blogging is a great way to create a steady stream of content and increase traffic to your website.

How to use:

Establish yourself as a perceived expert. The more you write, the more knowledgeable you will become about the issues and status of your industry. You should aim to post blog entries a few times a week or a few times month, depending on your resources.

Struggling to come up with content? You should think about some of the kinds of issues that tenants run into and the topics that your peers are concerned with. Browsing discussions and questions on LinkedIn can give you a good idea. You also can reformulate other content you have, be it from the transcript of a podcast or your take on an article. Honest to Blog, just have fun and get the creative juices flowing.

 

LinkedIn is the most popular place for professionals to network on the internet. The majority of individuals use Linkedin as a way to find jobs, post jobs, maintain professional contacts, and discuss professional issues. Property owners and managers can use it for more.

How to use:

First off, here’s how not to use it: don’t connect with anyone and everyone just to increase “contacts,” this will only cloud your LinkedIn experience.

Linkedin can be an effective prospecting tool. Change the people search to company search, and find the companies you want to get behind. You will be able to see how you’re connected to a company, whether you have a first-degree connection to that company (meaning you are connected to somebody in that company), or whether you have a second-degree connection. Reach out to these connections via LinkedIn message, e-mail, or phone and  request an introduction. 

Additionally, set up groups within LinkedIn. This may be a group for your tenants to talk with each other and see what’s going on within the building. Make announcements within that group to send an e-mail to its members. Open up forums of discussion, and give a voice to your tenants. Join commercial real estate representation groups and interact with your peers.

Bloging and LinkedIn are two of the most prominent social platforms used by CRE professionals. In an industry as competitive as Real Estate, social media can help reinforce your brand and give you a competitive edge.