I'm pretty sure everyone knows me from my mom's blogs, but if not my name is Kat Malone and I am a junior at Virginia Tech in the Residential Property Management program.
These past two days myself and two other students, Mike and Jessica, were chosen to represent the RPM program at the Virginia Apartment Management Association's (VAMA) Passport to Success conference in Richmond. We were invited by Renee Pulliam of S.L. Nusbaum, past president of VAMA. S.L. Nusbaum, who is on the RPM Advisory Board, paid for all of our expenses so we could make it to the conference. It was a great learning experience and a wonderful chance to do some serious networking. Everyone always tells us how small the property management industry is and we got to see that first hand. Many of the companies there are either on our Advisory Board, come to the career fair, or have people from their company talk to us in class and at the RPM Club meetings.
We made the 3.5 hr drive from Blacksburg in a little under 3 hours Wednesday morning. Aside from property management companies, there were supporting vendors such as Reico Kitchens and Baths, 1-800-Got-Junk? and CoinMach. The Virginia Housing Development Association was also there. Jessica interned for them last summer so she introduced Mike and myself to Neal Rogers, Asset Management Manager. There were three sessions over two days and each session had three different discussion issues. We chose to attend the "2008 Industry Perspectives and Projects" discussion that afternoon.
The discussion was led by William (Bill) Wollinger, President of Winn Residential based out of Boston, Alex Jackiw, President of Buckingham Management based in Indiana (she used to teach RPM's Asset Management course, but now just comes as a guest speaker), Tony Pusateri, Senior V.P. Property Services of Equity Residential, and Marc Rosenwasser, President of Meadow Wood Property Company based in Tampa. They started off talking about the mortgage crisis and how that is affecting the property management industry. Managers are having to find a way to change their qualification standards because people are coming in just having foreclosed on their house and having low credit scores. For our industry, the mortgage crisis is a very good thing for business, but we need to careful how we handle these financial situations people are in. As Bill put it, "Bankruptcy is something we've seen before in divorced individuals. Now we're seeing it with families. Same thing, different arena." Training the leasing and management staff to collect rent and sign qualified residents can be as simple as changing your compensation plan. For example, giving a commission for a good rental, but taking it away for a bad rental. Another issue they talked about is growth. A lot of growth is coming in the apartment market, particularly along the coastal areas where everyone seems to be moving to. Some cities are seeing major growth, others such as Boston are seeing maybe a bit too much. A lot of developers that started building condos are now turning those projects into apartments. The last issue they talked about is the immigration problem. Marc and Tony had experienced a lot of problems with this because they have properties in Florida and Texas, two planes illegal immigration is a huge issue. Their best advice is to become best friends with Immigration Services.
After the session was over we had dinner at a Japanese steak house and then joined everyone else for the Vendor Appreciation Party at the Tobacco Company. It was a lot more relaxed atmosphere- they had music playing, an open bar, and hor d'erves. I saw quite a few of the people I interned with last summer at Management Services Corporation- Lindsey Bailey, Lauren Maloche (Marketing Manager) Sarah Spears (Property Manager), Ronda Puryear (VP Marketing and current VAMA president) , and Andrea Heide (Regional Manager). The evening continued back at the hotel with a poker tournament that we didn't participate in.
Thursday morning we had the final two sessions. First we went to "The Creative Closing Advantage", led by Tiffany Yelverton of Creative Apartment Marketing, LLC. The tips ranged from following up with customers, paying attention to your tone, understanding what your customer is looking for and just plain being friendly. Customer service is an amenity. If you have exceptional customer service, people won't want to live with anyone but you. Everything she said about closing was simple, common sense stuff that most people just don't think about. I know I will definitely be using what I learned in my internship this summer!
We went to different discussions the third session and I went to "Maintenance Organization" led by Andy Meador of Kaim Preoprty Services, LLC. Andy had fabulous ideas on keeping track of your shop inventory, keeping it organized, and organizing the turnover period. I particularly liked his idea of having a trigger number on your supplies so you know when you get down to a certain number, it's time to order more. I will definitely be using those organization skills while helping mom and dad with their properties.
We were introduced to the entire conference in the lunch that followed. We had been told there would be other students there and I'm proud to say we were the only ones. We ate lunch with the VHDA table with Neal, Jeremy Kahl, David Layman, Kelly Wood (the last three are Asset Managers) and one other lady whose name I did not get. It was wonderful getting to meet everyone we did. Going to this makes me excited for the major I chose and happy to hear the same things we talk about in class are the same things people are talking about in the industry.
The one phrase I will not forget from this conference by Alex Jackiw, "If you see a light at the end of the tunnel, it's a train."
The picture below is from after our first session. L to R: Bill, Mike (fellow Hokie), Alex, Tony, Jessica (fellow Hokie), me, Renee, and Marc.
