Resident Experience Managing Build to Rent/PRS The U.S. Experience November 04, 2015 Managing Build to Rent/PRS The U.S. Experience Resident Experience Amber Anderson Senior Director of Real Estate Holdings Greystar Europe Holdings

The Life Cycle Life Cycle of a Resident; the experience begins before you make first contact with the prospective resident and ends months after they move out.

Market First step; marketing, branding and messaging.

Positioning Document Branding starts with positioning document. On new development, It answers the question of what was there before, what’s there now, what do we anticipate being there in the future. What should interior look like, what amenities do we need, what should our color palette be? Existing buildings it answers the question of who is our resident, what kind of photography or lifestyle photos should we utilize. How do we speak to all of those things simultaneously? This is sent to architect, interior designer, signage production, any one who is working on the creative vision of the building.

Branding: Name and Logo Names evolve and develop. Names are usually a nod to something; history, street, vibe.

Messaging and Brand Voice Extends to brand voice from there, how do we want to speak to people and how do we want them to perceive us. The brand is no longer what we tell people it is, it’s what people tell us it is. Everything drives from the brand strategy and voice. Logo, colors, suggestive photography, buzz words that need to always be considered with collateral. How does onsite team dress (look book for apparel). The goal is to make sure we are communicating consistently from the time of fence banner and construction equipment, all the way to the minute they walk in the door for the first time.

Website and Advertising Website splash page, logo, colors, suggestive photography, buzz words. All are part of the branding experience. Website: 84% renters are searching online first, 80% will see your website before your property and 87% make decisions based on reviews or ratings. splash page as soon as fence wrap goes up. It needs to lead somewhere so people can get more information. Fence wrap and splash page need to be concurrent. Websites need to be functional so you can gather interest list. Easy to read, easy to understand, get the information in ten seconds or less. Not a sales tool yet, just a brand awareness tool. Basic info on amenities and features, contact me function with information about prospects. Entire purpose of your splash page is to build your interest list so you have people to follow up with once you’re ready. Renderings, life style photos, construction photos or progress camera, renderings of interior units. Time lapse videos are cool. Walk through videos, room builder with dimensions of unit types. Allow people to start envisioning what goes where. Blog of local attractions and happenings (critical that it is updated or higher agency to handle on your behalf. Helps with google SEO; content and relevancy are key). 3D floorplan, when you click on a room and it will zoom in and give you a 3D walk through of the unit. Moving beyond splashpage, high quality, digitally enhanced, intoxicating images are key. Real photography is key but be smart; it shouldn’t look fake. Photos from an iPhone aren’t going to cut it. Hire professional to clean up shadows, display finishes correctly. Best money spent on a website is easy navigation and high quality photos. Don’t be overly clever; it can be cool but people will leave if they can’t find what they are looking for. Bounce rate is number of people who land on website and leave without going anywhere else. The goal is to be under 30%. Paralax scroll movement is in an effort to be more mobile friendly so people can scroll and get the same information from their phone or tablet. It kills SEO and makes it hard to determine from an analytics perspective what’s working and what’s not or where you are losing people. You can’t follow them to see if they go home page, gallery and then drop off at rates (you know you have a pricing issue). If it’s critical for you to know your ROI, parallax scrolling won’t work but if you’re in a market where you have a heavy tablet or mobile user base, analytics be damned. (Avalon Bay uses this exclusively). Ability to navigate quickly and efficiently to the building. Todays customer wants to be able to self-qualify; this helps your leasing team because you’ll cut out the people who can’t afford it and you’ll have people who are either aspirational to want to try and afford it, or know they do. They need to be able to reach you. Chat button, phone number, email. Contact form should lead into lead to lease or lead management software. Marketing perspective, like to be able to track everything. Used to put a toll free number on everything; not the case anymore because google needs to be able to find the same number when it’s crawling in order to legitimize your business and location. In the past we have put direct number on the website. That isn’t ideal for google anymore but having only one number you do lose ability to drill down on ROI with various traffic sources.  Must capture the viewers attention.  Influenced perceptions, feelings and emotions.  90 percent of buying decisions are influenced by visual factors.

Signage The goal is to make sure we are communicating consistently from the time of fence banner and construction equipment, all the way to the minute they walk in the door and are greeted by our team for the first time.

Engage Mood Technology Marketing Sales Training Tour Path The goal is to make sure we are communicating consistently from the time of fence banner and construction equipment, all the way to the minute they walk in the door and are greeted by our team for the first time.

Interior Design and Amenities Amenities: modular, small spaces are more in demand. Lobby in an Ava building is a large loft with huge screen TV and people are hanging out, watching TV. People need an area to hang out publicly and be able to still be separated. Why people go to Starbucks to work. Social spaces could be game room, basketball court, game lounge but give people ability to be antisocial in a social environment. Provide spaces around what people want and want close at hand. Gym, laundry facilities, pet park, bicycle storage, bike repair rooms, work station/DYI space, pea patch garden, glam room with area for make-up and photography, blow out bar, indoor dog park. Car or bike share.

Tour Path Think about the tour path when programming space; yellow brick road! What are the stops along the way. Music piped in only on tour path, design and lighting in hallway, imagery along the way, certain smell or fresheners that you want, experience in the elevator (Ava elevators have clever sayings like “oh, it has it’s ups and downs”) and common area bathrooms, auto lighting along the route, appealing to the six senses. Think about what is sustainable; don’t program anything you can’t maintain or that is too much of a fad. Don’t try to be too hip and don’t try to be something for everyone. The prospective renter is savvy and understands branding. They want to part of something bigger than themselves

The Resident Experience Model Themed. Should match the needs of the demographic. Appeal to the senses, have music playing, light air freshener. Goal is to have people envision living in the space. WOW fridge!

Collateral Materials Once creative look and feel have been established, you move to collateral. Understand what comps are doing; do we want to compete and do it better, or be different. In San Francisco, no collateral is needed because it’s a high compost, recycle and green market (people are turned off). In NYC, collateral is still very in and people want thick, sexy brochures that give them the look and feel of elegance. In techy markets, people want iPad leasing where paper is never wasted. In mid-west markets, print is still very appreciated and people want something tangible to hold and feel. It should be specific to what the team on site needs to sell the product.

Execute Acquire the resident

e-Leasing Experience Interactive Leasing Kiosk: An extension of the website experience, Greystar partners with Engrain, to provide a vivid 55” – 70” touch screen panel featuring floor plans, unit finishes, views, property amenities, interactive community maps, and real-time pricing and availability. Dynamic content such as local events, weather, news, metro information, community news and scrolling social media feeds.

Application Approval and Lease Signing Protect the house! Opportunity to avoid major risk management on the front end. Industry is moving to eSignature. Approvals are different per municipality and investment needs; OFAC in UK, criminal and credit in US. International requires increased deposit or guarantor. Technology; iPad leasing, touch screen TV in waiting area, hospitality area (espresso machines, blue tooth coffee maker with app you download in the lobby to customize drink, refillable water station). Ability to utilize tools to touch on a unit and show the view out of the windows, virtual walk through of unit, filter by specific amenities (washer dryer, stainless, etc.) I want a “2bed, 8th floor, hardwood floors, facing west” Cuts out unimportant things. Tech is only useful if you utilize it correctly and to your advantage. If it’s just to be flashy, what’s the point. Don’t deal in flash over function. Texting and email marketing; digital communication is becoming much more important.

Service Pay attention to what it means culturally!

Branding and Messaging Continue Move in gifts, maintenance uniform, pool services

Employee Training and Development GraceHill, Irem, NAA, company training. Leadership development. Training; the way you “speak” to your resident is critical, depending on if it’s a hipster building or a really high end building with a doorman. This is where training and development of associates is so critical. Having a doorman that’s professionally dressed with a skinny tie but has tattoo sleeves is okay in Arts District, downtown LA but not okay in Central Park West, NYC. everything should be highly customized. Team needs to be trained so the experience is in line with the branding. Team should know the voice of the building and know the language so they can speak it fluently.

Value-Added Amenities Package Concierge “Room Service” delivery 24 hour concierge Valet parking Dry cleaning services Pet walking services Child car services Blow out bar

A+ Customer Service Online work order, follow up on maintenance requests, handling complaints and issues, responsiveness, relationship management.

Retention Events and vibe of people have to be well thought out, depending on the demographic. Yappy hours won’t work everywhere, beer and wine don’t work everywhere, kid events, etc.

Sense of Community Resident events Common values; charity sponsorship

Surveys Surveys should happen throughout the life cycle of the resident at various touchpoints; the goal is to continually improve! Listen to what people are saying about you, where there is smoke there is usually fire.

Capital Enhancement Invest in asset quality

Reputation Management A happy resident will leave the resident life cycle with a smile on their face and a 5 star review.

Sources http://kingsleyassociates.com/services/resident-surveys/ http://365connect.com/ http://www.apartmentseo.com/ http://www.urbaneapts.com/blog/ http://learn.gracehill.com/EB-2014-04-01-Hip-to-be-Fair-Content-Request-LP.html http://www.minnesotabusiness.com/2015-economic-forecast-hosted-institute-real-estate-management