Are you accepting credit cards for rent payments?  How much do you charge for late payments?  Do you offer incentives for paying early?  This month, we delve into these questions with our latest SatisSurvey (powered by SatisFacts)!  Here's how it works:  If you want to gain insight into the all the different facets of the rent payment process, just fill out the survey and we will email you the results for free.  It only takes a few minutes, and free results will be provided only to survey participants!

(If you are not a property management company but still want results, please let us know)

To take the survey, click on the link below:

Exploring the Rent Payment Process Survey

Thanks for participating, and we look forward to seeing the results!

As mentioned, our surveys are powered by SatisFacts, which provides resident survey options to better track the effectiveness of your resident satisfaction programs.  Click on the logo below to check them out!

Who here is an expert on mold?  Our guess is that the only people who got this question right are those who have already had mold training, or are really good guessers!  Here was the 15th Training Trivia (powered by Grace Hill):

"Level I mold remediation is generally defined as a small isolated area of mold, occupying less than ___ square feet of space."

• 5
• 10
• 15
• 20

Congrats to those lucky few who got the correct answer!  And last but certainly not least, the winner of the 15th Training Trivia!

Julie Still

Congrats to Julie Still for winning the Training Trivia! Thanks to Grace Hill, Julie has won a $10 gift card to either Walmart, Best Buy, or Starbucks OR an MFI T-Shirt! For everybody else, remember that you have to be registered and logged into the site to be eligible to win!

Two months ago the Blog of the Month dealt with the issue of missing phone calls, so it seems as though we are continuing a theme this past month by focusing on a blog regarding email follow-up!  It's easy to tell someone they just need to reply to emails, but it's a whole other thing to give them a step-by-step guide on how to handle your prospect emails!  Morgan has given a wonderful guide and wins July's Blog of the Month!  For winning the Blog of the Month award, Morgan also wins a $50 gift card of her choice, sponsored by RentWiki!

Don't let another lease walk away!

We also want to take a moment to thank RentWiki for sponsoring the Blog Of The Month Contest! They have been a fantastic sponsor for MFI, so please take a moment to click on their banner and check them out!

Could 80% of people actually be wrong??  Apparently so!  The latest Training Trivia teaches us that if the behavior is welcomed by the recipient, it is not sexual harassment, and is a question that less than 20% of responders got correct!  Here was the fourteenth Training Trivia (powered by Grace Hill):

"If behavior is not unwelcome, it still can be considered sexual harassment."

• True
• False

Congrats to those lucky few who got the correct answer!  And last but certainly not least, the winner of the fourteenth Training Trivia!

Pamela Spahr

Congrats to Pamela Spahr for winning the Training Trivia! Thanks to Grace Hill, Pamela has won a $10 gift card to either Walmart, Best Buy, or Starbucks OR an MFI T-Shirt! For everybody else, remember that you have to be registered and logged into the site to be eligible to win!

Powered by SatisFacts

Our first SatisSurvey is complete, peering into the resident renewal processes currently in place across the industry. Should these be considered “best practices” or are they only common because “that’s how we’ve always done it?” Here are some highlights of the survey:

As of June 2010, only 7.8% of apartment communities in our survey were using a revenue management system. As this is our first survey of this kind, we are unsure of whether this represents significant growth for this type of system, or if the concept is flat in adoption. The most common person to establish renewal rates was the property manager, at 48%.

Only 39.4% of responding communities gave their current residents beneficial pricing relative to new leases. Free carpet shampoo, or other renewal incentives, however, were quite popular, with 83.3% of communities utilized this type of retention tool.

Online leasing remains low at only 9.1% of communities utilizing that feature.

As of June 2010, 62.4% of communities felt their resident turnover was on track to be lower than 2009.

If you would like access to all the results of the survey, the full survey results are available for $19.99. Purchase the Survey Results
(Survey results are provided as an immediate direct download in PDF format requiring Adobe Acrobat. Access is limited to one person per purchase.)

Who is in charge when it comes to mold remediation?  It turns out, there is no governing body for mold remediation as of now!  Here was the thirteenth Training Trivia (powered by Grace Hill):

"At this time there is no governing body, guideline, or system of quality control for the multifamily industry providing the proper procedure for eliminating mold."

• True
• False

Congrats to everybody who got the correct answer!  And last but certainly not least, the winner of the thirteenth Training Trivia!

Susan Sherfield

Congrats to Susan Sherfield for winning the Training Trivia! Thanks to Grace Hill, Susan has won a $10 gift card to either Walmart, Best Buy, or Starbucks OR an MFI T-Shirt! For everybody else, remember that you have to be registered and logged into the site to be eligible to win!

Get out your calculators because it's time for a math-related Training Trivia! Many times knowledge of a job isn't enough; it also requires application of that knowledge.  Here was the twelfth Training Trivia (powered by Grace Hill):

"A community of 250 apartments is required to change AC filters quarterly. How many filters should the team change per week, approximately?"

• 250
• 50
• 20
• 10

Congrats to everybody who got the correct answer! If you didn't, here's a little help from Grace Hill:

"The correct answer is C, 20. 250 filters divided by the 13 weeks in a quarter is 19.23 (20)."

And last but certainly not least, the winner of the twelfth Training Trivia!

Diana Craven

Congrats to Diana Craven for winning the Training Trivia! Thanks to Grace Hill, Jamie has won a $10 gift card to either Walmart, Best Buy, or Starbucks OR an MFI T-Shirt! For everybody else, remember that you have to be registered and logged into the site to be eligible to win!