Please share your most creative and successful resident event!

I'm looking for some examples of the most creative and successful resident events that have been held at your communities. Thanks!

The most positive response I had from a retention even was the car wash. Who doesn't want to see their landlord wash their car? LOL. Since our property doesn't allow car washing on the premises, it was a HUGE hit! The best part is the cost was under 20 bucks!

I have seen community yard sales, where the property placed the ads and made rental tables available upon request (they found that they could rent tables at a cost of $XX each, but needed a 1 week lead time to reserve them). What they did is send a notice to all residents to inform them that they wound be hosting and promoting a community yard sale; and that tables were going to be available, but they would need to be paid for 15 days before the planned date. This was a 2 day event, and arrangements were made for a local charity to pick up the remaining items on the following Monday. I have ALSO seen properties use their clubhouses as polling places on election day. Often the local registrar of voters PAYS a small stipend for the use of the space; and you can make it known to your residents that you are doing this in the event any of them may want to be poll workers.

Both of these have the added benefit of generating traffic into the property for tours.

The most creative one we ever did was a Casino Night. We hired a casino company that had dealers and tables. We did it around the pool, had strobe lights, a red carpet, food catered from local restaurants, photos with someone dressed as "Elvis," etc. It was a huge hit and talked about for a LONG time by the residents. For the month prior, we also invited all of our prospects, sent direct mailers to neighboring properties, marketed it to local businesses....we definitely got some leases out of it in addition to giving our residents a good time.

I have been doing this for a lot of years and I have had some successful events under my belt but my biggest secret that I have to offer to anyone looking for a successful event is this... You can't make everyone happy.. so don't. My most successful events have been events that have been geared towards a certain age group. Everyone is invited but you focus on that age group and it makes it successful each time. A kids day in the pool w/ little mermaid and Nemo decorations with free icecream... focus is on kids but you'll be amazed how many parents (and non-parents) have a good time. Have a chili cook off (seniors love this!) and gear the advertising towards seniors as the taste testers and gear advertising to the contestants in a certain age group. Have a pool party focusing your advertsing on 20 somethings and you'll have a great turn out for every age! Most communities have an array of different people and different ages... you won't be 100% successful if you try to find something everyone likes.. because not everyone like everything.... Just my little helpful hint.

I would celebrate your community's diversity and host a potluck lunch/dinner where your RESIDENTS can make and bring their favorite dish from their family/culture. You provide the paper/plastic plates, utensils, drinks, and side dishes. You can take this further if you have it on a weekend and invite your recent traffic to come in and meet the residents.

Something else I have seen is the property asked the residents to provide a copy of the recipe to one of the staff members, who would compile it into a cookbook and have them available for sale ($5-$10 each) and donate the proceeds to a local shelter on behalf of the residents. This would need to be done in such a way that the cookbooks can be printed in time for the potluck so you have a quantity on hand and can take orders when you run out (say printing 100 initiially, and taking orders for those expressing interest after those 100 are gone).

The most positive, successful and extremely cost effective resident event I had was “Meet Your Neighbors Day” The event was held after hours, and we recruited assistance from the local vendors and food providers. Each vendor donated food, gifts, games or drinks for the meeting. The event was magnificent, we had approximately over 100 people attend, and we had games, prizes and bunch of food and drinks to offer. It really was a great way for the residents to meet each other and our onsite staff. It created a huge rapport with everyone, and really helped our renewals and resident referrals. The best of it all, it didn’t cost the site anything, because it was all collected from the vendors and local business each month.

Thanks for all of your responses. I love how they are expanded upon to make them more creative and personal. For instance, taking the idea to have a potluck dinner and turning into something thats focus is on the culture and diversity of the community. This tells residents that you not only care about them, but helps to create that sense of community...and that's what sells these days.

I would love to hear more ideas along this line... Come on, I KNOW you all have more in your retention arsenal!!

I don't know if this qualifies as an event, but given the rapid decline of the quality of customer service; maybe it SHOULD be......


I don't know about you, but I CELEBRATE when I get the service I EXPECT, as opposed to what I am willing to ACCEPT (often these are two different things)...

Give your residents excellent customer service and anticipate their needs. Train your staff to realize that the single biggest line item on the budgets of your residents is likely to be their rent; and treat that relationship as such....

We held an event for national night out...we invited our residents to get to know one another we had a dunk tank, bounce house, and ordered pizza the residents loved the dunk tank who wouldnt want a chance to dunk their manager...

Just held a fabulous resident event at my apartment complex. I asked all the pizza vendors in the area to DONATED 2 pizzas for a "pizza tasting constest". Ten pizza vendors participated. Residents were able to vote on their favorite pizza and a winner was declared. I coupled this with a trivia game. We hired a Trivia Master, organized the residents into groups of 5-7, and played trivia for 2 hours. We served beer, wine, soft drinks and water. The residents LOVED it and many said it was the best event we've held. They would like to do this again!

Thanks so much for sharing this! I am going to try it at my property. I only have 80 apartments, and my parties are not well attended, but maybe pizza will bring them out! Hopefully the pizza places will decide to help out, but usually I have to buy the pizza myself so I only do this once a year.

We held a health and wellness fair. Several companies came out with samples of their products or services...companies like Local Chiropractors, Fitness, like the YMCA or Golds Gym, Trader Joe's or World Market, Insurance Company, Juice Plus, Weight Watchers, Free health screenings by a Dr. Office or Walgreen's clinic included blood pressure check, Massage Envy or something like it, Red Cross or other blood donation organizations, Dentist with free toothbrushes, etc. The Fire and Police department often have programs where they will bring a fire truck out for kids to see and they share information about fire safety. The options are endless! The best part, is it offers value to the resident, the cost is free to the property and also brings tons of exposure. Just having all of the businesses come to your property help get your name out there.

When I was a leasing agent I organized a fall festival at no cost to the property. We collected donations from local area businesses. Used the money towards the games and prizes. Each station was named after the business owners who donated. A local hot dog vendor provided a reduce rate for their food for our residents. The residents took turns running the stations. In addition we had local performing arts groups give performances. This was a very successful event for us.

We did this as the Friday activity as part of Resident Appreciation Week. Not going to lie...its hard work! *BUT* I can't tell you how many "Thank You!"s we got...totally awesome retention idea.

We had a Back to School Party for the ADULTS only this year entitled, "Aren't We Glad Their Going Back!"

We converted our clubhouse into a 1970's Disco and hired a DJ. Our residents danced the night away the Friday before school was to start. We pulled all the lights from the room and installed professional DJ Lights and even lit up the pool area and outside of the office with spectacular colors. It really looked like a night club.

Everyone dressed up in their favorite 70's garb and I went as a 70's pimp.

We screened a Bee Gees concert at the pool for PARENTS only at the same time.

It was a HUGE GROOVY SUCCESS!

Lakewood Estates in Royse City Texas.

Here are some of ours:
Hot Baked Potato Bar: Cheap and nice to feed people, co-host with a vendor and topic of choice
C.O.P.E. Party: Citizens organize in preparedness for emergencies, Build 3 day survival buckets
Come Grow with Us: get together to make earth balls (seed balls) let residents plant them in an area that needs some beauty
Breakfast on the go: have a few brown bag options, some with milk or juice , a resident referral flyer for their break rooms etc.
End of Summer movies at the pool: show a scary water movie like the original Jaws
Tie Dye T-Shirts: This requires lots of supervision but it turns out amazing and you see shirts for years!

Our company does an annual Health Fair as well, with partner vendors in our Rewards program. They are hosted at one of our High-Rises and attendance is open to all our communities. It's become one of our most popular events.

So many to choose from! We chartered buses and took residents to a hockey game. We would throw a "Beers from Around the World" party and everyone would BYOB their favorite imported beer to share. Hula Night was a huge success. These are just a few.
Our resident events were very well attended, regardless of the theme. One of the reasons is because we planned our events out in advance. We would provide a calendar of events for the entire year in January. Residents would ask for it as soon as January rolled around.

We started a monthly game night. Residents bring their favorite board or card games and the group decides what to play. It's been a great success and word of mouth really spread. We now have so many people come we'll have several different games going at the same time!

Based on 193,000 rental prospects from 320 properties across the U.S., PERQ’s Multifamily Field Guide shows 20% of consumers enjoy social activities, with Outdoor Activities coming in second at 17%. Our multifamily clients say hosting outdoor events for residents and their friends, and inviting potential prospects (leads that came from your website) is always a good idea. You can always take photos of these outdoor events and post them on social media or use them in lead nurture emails as a way to entice rental prospects and show them what you offer. Our data also shows 33% — or more than one-third — of rental prospects own a pet. One regional manager told us that a good apartment resident activity idea is to host a Yappy Hour. Invite your renters and their pets, along with local dog walkers, trainers, vets, groomers, pet sitters and the local dog bakery. You’ll create a connection within your community, and it shows your residents you care about their furry family members, too!

One of the most popular events we have done is "Walking Tacos" , it's delicious and inexpensive. The name itself is intrigued so residents want to see what it's all about. You get the snack sized bags on corn chips, Doritos or cool ranch Doritos. Open it up , the resident chooses all the toppings they want put in the bag.Then you give the residents a fork with their bag and then they simply walk around with their dinner in a spillproof bag!

Live Clue game big hit
Speed dating huge hit