Help with vacancies

I have been at my property (a Rural Development property) for 14 years and it has always been a tough property to rent because the town really doesn't offer much. We have no grocery stores, movie theaters, shops, etc. The only thing we really have is 2 major fast food chains. My property is the oldest property in the town and we are showing our age. Another property (tax credit) was built about 5 years ago, but we never really noticed much change in vacancies. But right now, I'm at 80% occupied and no one on my waitlist. I know the other property has a lot vacancies, also.

My vacancies are from people buying homes (those low interest rates killed us) and I've evicted the rest for not paying rent.

My questions is: What/Where/How do I market this property?

We are 20 minutes away from a city and 10 minutes away from the closest grocery store. Which doesn't sound that far, but when the majority of your residents are very low income, with no cars, that's a long distance.

Because I'm a RD property, I can't offer free rents and can't afford to offer them. I did have a referral program going, but no one referred anyone. Everyone said they didn't know anyone who could afford to move right now...

I do activities with my residents as often as I can and myself and my staff scored high with the residents on a recent company survey...

So how do you rent apartments when your town doesn't offer your residents much to choose from, your area is suffering from high unemployment, and your property isn't the prettiest because of age?

Any and all help will be much appreciated. Thanks...Brenda

I would market to all of the surrounding cities - even if they are 20 min. to an hour away, as well as all local businesses there. For every person that can't afford to move right now, there are several that desperately need to move to lower their expenses and may not know what their options are.

Another great place to market to is the local unemployment offices. Many apartments I've worked with have had great success with this as so many people who didn't "previously" qualify for affordable housing now qualify.

I would also market to the other affordable housing properties, housing offices, etc. in your area and in surrounding cities. Many times someone may not be able to find an opening in the City they're in, but could transfer to another City where the housing program has spaces available. Or, your competitor could be turning people away because they don't have the floorplan/type available that a customer needs, not knowing that you do have it available.

Kudos on giving great service and activities for your residents

I have run into similar issues with my senior section 8/202 in a rural community population 2500. some of the things we have done include:
1. got an age waiver
2. worked with a local moving company to offer free moving (cost of mover was less than one months lost revenue)
3. looked at items for amenities that was under the cost of one months lost rent.(cable for a period of time, housekeeping, w/d, etc. And then we also ask "What would it take for you to rent this apartment today? Weigh it out cost wise of request vs lost rent.


Good Luck!

That sounds like a tough situation. Is your property an elderly property or a family property?

For elderly properties, you might want to see if you and/or your staff can volunteer at a Senior Center a couple days a month. This will give you a chance to get to know the seniors and maybe you can be charge of an activity or two. Since you have experience with that. Plus, if you have any elderly residents, that don't go to the center, you might be able to get them to go, then you have word-of-mouth advertising.

For a family property, maybe you could volunteer to do a reading time at the library or at a daycare. Again, it gets your name out there and it gives you a chance to interact with families.

Get friendly with your local small businesses. We had a little grocery store in our town and we got to know them real well and they would send people our way all the time.

Good luck and let us know how things work out.

Thanks everyone for your help. You've given me some things to try that I hadn't thought of, so that's always a good thing...thanks again!

Glad you got some great feedback, Brenda! We're also going to feature your question on our newsletter that's going out tomorrow!

Brenda,

You mention that you have activities with your residents and that your staff scored high with the residents on a company survey. That seems to be a key selling point in my opinion, and ought to be promoted in any marketing material. My guess is that your residents likely appreciate those types of activities for lack of being anything close in proximity to do. Maybe you can expand on some of those activities, or appoint an "activities director" using one of your residents - give that person a cut in his/her rent for overseeing that activity. To promote your units - incent your current residents for any referrals brought in to you. Maybe you could create some sort of marketing materials for your residents to post or take to their employers. Just a few of my thoughts....Good luck!

Brent...Thanks, I've gotten some great info to get me started...

Dave...Here's my problem with using this as a marketing tool...and maybe it isn't as big a problem as I think, but...I actually have no community room to do these activities in...we have a laundry room and over the years, I've gotten pretty good at concealing the washers/dryers and/or using them to our benefit when I have an activity. Of course, this becomes an inconvenience to the other residents who want to do their laundry and can't. We recently had our first Bingo and we ended up cleaning up the maintenance shop, hanging curtains around to conceal the 'maintenance' side of things so that we could fit everyone into one place. It worked out great, but...it interrupts my maintenance man's schedule (the day before when we have to move things around, because he participates in all activities with me along with the Porter)...

So I'm not really sure how to 'market' my laundry room/maintenance shop for activities. I've just always enjoyed doing activities with the residents/children and found a way to do that...Any help on marketing this, would be great...grin...Thanks...

Brenda...

First, I want to applaud you for being so creative. If your laundry room is like the ones I'm familiar with, then you have your work cut out for you to conceal them!

Those of us in property management tend to have to think outside the box on a lot of things.

I do think you can just market the fact that you do activities and leave out where you do them. Once the applicant becomes a resident I think they will enjoy the fact that you are doing activities with them so the 'where' of it won't matter.

Good luck! Christine