Apartmentalize 2021: Industry players talk "Resident Experience"

Zego attended NAA's Apartmentalize 2021 in Chicago, and we had the privilege of meeting a number of great industry experts and property management professionals who generously shared their thoughts on the state of resident experience.

We spoke with Kelly B. from BG Multifamily, who talked about how making an apartment feel like a home can really enhance the overall resident experience.

“So, whenever you're working on site, you're providing apartment homes. It's home. Your home is probably the most important, one of the most important and intimate decisions that a person can make, so focusing on the resident experience is important just for that reason. When you go home, you should feel comfortable, you should feel a sense of relief, you should feel secure, you should feel happy. That's what working on site does. It's that simple. Just remembering you're providing a home.”

Stephanie N. from CORT discussed what resident experience management means to her.

“I think a resident experience refers to how a resident feels living at a community in relation to the onsite management team and how their needs are being met. Not only met, but being exceeded… I think that whether that resident signs a renewal is completely contingent on their experience living there. So they should be taken care of throughout their lease..”

We also asked Mike D. at BluePort, why is the resident experience so important to a property's overall NOI? And how can solutions like BluePort help enhance these experiences?

“Right now, the resident experience has to be property-wide, right? And bringing in that resort-style Wi-Fi experience to the multifamily communities is what I think is supercritical in terms of providing that property-wide experience. Residents don't want just the internet connection in their apartments anymore. They want to be able to go to the pool. They want to be able to go to the clubhouse, the gym and have that connection. And what we're doing in the space is we're bringing in that property-wide connection with a secure, personal connection for the resident.

So when they leave that apartment to go to the gym, the pool, or whatever, they're on their own personal connection still throughout the entire property. So we think it's super important for the residents to be able to have that property-wide connectivity and then more so above the resident. It's the backbone for all of that technology infrastructure, right? Everything else that impacts the resident experience, so the door access and security systems and all the other IoT product tweaks that are coming out right now that need that connectivity pulse. And that's where we feel that bringing in the property-wide connection piece is supercritical.”

[Interviewer: And with the connectivity piece of it all, like how is that making sure that the resident feels like they're a little bit more, they're more satisfied with the product. You know, I always talk about the resident experience, but like, how is that resident experience that's enhanced by the connectivity really going to impact and help the property long term?]

“Well, I think it's simple, right? So when you're somewhere, and you have your phone, and you might be on a phone call, you might be doing some work, or you're driving, which you shouldn't be, right? Whatever. You lose that service to your cell phone, and what does that feel like, right? It's frustrating. My phone's not working. My call just dropped.

So the same goes for doing something on your phone or your iPad or whatever mobile device you have. You're in your unit, and you gotta go throw the trash away, or you got to go bring the kids to the pool, and you still want to watch your show. You still want to do some work. So having that seamless property-wide connectivity is really, in my opinion, what enhances that experience because now the resident doesn't have to worry about joining the next network. Oh, what's the clubhouse password again. Oh, they changed it. I got to go back to the leasing office. Oh, they're out to lunch.

So all those little components that come together to create a bad experience, we're pushing that all to the side, giving a giant bubble around the property of Wi-Fi connectivity. And then, within that bubble, we put each resident in their own little personal connection to give them that great experience.”

Ben B. at MRI explained why the resident experience is so important to both the resident's happiness and the property's overall performance in the process.

“Resident experiences is paramount just with all of the competition that's out there and the cost that it takes to actually acquire a net new resident. The ability to retain them is far more important. And to retain them, it is what kind of a community are you creating around them? Are you able to connect them with their neighbors? Is there people... Companies talk about cultures within inside their corporate cultures. There's a culture within a community as well. And are you able to foster that? Are you able to create a good community where people want to be engaged and want to be with their neighbors? And ultimately, that's going to lead to higher renewal rates and probably higher price increases on those renewals. And it really all boils down to the resident experience and how they feel about that community.”

We met with Kim S. at Print With Me, to learn what resident experience management means to her and how it can impact our property's overall NOI.

“Well, in December of 2020, SatisFacts Research released a resident survey where they had asked residents what are the most important amenities that help you, that you want in an apartment that keep you happy? Number one was faster community-wide internet and number two was a multifunction device to be able to print, copy, scan and everything else, which is shocking in 2020, 2021. However, with everyone working from home, we saw a 40% increase in usage last year and it was a testament to the fact that everyone... This was a highly-needed item for folks to be able to continue their day-to-day lives, whether it be going to school, at work, whatever else that might be, activities with their kids. We're glad to be able to provide that. This takes a huge burden off of the And it provides a great resident experience because folks can print right from their own devices, which they didn't have to worry about logging into germy public PCs or anything like that. We're really happy to be able to provide a great experience for residents while taking the burden off of the site teams.”

[Interviewer: Then in terms of being able to provide that enhanced experience for the resident, you're able to boost their happiness overall, how do you feel that that might be able to lead to better retention for the properties? Like you said, you were referring the statistic of this is something that the renters are really excited about, they would prefer to have onsite between that and the property-wide wifi. How do those things equalize to improving their chances to renew at a singular property?”]

“Well, now that we're all spending so much time at home still, and it's foreseeable that we're going to be spending a lot of time at home, this is where if we're spending way more time than we had anticipated ever in the past, we need to create incredible environments for us to be in. As it pertains to residents, whether it be pools, or fitness centers or whatever other items go into the resident experience, it's been more important than ever and people who are not capitalizing on making sure that they're providing the best amenities, they're losing out big time. People are going to go elsewhere.”

John M. at Quext discussed how their solution is helping to elevate the resident experience and why it's important to our industry to place added value on this component of property management.

“We have a pretty wide range of products. And one of our company values, one of our three values is community. We view our community as our residents, our staff members, and our investors. When I say our investors, I'm primarily talking about our owner-operator investors on the Madera Residential side. But Community is a core value of ours and most of these solutions that we've developed, we really have the resident in mind. First of all, as an operator, if you're not taking care of your resident, but if you're not treating them as an important member of your community you're going to be perceived that way. And so everything that we've developed here, we, one of the barriers we're trying to break down is just scalability and availability to say the masses.

That sounds kind of corny, but really we're trying to democratize our solutions so that they're available to a much wider audience. And that means getting technologies in the hands of people that tend to not be the first on the list. So with Smart Home, for instance, the way we started as an industry, and it makes sense due to cost, primarily, typically, seeing roll-outs in higher end properties, but we just think that our solutions should be created to hit as many people as possible.

So we're doing that. We're doing that on the Madera residential side, we're rolling out Smart Home managed WiFi to our B and C properties. And we actually came out looking sort of like geniuses during COVID, especially with managed WiFi because so many parents were stuck at home with their children, taking them through school. We had some incredible resident testimonials, but I think kind of the obvious answer in terms of value is if your residents perceive the solutions you're offering to them as a value, then they value where they live and that makes them want to either come to or retain themselves as your residents and that is an obvious value to your property.

And if you're able to garner some revenue, as you know, out of these solutions, which you would expect, then you're, you have some obvious and serious value creation for your property and for your investors on the backend.”

We also spoke with Nick D at Rent Manager who discussed his thoughts on the resident experience and what he sees is the future of resident experience management in our industry.

“Resident experience really is the ease of access, I feel for residents to be able to do everything that they have to do because no one wants to have to do things like have to know that they have to drive to the bank and drop a check off, or that they have to pick up a phone, actually call you, to submit a service issue when they have that ease of access, everything that they need right there in the palm of their hands and know that they can do stuff on the go. I think that is especially true with the evolution of COVID and everything like that, just because I don't have to go somewhere to be able to solve my problems when that's not really something I want to do after I get off work and have to deal with it.

In terms of kind of the future of everything, I think it's just going to get more and more automated from everything to notices out to residents and tenants, keeping them updated on everything going on at the property, having them have access to be able to reach out to you when stuff happens or be notified of things in communities and everything like that. So really just taking automation to the next level…”

And that's a wrap on Apartmentalize 2021 here in Chicago! Thank you to NAA for a great week, featuring the latest and greatest innovation from around the show. And finally I want to say a special thank you to our guests on today’s episode. We can't wait to attend more live events and hear what industry players like you are saying about the resident experience. Be sure to stop by our booth at next year’s Apartmentalize or other shows later this year, where you, too, may be featured on our next show floor recap. We hope you enjoyed listening! Thanks again.