1. Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas

Though the recession has hit the entire nation hard, Texas has weathered it better than many states so it’s no surprise that the metropolitan area of Dallas-Fort Worth shows up near the top of the list of cities with the most new apartment construction. Unemployment isn’t as high in Texas as it is in other states either, so new units may fill up quickly as they’ll likely attract renters from out of the area who are hoping to find work.

2. San Francisco and San Jose, California

The tech industry of Silicon Valley has had its ups and downs over the past years but it looks like things are starting to even out again. There’s no doubt that we are a nation that loves its technology and there is a growing market for electronics and software so, over time, San Francisco and San Jose are bound to see an increase in the number of jobs available. New apartments are under construction in many cities around the Bay Area, which has seen some of the highest rental prices in the nation. These new units should help keep rental prices more stable as they attract more tech-savvy professionals to the area.

3. Indianapolis, Indiana

Over the course of the past few years, Indianapolis has remained one of the most affordable large cities in the nation. New apartment construction will help keep rents down, attracting people from around the nation. Though the job market in Indianapolis is still a little shaky, there are plenty of people looking to move to The Crossroads of America. Renters looking to move to Indianapolis don’t need to wait for the new construction to be completed, either; there are lots of units available now and at quite reasonable prices.

4. Tampa, Florida

With low vacancy rates and relatively high-priced rentals, new construction in Tampa will help stabilize prices and attract more people to the area. Though the job market is tough in Tampa, new construction projects, such as the creation of new apartment buildings, creates many jobs and helps put money into a local economy. Once the buildings are ready for renters to move in, the influx of money into the Tampa economy will have hopefully improved to job outlook in this city enough to support the new people moving in.

5. Salt Lake City, Utah

People who have lost their jobs in other parts of the nation may be able to find work in Salt Lake City. It has one of the best markets for professionals such as teachers and a reasonable cost of living. The new apartment buildings going up in this city will help keep the cost of living down while attracting new people to take on the available jobs in the city.

Are you building or seeking an apartment in any of these areas? We’d love to hear your thoughts – here or on our Facebook page!

Economists agree that a big part of the economic crisis we’re in is connected intimately to the housing crash. As homes lost their value and as people faltered under home debts they could no longer pay, jobs were lost and the entire nation’s economy suffered. Despite this clear connection, not much is being done to help former homeowners recover. Likewise, not much is being done to keep current homeowners who are still falling behind on their payments from falling into the same trap.

Many of the jobs initially lost in the economic crisis were closely related to the housing market. People who worked in construction lost their jobs when the construction of new homes dropped off. As fewer people were able to buy new homes, industries that marketed goods to home owners also suffered. This domino effect eventually reached nearly all industries across the nation and also adversely affected the economy abroad.

Fixing this troubled economy is not an easy task. Economists and lawmakers disagree about how to go about fixing the problems that we all face and the argument seems all but impossible to resolve. There are many different issues and addressing one of them will not necessarily fix the others.

That said, one area of the economy that definitely deserves more attention, especially when discussing a plan to create more jobs across the nation, is the housing industry. Directly addressing the housing problem may be one way to solve many of the nation’s economic issues, especially given that this crisis caused so many of the problems that we are currently facing.

The government has spent a great deal of resources bailing out large banks after the housing crash. These handouts were justified in that they prevented many banks from going under. The failure of banks was a huge contributor to the Great Depression, a scenario the US Government was right in wanting to avoid again.

Obviously, banks were not the only entities damaged by the recent housing market crash. Individuals lost their savings, their belongings and then their jobs as the economy went from bad to worse. In many parts of the country, people are still in danger of losing their investments and the job market continues to hover at a national average of about 9 percent. While there are individuals that do receive government assistance as they struggle to pay their mortgages and hold on until they can find new jobs, the vast majority of struggling Americans receive very little or no assistance. Obama is, of course, aware of this problem and has stated that he intends to keep “responsible homeowners” from losing their homes, though an action plan for doing so remains elusive.

And the question remains, with such a damaged economy, where do we put the first band-aid when trying to quell the financial bleeding?

Have something to add? We’d love to hear from you – here or on our Facebook page.

There’s a new social networking tool out there and already its generating a great deal of buzz. The tool is Google+, and though it isn’t certain yet how its introduction to the social networking market will affect established tools, a company that wants to keep up with the latest in technology should definitely be aware of what it is and what it does. Especially because, as Mashable estimates, Google+ has already amassed 10 million users in two weeks!

Google+ can be used by anyone with a google account. It allows for a profile to be set up, with pictures and links, with an interface similar to that used by the latest version of Facebook. Once the Google+ account is set up, updates, advertisements and notes can be shared with the people in the account-holder’s network.

The main feature of Google+ is that it allows users to easily and privately arrange contacts into circles. Each contact can occupy any number of circles, so a large multifamily organization can create circles for say, residents at a few different locations, employees, and even competitors. Google+ allows for a couple of levels of contact, one in which the two contacts follow one-another, like “friending” on Facebook, and one in which one contact follows the other, as in Twitter.

The other feature of Google+ is the +1 button. This button functions like the “Like” button on Facebook and also promotes the dialogue box so that it floats higher in the stream. While it isn’t necessary to accumulate +1′s, they will increase a company’s visibility.

Though Google+ allows people to quickly sort through their contacts and keep in touch with both good friends and new acquaintances, it doesn’t allow for direct contact any more than Facebook does. Google+ social networking is a mostly passive activity. Status updates and ads can easily be posted, but they have to appear in a contact’s stream in order for that contact to view them. Of course, just like in Facebook, the stream will consist of all the updates from a person’s contacts, though unlike in Facebook or Twitter, those contacts can be very easily filtered. There is a good chance that people may chose to view the streams of their friends and family more than streams that include companies or people that they don’t know personally.

Though Google+ launched originally without allowing corporate profiles, this is soon to change on a limited basis. In the meantime, if you want to begin thinking about adding a Google+ page to your property’s social media outreach, we may assume that rules that apply to other branches of social media apply here. That is, a company that wishes to connect with people through a social media tool such as Google+ will need to make sure that the content they provide is consistently interesting or entertaining. A series of posts linking to a homepage or an advertisement won’t cut it in the new social media network; it’s all to easy to hide a contact from view. While a company may have thousands of followers, this doesn’t mean that each of them are reading the content. In order to remain visible in this new network, companies will have to offer something special to their followers.

Want to learn more? We’ll keep you updated!

What is a debt ceiling?

Congress limits the total amount of debt that the federal government can carry, and it periodically increases this amount as the government comes close to reaching it.  Currently, Congress allows for $14.3 trillion dollars in debt, but the United States is coming perilously close to reaching this level; Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says that if the debt ceiling is not raised by August 2, the US will be unable to pay its bills.

What happens if the debt ceiling isn’t raised?

If the debt limit is not increased by Secretary Geithner’s deadline of August 2, the US will enter default.  Right now, spending exceeds tax revenue, so the government must borrow (by selling bonds) to cover the difference.  When the debt ceiling is reached, the government will not be able to borrow anymore, and the US will be unable to fulfill its obligations.  Social Security checks may not be issued or government offices may be shut down.  Once the debt ceiling is increased, the government will resume paying its bill and almost certainly pay its obligations retroactively.  The scary part, though, is that no one really knows what will happen – the debt ceiling has never been reached in this country, and most other countries don’t even have such a thing.

What will the consequences be?

Again, no one knows exactly what will happen, but it seems unavoidable that interest rates will jump.  Moody’s, a leading credit rating firm, has threatened that it will downgrade the perfect AAA rating for American government bonds if a compromise on the debt ceiling isn’t reached imminently.  A downgrade means that Moody’s no longer thinks of U.S. debt as risk-free, and that there is a chance that bond-holders will lose their investment.  As a result, investors will demand a higher interest rate on government bonds to make up for the increase in perceived risk.

How does this affect me?

You might be wondering how exactly you’ll be affected by this whole mess.  Well, even if you aren’t a government employee and don’t receive Social Security, you could still see some effects.  The most important is the increase in interest rates; the interest rate that you get on a home loan, for instance, is directly affected by the interest rate on government bonds, so if August 2 comes around without a debt ceiling increase and interest rates go up, people will be less likely to buy things that require financing, like homes, because it will just be too expensive.  The housing market has yet to recover from the beating it took in the Great Recession, so this is not good news.  As CNN’s Jack Cafferty notes here, the homeownership rate in the US has fallen to just 66.4%, its lowest level since 1998.  If interest rates rise, fewer people will be able to afford this important part of the American Dream.

Is there a silver lining?

Yes.  As a result of declining home-ownership, demand for rental properties will increase.  And the multifamily industry has seen impressively growth recently, with impressive new projects breaking ground every day.  It may become more expensive for multifamily housing owners to get financing for new projects, but companies with good credit should be able to escape the worst of it.

So what do you think? Will Congress reach a compromise to increase the debt ceiling before the August 2 deadline? And how do you think it will affect you?  Let us know here or on our Facebook page! Stay up to date on this issue and other similar ones as part of our ‘Rent Increase WATCH Series’.

Baltimore: Multihousing News reports here that construction has begun on a sustainable townhome project called Towson Green in Towson, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore.  The Chesapeake Fund, an organization committed to preserving the pollution-ravaged Chesapeake Bay, worked with the developer, Bozzuto Homes to create a state-of-the-art “green” community.  The efforts taken here “include the installation of underground sand filters that will treat storm water to reduce its phosphorous and nitrogen loads,” a rainwater collection and treatment system, and use of environmentally-friendly design and construction processes, which includes the implementation of Energy Star-certified appliances.  But that’s not all: Towson Green is constructing optional charging stations for electric vehicles for unit owners who desire them.  Now that is state-of-the-art, considering that electric vehicles currently make up a very small share of overall American car sales; however, with the introduction of the Nissan Leaf and other all-electric vehicles, demand for charging stations will inevitably increase, and Towson Green will be a step ahead of the curve.

Los Angeles: MHN again gives us the story of an ultra-green housing project, this time intended for students at the University of Southern California.  In fact, USC students reportedly encouraged the university to take on this development through Facebook comments, another reminder of the importance of social networking (but that’s a discussion for another article).  The complex, known as West 27th Place, is filled with adjustments both small and large that will reduce its impact on the environment.  Developers were able to get their building plans fast-tracked by the City of Los Angeles by agreeing to include eco-friendly measures, and it seems that once they began “greening” the project, it became a (productive) addiction:  David Hilliard, president of the development company, said that they set out for “[LEED] Silver certification, but we found that if we were careful in our selection of materials and construction techniques, we could gain additional points here and there at a relatively small increase in cost.  Suddenly, we found ourselves aiming for Gold, then Platinum certification.”

The developers succeeded and were awarded with LEED’s highest honor.  They did so through some spectacular measures; the complex’s location was chosen with consciousness of proximity to public transit and construction created 95 percent less waste than similar developments due to less wasteful building methods.  West 27th Place features desert-friendly landscaping, low-flow water fixtures and efficient appliances to reduce water and energy use.  Most impressively, the building’s elevator generates electricity as it travels downward and returns it to the electrical grid!  The environmental benefits continue: front-row parking for efficient cars, solar reflective roofing, on-site recycling, and motion sensor lighting in common areas.  This place sounds like the apartment building of the future!

Ames, Iowa: The green movement isn’t limited to big cities and sexy new developments, it seems.  MHN gives us the story of a $10.6 million “greenovation” to an existing apartment complex in this Iowa town of just 60,000 residents.  And, interestingly enough, it’s not for a fancy, shiny development like the two previous mentions – this time, an affordable housing property is going green.  The 60-unit community, known as Eastwood of Ames, reduced its carbon footprint by adding Energy Star appliances and environmentally-friendly carpets, windows, and air conditioners.  The project, unlikely just a few years ago because of the exorbitant price tag, was made possible by local and federal tax rebates amounting to nearly $800,000 as well as almost $4 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known as the “stimulus.”

I loved hearing about these housing projects and their ground-breaking ways of reducing their impact on the planet.  Know of any housing developments that are making an effort to be environmentally friendly?  Let us know, here or on our Facebook page!

If you’re posting an ad for a roommate or tenant on Craigslist, one of the most important things to do, according to the latest research, is proofread your work. As it turns out, your high school English teacher may have been right all along: people who use proper grammar get the most responses from online ads. Though research into the specifics of the connection between proper grammar and the rental market is preliminary, it would seem that those ads with better writing do, in fact, get more responses than their competitors.

Though social scientists aren’t completely clear as to why people respond more positively towards ads that are written correctly, there are a number of theories that help shed light on this phenomenon. The old adage that states that, “A man is only as good as his word,” is pretty close to the truth. On the whole, consumers tend to respond more favorably to things that are well written, something that online advertisers have just begun to realize.

How important can proper grammar really be?

As it turns out, very. Research has shown that people are more likely to buy a product that has well-written reviews, whether those reviews are positive or negative. The writing, it seems, may be more influential than the content of the piece. Of course, content is important too, so a product that has positive and well written reviews will, naturally, sell better than a product with negative reviews. While these studies on grammar in advertisements do not apply directly to apartment rental ads, it is a fair assumption that a person’s behavior when considering a smaller purchase can be applied to the larger “purchases” done on the rental market.

What should you do to make the best use of this research?

If you’re posting an ad on Craigslist, or any other apartment rental site, it’s extremely important to read over your work before hitting send. Make sure your sentences are complete, your punctuation in the right places and your words properly spelled. Overly informal writing and writing that follows the grammar or spelling seen in text messages doesn’t belong in an ad and can discourage people from contacting you about the rental. Like anything, you want to put your best foot forward, and since ads are still a largely textual medium, you can and often are judged by the words you use. Often just writing your post in a MS Word document and running spellcheck could be the difference between an empty and a rented apartment! Or if you are using the MyNewPlace RentEngine posting tool, it has a spellcheck feature built right in! RealPage’s PropertyLinkOnline apartment marketing software is another great tool that lets you easily optimize your apartment listings on multiple sites from one easy location.

Thoughts? Experience with sloppy listings? Questions about RentEngine? We’d love to hear about them here or on our Facebook page!

A Pennsylvania mom whose daughter was killed by carbon monoxide in her sleep at 10 years of age, Dena Yeagley has been lobbying for the bill. She’s also been spreading the word that the preventable tragedy can be avoided with an inexpensive purchase of carbon monoxide detector.

Dena’s daughter, Abby, and her father, Andrew Heckman, were victims of toxic levels of carbon monoxide that leaked from a rusted flue pipe in the oil furnace. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about 450 Americans die each year from the odorless gas, making carbon monoxide poisoning the leading cause of accidental poisoning in the U.S.

Symptoms of high carbon monoxide levels include fatigue, headaches, dizziness, weakness, nausea, and confusion.

Twenty-four states have statutes requiring carbon monoxide detectors in at least certain residential buildings; you can visit the National Conference of State Legislatures site to find out what restrictions your state has here. In Pennsylvania, the Senate Committee on Urban Affairs and Housing has been considering the bill, SB 920 (also known as the Carbon Monoxide Alarm Standards Act), since late March.

According to the CDC, “CO is found in combustion fumes, such as those produced by cars and trucks, small gasoline engines, stoves, lanterns, burning charcoal and wood, and gas ranges and heating systems. CO from these sources can build up in enclosed or semi-enclosed spaces.”

Buying the detectors is not expensive, and you may be interested to learn that apartment managers are not necessarily always responsible for the cost. For example, according to the New York City Department of Buildings, costs generally range upwards of $20, up to around $60 for ones with digital readouts and controls. You can buy the detectors at hardware stores and home centers. In the city of New York the owners are permitted to collect some reimbursement from the tenant if the house or apartment where you’re installing the detector is rented. Check with local laws to find out what the rules are for you, and if you’re in Pennsylvania, stay alert for the senate’s decision.

Have anything to add on this extremely important issue? Please leave your thoughts here or on our Facebook page.

I found the inclusion of three greenspaces in the building to be its most intriguing feature. The greenspaces encourage people from the same section of the “street” to hang out together in a pleasant space, just as people in flat neighborhoods gather on stoops or front porches. Living in buildings might be more efficient than living in suburban tracts. But it’s important to recognize the social role that where you live can play in making your day better by letting you form community. I like this a lot, and think building designers can attract renters through community-building by building community-friendly buildings.

I think the integration of office space at the lower levels is practical too. The street-level apartments are never that great to live in anyway. And the mixed-use would diversify the energy-consumption habits of different areas of the building (e.g. apartments would be mostly empty during the day, mostly full at night, whereas office spaces would be the opposite).

2) Portland, Oregon has everyone going nuts, and was the topic of features on two sites:

Erika at MultiHousing News Online noted the Portland area has the lowest apartment vacancy rate in the country, at just 4 percent.  But unemployment in the city is still pretty high, at around 10 percent.

Jerry Ascierto at Multifamily Executive brings us quotes from directors of development at big firms calling the area the hottest market in the U.S. From the two articles we learn that supply of new apartments can’t meet demand, partially because the city’s smart anti-sprawl growth boundary has limited development projects to urban infill, and partially because just 157 new units will be completed in the whole city this year.

The result, though, is that now everyone wants a piece of the Portland pie: institutional investment is going like gangbusters, with a year-to-date improvement over last year of over 900 percent. !!!

3) My third favorite (that’s third, favorite, not third-favorite) article this week talked about how to have a stellar “multifamily operations unit.” The tips in the article were taken from a “keynote power panel” at Multifamily Executive’s Rental Rocket virtual event. Here’s a distillation of the takeaways writer Chris Wood brought to us in this article:

• Get good systems in place. Systems to take online maintenance requests, to manage renewals, systems to help your people learn.
• Be available 24/7, or outsource services to companies that are. I like this. If a round the clock fix it man showed up at 2 AM because the heat was broken and I was cold and he made the heat come on right away, it would make me grateful to my management company for a whole long time.

• Accountants and bookkeers are out, sales and service staff are in. You can outsource the former, but people really like dealing with nice people.
• Plug social media applications into your community portals. Why? The more relationships people have with peers, the happier they’ll be.

We’d be happy to consider your blog or site for our Multifamily Blog Roundup – just let us know here or on our Facebook page!

On the MultFamily Insiders blog, Jonathan Saar brings up the question of what apartment managers should strive for with a Facebook page.

In his April 20th post, “Facebook’s Impact on Multifamily Part III- Engagement or Participation?” he asks whether striving for “engagement” over “participation” is splitting hairs. Most pages naturally start out with participation, he asserts; participation is where people “Like” your posts, or comment, whereas “engagement,” by contrast, only begins when participation spins off into actions or conversations either in the real world or elsewhere online (e.g. email).

Juleen is on board with those who say an apartment manager’s goal for his or her Facebook page should be to strive specifically for engagement. The intention of most apartment managers is to create conversations, and be a great resource for residents; in real life, a manager’s spoken conversations with residents would lead to actions. So, Juleen asserts, there’s no reason we shouldn’t have the same expectations of our virtual (Facebook) conversations, too.

MultiHousing News covered a trendsetter in modular construction.

According to MHN, a recent Seattle expo demo’d the products of Sustainable Living Innovations, or SLI, a custom multifamily housing product created by architectural firm CollinsWoerman. Arlan Collins, a principal at the firm, said the SLI prefab construction elements halve the labor required to build a structure, and eliminate 2/3 of onsite labor activity. The company uses steel and concrete rather than wood, which typical modular products use (steel and concrete are more appropriate for dense, urban housing settings, fit better in constrained spaces, and have twice the lifespan of wood).

SLI evolved out of Collins’s observation that multifamily development projects usually take 3 years to realize; his goal became to cut that time requirement in half. That allowed builders to quickly respond to demand for apartments, while giving investors the security of a shorter timeline.

SLI is the only pre-fab housing product system that can be used for buildings taller than mid-rise. And unlike regular modular homes, SLI products are also customizable; a developer using SLI in different parts of the country who wished to can alter the floor-to-ceiling heights depending on each building’s environment could do so.

Collins likens SLI to an erector set: parts are built to specification elsewhere, then shipped to the site, eliminating the warehouse step required in modular construction, offering subsequent savings on road time and gas costs and associated carbon emissions. It remains to be seen what construction crews will have to say at the news that their labor needs can be halved by this promising new product, which Collins called a “game changer”. But according to the article, most of the public who toured the full-scale model units left impressed with both the space and the quality of the buildings.

MultiHousing News also brought us the rather stunning report that a quarter of U.S. renters spend over half of what they make on rent and utilities, according to a study by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The study also found that another 25 percent of U.S. renters spend between 30 and 50 percent on rent and utilities.

The rule of thumb used to be to spend no more than ¼ of what you make on where you live. But in the last decade, rents and utility costs have been rising, while relative renter income rates have been falling. That combo has put renters in a pickle, especially given that relatively few new apartments are being built, and more new renters—20-somethings, foreclosed homeowners—are entering the market. Ack! In high-cost cities, rental affordability could soon be an oxymoron for many. At a conference on the study’s findings, some speakers suggested the government should loosen regulations and let affordable developers and renovators take to the stage. Others insisted the government could fund housing programs and develop more fair income curves to increase affordable housing access to respond to the problem.

The National Apartment Association says heads up: Craigslist will be charging for apartment listings soon. Citing multiple multifamily housing ad experts as their source, NAA says that, based on a pay-per-post model’s success in reducing illegitimate postings in the New York City listings, the practice is probably coming soon to a large urban market near you—especially if you’re in a large urban market that’s “beset with spamming issues” (as New York was). Experts predict that in the next 18 months the top 25 major sales areas for apartments can be expected to shift, with the entire nation following within 3 years. I issue a battle cry to all you spammers out there: your days are numbered, fiends!

The past few years have seen an increase in shared rentals. As the economy begins to improve, single-occupancy apartment units are starting to be in more demand than they were a few years back. Though many people enjoy living with housemates, the number of people who chose to live alone is on the rise once again.

An increase in the demand for single occupancy units may indicate that the economy is beginning to recover, but it also may indicate that it has not bounced back as strongly as many economists have indicated it has. Many of the people who are renting single-occupancy units may be interested in purchasing a house or condo of their own. It is, after all, a buyer’s market, and the low prices on real estate today make it a good time to invest. But the fact that a person may choose to sign a lease rather than a bill of sale does indicate that the income needed to feel comfortable owning a home has not yet been met. The single adult who is renting a place of their own may very well be completely unable to afford to buy even a modest property.

So the trend towards single-occupancy apartment units could suggest that things are getting better but that they’re not great yet. People are earning enough income to get out of sharing with roommates but not enough to buy their own place. It’s still too early to tell if the economy is on the road to recovery, but the increase in single-occupancy rentals indicates that it may be.

Noticed any interesting rental trends among your properties? Share them with us on our Facebook page!