With apartment industry hiring not likely to resume fully until later this year, employees are taking on larger workloads.
Most apartment management companies and communities have experienced some degree of job layoffs over the past year in response to the falling economy and rising vacancy rates. Those still working have seen their job responsibilities expanded, hours extended and energy levels exhausted. They’ve been asked to do more with less. Many wonder when their employers will bring in reinforcements.
Those who were laid off also are wondering: “When is the industry going to start hiring again?”
Economic recovery is imminent. Experts expect job growth as soon as this spring or as late as 2011. With job growth comes apartment demand. With apartment demand eventually comes hiring. Ask any company in any market and nearly all will share a common sentiment—apartment employment will pick up when fundamentals such as revenue and occupancy improve.
A Full Workload
Kettler Management has been conservative with its staffing decisions during the downturn. The company avoided making layoffs last year, but instead took a closer and more cautious look at its staff’s duties, says Cindy Clare, CPM, President of the regional firm that has 13,000 apartments in the Washington, D.C., area. “When we added properties, we didn’t add new people as quickly as we might have before the downturn,” Clare says.
This year, Kettler will fill open positions, but won’t add new positions, especially at the corporate level. “In our budget forecasting, we didn’t predict an increase in rents or a change in concessions in 2010,” she explains. “But if we suddenly see a big rush of people coming to our property and we have reason to start reducing concessions, that may change.”
At Laramar Communities, the recession has created a mindset of expense control and prudency, in which every dollar is watched more carefully, says Dave Woodward, Managing Partner and CEO for the Greenwood Village, Colo.-based company that manages 31,000 apartments in 20 major markets. “The net effect is that our employees are being stretched a little bit more than they might have been otherwise,” he says. For example, instead of being responsible for six communities, regional managers might be responsible for eight.
The company remains in “hunker-down mode” for the time being, Woodward said in January. “We’re trying to get through this [tough economic time] before we start hiring again,” he says.
Now Hiring
Many companies are similarly waiting to see what happens to the economy before filling current job openings or creating and filling new positions. But some apartment firms, sensing a turnaround on the horizon, are adding staff to ease the burden on employees who have taken on additional tasks or properties during the recent tight times.
While cutting staff can be an effective way to control expenses, it can make apartment owners become concerned that their management staff is taking on too much work, says Alex Jackiw, CAPS, CPM, President of the Indianapolis-based apartment management firm Buckingham Management.
“My clients ask me, ‘How many properties will my district manager be assigned?’ ” Jackiw says. “Those responsibilities are something we are looking to ease. The smaller the portfolio, the more scrutiny managers can give to a given property, and the more they can maximize their portfolio’s performance.”
Jackiw says that during a time when she has seen many real estate companies in the Midwest continue to downsize their staffs, she has found a more qualified pool of potential employees among those who were laid off for financial reasons. In recent months, Buckingham, which manages 15,000 apartments in the Midwest, has hired a director of marketing, an in-house legal counsel and a vice president of student housing.
“We’re starting to see the market firm up slightly,” Jackiw says. Buckingham is developing two new student housing communities and has seen a surge in its receivership work, creating room for the company to grow even during an economic downturn.
When the right person for a job is available, Jackiw adds, companies should hire them while they have the opportunity, rather than waiting for the perfect moment.
John Cullens, President of apartment career recruitment site ApartmentCareers.com, says he is beginning to see an increase in apartment company job postings, but it hasn’t yet translated to an increase in hiring.
“There’s a lot more tire-kicking amongst companies looking to upgrade or enhance their staffs,” Cullens says. “The one thing that I hear from all of them is that they are looking to hire people who they feel will have an impact and that will directly impact their bottom line,” rather than simply fill an empty seat in the office.
For the first time in seven years, Nashville, Tenn.-based real estate firm Freeman Webb hired a new regional manager. Dan Ford, President of the company’s Property Management division, which operates 12,000 apartments, says growth in 2007 and 2008 had stretched his company’s resources, but with the likelihood of future growth uncertain, the company chose to add responsibilities to existing staff rather than hire new employees. In late 2009, however, Freeman Webb felt confident enough that its portfolio would expand to justify the new position.
“We think that more receivership work is out there, as well as acquisition opportunities,” Ford says. “If and when we do add additional properties, we’ve made sure that this new regional manager will have room on his plate to take on more duties.”
While Tulsa, Okla.-based American Residential Group isn’t hiring yet, the company is gearing up to add administrative staff because it is cautiously optimistic that it will add a few communities to its portfolio and will embark on a new construction project in 2010.
“We’ve had some of our staff in work overload mode, doing multiple tasks or working on multiple properties,” says Becky Weaver, CPM, Vice President of Property Management for the company that manages and owns 2,000 apartments.
American Residential Group’s regional property managers typically oversee approximately six communities, but have been supervising as many as 10 during the recent year. If the new additions come through, she says, “We’ll add more regional support so everyone will be back to dealing with more manageable numbers.”
Where to Look
Where should apartment job seekers look for their next position? While growth at some companies has led to their creating new positions, hiring at most apartment companies is driven by the number of apartments the companies own or manage. Simply put, the companies that are quickly growing their businesses will be most active in hiring.
Laramar, for example, hired regional managers in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., last year, and both hires were tied to the growth in its fee-management business in those markets, Woodward says. The same tends to be true with corporate office jobs such as accounting. Hires are made based on the number of communities an employee can handle, so companies taking on more apartments add staff.
Much of Laramar’s growth has come from new fee-management opportunities from lenders or special servicers foreclosing on properties, Woodward says, so the company may hire more aggressively in markets such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, Texas, Florida, and select markets in California where more receivership work is likely to come.
“Normally we’d wait two or three months and gauge our clients and the market before deciding to expand staff,” says Woodward. But because Woodward is actively pursuing management opportunities in some of those markets, he says, “We’re more likely to hire someone sooner.”
When hiring does resume, companies’ marketing and training departments will likely be among the first to welcome additional staff, apartment executives predict. Those departments were hardest hit by the downturn, with some companies choosing to take responsibilities from those departments and give them to regional managers. Weaver says accounting, HR and regional managers have been assigned the most additional work.
Onsite jobs such as maintenance and leasing, on the other hand, have been less affected by the downturn, Woodward says. “You need onsite management when times are good or bad, regardless of the owner’s financial performance goals or demands,” he says.
“Because more apartment stock is added in this country every single year, there must be employees to lease and maintain those units,” Cullens says. Even in a recession, apartment providers are always on the lookout for well-qualified onsite management staff.
Jeffrey Lee is NAA’s Manager of Communications. He can be reached at jeffreylee@naahq.org or 703/797-0647.