Leasing consultants are typically the first apartment community employees that potential residents meet, and it is crucial that leasing consultants receive the training they need to be effective in their jobs. Our National Apartment Leasing Professional (NALP) designation program helps fill the leasing knowledge gap by offering both in-person and online programs.
Selling your community to prospects over the telephone and learning how to set your property apart from the competition are just a few of the skills taught as part of NALP training. Sue Weston, CAM, CAPS, of the Sue Weston Company and an NAAEI faculty member, says that with the NALP online course, employers and students often see an immediate benefit because the course is presented in modules that cover specific topics. After taking one of those modules, students can immediately identify what they have been doing wrong and how they can improve. They can then put that new knowledge to use the next day at work.
“Employers see that covering the cost of tuition is more than made up for with
leases signed that wouldn’t have been signed otherwise because the employee
didn’t have the needed skills,” Weston says. “This is not tuition. It’s an investment.”
April Smith
JS Property Management
April Smith, NALP, is an Assistant Manager at Hayden Square Apartments in Yuma, Ariz. When she started her online NALP coursework, she had been working as a leasing consultant for only five months. Previously, she had been a fifth-grade teacher, so she admits she knew very little about marketing or leasing apartments when she joined the industry.
“My on-the-job training has been invaluable, but I value formal education and was excited about taking NALP’s online courses so that I could learn more to help me get ahead in my new career,” she says.
April put some of the new NALP online skills to use right away. For example, she learned how to phrase questions to prospects over the telephone in a way that promoted her property and allowed her to capture essential information about the prospect and their apartment needs.
She says her favorite part was preparing the Market Survey, which required her to visit the properties of three competitors. She learned first-hand the features that differentiated her community from others so that she could emphasize these points when talking with prospects. She shared this information with her manager, who was debating whether to raise rents while working on the annual budget.
“The NALP online program was a great learning experience overall,” she says. “I’m looking forward to doing the CAM (Certified Apartment Manager) course in the future so that I can learn more on the management side. I was recently promoted to assistant manager, and I’m not stopping there!”
Monica Roerig, Greystar
Monica Roerig, NALP, Leasing Manager for the Saulet Apartments in New Orleans, has been in the apartment industry for three years. She took NALP online in May after her manager recommended the course. She says she chose the online program because of the flexibility it offered. She took the course during her property’s busiest time of the year, so she was able to immediately apply the lessons she learned to her job.
The interactive leasing scenarios taught her how to better close leases, she says. In fact, in the month after she completed the course, she set a personal record by closing eight leases.
“The course definitely helps with your leasing skills,” she says. “A lot of people in the industry start out in a leasing position and may not have some of the skills to be successful when they start. The NALP course can point them in the right direction.”
Monica is now working on her CAM designation.
Kerry Dixon
Dukeworth Realty
Kerry Dixon, NALP, worked in the apartment industry for three and a half years, recently climbing her way up to assistant manager of Dukeworth Realty’s
Wyndham Apartments in Lubbock, Texas. With her supervisor’s support, she took the NALP online course during work hours when she had free time.
The online course offered her the flexibility to review course content and modules that she may have had a tough time grasping or ones that she wanted to make sure she fully understood. Her studies had an immediate, direct impact on how she did her job.
“Once I started taking the NALP online modules, I was surprised at how much it boosted my career in the apartment industry,” she says. “It made everything about my job that much more important to me.”
She also realized that her residents needed to be her priority and that she needed to start seeing them as her customers and treat them accordingly.
We congratulate all of our NALP designates and are particularly excited about the response to NALP Online. If you would like to learn more about how the NALP course can help you advance your own career, please visit our website at
www.naahq.org and click on NALP.
Maureen Lambe, CAE, is Executive Vice President of NAAEI. She can be reached at 703/797-0601.