
Apartmentalize 2021 Schedule
(Subject to change)
Friday, June 18
Attendee and Exhibitor Registration Open
Game Changer Sessions
NAA Exposition Open (Lunch served 11:30 p.m. – 12:30 p.m.)
“Promote Yourself”: A New Tool for Your Maintenance Tool Bag
The next step in maintenance team members’ development? Self promotion! Everyone agrees maintenance professionals are essential to the apartment industry. In fact, as owners considered layoffs and furloughs during COVID-19, maintenance teams were exempt and were the face of their communities! Yet skilled maintenance professionals say they’re not recognized for hard work, expertise or accomplishments. Explore how training maintenance team members to do some self-promotion goes a long way toward career development, resident satisfaction, recruitment and employee retention.
Speakers
What's After Employee On-boarding? Calculating the ROI of Industry Education
Because of record-breaking housing growth, rapid industry evolution and a massive talent demand increase, industry education and the implementation of effective training programs are more important today than ever before. Today’s managers scramble to attract new talent while being tasked with the crucial obligation of properly educating and training new team members. If you’re responsible for enhancing your team’s training platform facilitation or want to learn the ROI of industry training/credentialing to maximize your own career potential, this session provides the answers you need.
Speakers
Waste, Dumpsters and Data Mean Profitability
The escalating cost of waste management negatively impacts your bottom line. The average apartment property wastes thousands of dollars a year on hauling fees for dumpsters that are only 46% full. This means you’re most likely paying full price for a service that hauls half the contracted amount, and that’s just the beginning of cost inefficiencies associated with trash and recycling disposal. Learn how you can gain control and visibility into your waste management program.
Speakers
Swipe Left-Swipe Right: How do Owners Choose Management Partners?
It’s been a rental housing dilemma for years: “Should we own and manage our assets?” or, “Should we simply own them and hire a third-party manager?” Renting has become a lifestyle of choice, thus rental housing real estate is an investment of choice. Don’t miss the candid conversation between owners and executive property managers who work every day in this negotiation arena. Is it all about the money, or do owners look for something special? Take away a deep understanding of how to win the business and which way to swipe!
Speakers
Student Housing Short Term Rentals: Vacancy Loss Solution + NOI
Student housing assets have to lease-up every year. This is true whether an asset achieved 100% occupancy last year, two new properties open next door this year or you are operating during a global pandemic. Short term rentals can help reduce the overall leasing target, solve vacancy loss, provide an amenity to residents in the form of guest suites and provide a new source of NOI. We will explore revenue share from the viewpoint of a professional manager, exploring corporate leasing and in-house short-term rentals with case studies and the pros and cons of each approach.
Speakers
Open Space Sessions
Finding the Needle in the Haystack: Portfolio Sustainability Strategies
If you need to reduce operational expenses and environmental impact but maximize your time and budget, where should you look? If you have a portfolio, which property should you focus on to maximize efficiency? This session provides strategies that participants can take back to their portfolios to help get the biggest bang for the buck, including expertise and commentary on techniques, tools and tactics that work whether you have one property or 1,000.
Speakers
Education Sessions
Developing an Emergency Preparedness Plan to Manage Supply Chain Disruptions
Public safety emergencies such as COVID-19 are challenging for everyone in a multitude of ways. In the rental housing industry, economic pressures can escalate quickly as the impact on supply chain becomes evident. But quick and confident planning, including having an emergency preparedness system with suppliers in place, can ensure fast access to critical supplies. Hear from a senior purchasing manager, a properties executive and a resident services corporate director on how they overcame supply chain challenges by working with supply partners.
Speakers
Coaching Already-Burned-Out Teams to Deliver Top-Notch Service
Positive ratings and reviews are essential for success. Those stellar ratings and reviews, however, are earned by diligent onsite team members deemed essential workers during a pandemic that forced them to balance facing the public with their own fears about the virus, childcare, job security and more. Rental housing employee survey data show that site teams’ stress levels are rising, and confidence in their leaders is dropping as the pandemic drags on. Join us for a reality-based assist to motivate burned-out teams to continue delivering stellar service.
Speakers
Build the Most Effective Marketing Machine for Today’s Shopper
Expectations for marketers are higher than ever. With budgets cut, rental housing marketers are still expected to generate more traffic, leads, tours and leases. To keep up with slashed spending, you need to build a more streamlined marketing machine—one that captures and converts prospects in the most cost-effective way. This panel explores real-world situations and tools to help you identify the best options for your specific situation. Go beyond the basics of marketing automation to reduce spending and improve the effectiveness of your overall marketing efforts.
Speakers
Apartment All Stars Present: You Pick the Topic!
The Apartment All Stars are here for your challenges! You, the attendee, choose what we cover in our session by voting on the topic that most appeals to you. When you arrive in the speaking room, you’ll be directed to vote for your choice. Majority wins! Your choices are: “Best of the Best: What's Working Right Now Across the U.S.;” “Leasing, Marketing and Resident Retention in a Post-COVID Economy” or “COVID Shmovid! Fire Me Up with Your Ideas!” Get there early; the All Stars program is always standing room only!
Speakers
"Keeping Up With the Generations:" How Gen Z Drives Trends
Typecast as narcissistic, entitled offspring of Baby Boomers, “aging Millennials”—the oldest of which are nearly 40—often have quite different lifestyles from those of their younger counterparts. Otherwise known as “Generation Y,” Millennials are advancing in their careers. What separates the middle-aged members of this cohort from younger Gen Yers and the digital-native members of Gen Z? Explore Gen Z (representing about 40% of current consumers) attitudes, buying behaviors and their implications for the rental housing industry.
Speakers
What the Pandemic Taught Us About Maintenance
The pandemic not only helped us to realize how important our maintenance team is to our residents; we also learned how to provide maintenance while keeping residents and staff safe. Periods of crisis often result in innovations that are helpful in that moment and can help restructure how work is being done. During this session, we explore how companies evolved their maintenance processes to succeed and stay safe during the pandemic.
Speakers
The Magic of Marketing Math: Numbers + Storytelling = Superpowers
Leasing and marketing in the rental housing industry requires an infinite amount of creativity. What happens when you’re expected to be a creative creature and mathematician? You become a rental housing rockstar! Learn how to leverage math to get your desired leasing outcomes and which data and calculations are most likely to help you make a robust difference in your onsite performance. From increased closing ratios to matching your online ad budgets with the seasonality of your business, math is a critical component to your success.
Speakers
The COVID-19 Crossroads: Hot Trends, New World, Fresh Perspective
Our industry evolved fast in the COVID-19 era. Companies were forced to push technology initiatives and virtual offerings to keep employees, prospects and residents safe. Now it’s time to make hard decisions. What worked? What flopped? Which initiatives and ideas were fruitful for productivity, pizzazz, culture and leasing success? Join us to sift through top trends as you crystallize your company’s roadmap for post-pandemic success. We dive into leasing, marketing, resident experience, company culture and more to help form a solid strategy to thrive, not just survive.
Speakers
The Changing Landscape in Employee Benefits
The pandemic brought significant changes to the benefit packages that help attract and retain talent. Standard PTO, EAP and fitness center discounts were replaced with meditation, massage and extended leave requests, leading companies to design varied and thoughtful responses. After the initial protocols and regulations, which benefits did employees appreciate and use? Which didn’t work well? Which will survive through 2021? Our panel of HR practitioners explores fundamental changes in how benefits are approached and created. Take home tips to consider for your own teams.
Speakers
Policies and Practice Changes: Lesson Learned from the Pandemic Experience
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us all to closely examine how many of our processes and policies work with residents, employees and operations in general. This session includes a panel with members from affordable housing, workforce housing and Class A, who discuss what we have taken away from the pandemic experience with respect to what we no longer need to do, what we can do better and what we should now do that we have not done before.
Speakers
New and Emerging Risks: Are You Prepared?
Are you prepared for any new or emerging risk? No one could have anticipated the pandemic and what it meant to your operations. However, you can take what you learned and ensure you are ready for anything new that comes your way. This session analyzes possible gaps in your existing processes, reviews new and emerging risks that have the potential to negatively impact your businesses and explores old risks that are new again. Walk away with a plan to fill in the gaps and be prepared!
Speakers
More than Revenue: Drive Value During a Recession
We measure performance differently than we did in early 2020. It will continue to change as we navigate pandemic management and recovery. The one thing that hasn’t changed is the value of data. More than ever, operators must mine insight not just from metro market data, but submarket and individual property data as well. This micro data enables decisions that protect and boost portfolio performance in any environment. This session discusses the metrics operators are using to make informed and future-thinking decisions, and where they find this data.
Speakers
Flipping the Script: Reviews are Not Just for Prospects
There is zero doubt that apartment hunters recognize the value of online reviews. But did you know organizations can benefit as well from the power of reviews in terms of recruiting new talent, safeguarding employee loyalty and extending a competitive edge? Session panelists have flipped the script on reviews and transported the phrase “reputation management” to a completely new level. Hear key insight on how reviews have become an integral part of a company’s brand, vision and ultimately success.
Speakers
Education Sessions
Do More with Wireless: Leveraging Rental Wi-Fi
Wireless technology is transforming industries, and more advances are coming to rental housing. LoRa, Wi-Fi 6, 5G—what does this all mean for you? Dive right in to the early trends to learn about property-wide Wi-Fi and what this means for residents, staff and operators. Walk away feeling ready to parse through potential options to decide on and implement a solution that steps up your community’s technology experience!
Speakers
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: Turning Ideas into Action
Implementing successful diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs can be challenging. Take the first steps to understanding and implementing diversity and inclusion programs at your organization. This interactive session brings together two industry DEI experts with a history of implementing successful DEI programs at their organization and two Class of 2020 members of NAA’s Diversity Leadership Program who proposed the top two DEI program ideas within their capstone project to serve as an example of how two ideas can be turned into action.
Speakers
Add Real Value: Remodeling Your Off-Campus Student Property
Deciding to invest in remodeling your asset is never easy, but this session guides you through a real-life case study, providing knowledge stemming from missteps (both literal and metaphorical) and offering tips and tricks to make your project successful. Covering pricing, vendor selection, contract execution, design elements, marketing and resident communication, this session takes you on a one-of-a-kind journey through the back-office door into rooms where decisions were made and lessons learned, leading a group of seasoned professionals to become renovation experts.