Who Writes Thank You Notes to Their Property Manager?
Property Manager Thank you notes
ONE Properties, a fully integrated Canadian real estate development and property management company, was experiencing tremendous growth in its multi-family property management business.
In March 2020, as COVID-19 began to rapidly spread around the world, the Edmonton/Calgary/Toronto based company wanted to boost retention rates to reduce costly turnover. They had a critical question about their strategy:
“What do apartment renters care about today?”
ONE Properties commissioned a Valuegraphics profile of their target audience to look past the traditional demographics of age and income. From the 56 values that are the source code for every human behavior and emotion, several audience segments emerged. These four values sparked intense internal discussion:
Relationships
Belonging
Personal Growth
Experiences
Renters highly value Relationships, far more than the average Canadian. They are driven towards anything that will create real connections with the people in their orbit.
Similarly important, Belonging is a major hot button: they want to fit in, they want to feel that “These are my people!”
Understanding the importance of Personal Growth, which you might define as a constant desire to “be a better me” every day, led to amenity and in-suite FF&E strategies designed to deliver, as did the high value placed on new and interesting Experiences.
Along with the rest of the findings, these four fundamental results guided the ONE Properties team as they created a new approach. They developed policies and processes on how best to engage and support residents, whose values are embedded in the very fundamentals of the business.
The company adopted a hotel-style customer service model, enabled all employees with the mandate to follow through on maintenance and operations issues raised by tenants, invested in tenant-focused roles like the Resident Experience Manager, and launched a social program. Each decision in planning and operations was made in the context of the four fundamental values.
One Properties first rolled out its new platform at Versus, a 444-unit residential building catering to urban professionals in Calgary in March 2020, when the city was stressed not only by COVID-19 but also continuing negative news in the oil and gas sector.
Within a few months, despite the disruption of a global health crisis
tenant satisfaction went up, lease renewals improved, and vacancies were reduced.
And there was an unexpected outcome too. Company management started to receive unsolicited letters of gratitude from building residents, happy with ONE Properties’ personal touch, responsiveness, compassion, social focus, and the building assets and amenities at Versus.
“It is extremely difficult to please everyone
in a large apartment building, but you are doing a great job.”
“The Versus Staff truly make us feel they care about us
and want to make our time living here a great one!”
“I’ve been living at the building now for three years and just signed another year's lease.
With customer service like this, I’ll certainly be a long-term tenant.”
By informing decision-making with what residents value, what they care about most, ONE Properties forged a path to strong business growth.
“We are working to be an industry leader in Canada,” says Courtney Dulai, who is leading the Multi-Family resident experience at ONE Properties. “If we continue to follow the values, we will get there.”