Other firms have a different reason for avoiding not only combining leasing forces for multiple properties but having people dedicated to just leasing. Frazier Crawford, executive vice president of property management for San Diego–based third-party manager ConAm Management Corp., thinks leasing stars should be utilized during lease-ups, but otherwise, he wants well-rounded on-site staff.
“We don’t see leasing as sales,” Crawford says. “We see it as a service. Residents still like to know there’s somebody who cares about their situation and is there to solve their problems.”
Tom Grimes, executive vice president and director of property management operations for Mid-America Apartment Communities, a REIT based in Memphis, Tenn., agrees. “We don’t want to create Realtor-type salespeople where all they care about is the sale,” he says. “That customer will come back and live there. We want [the agent] to stay in contact with them so when we feel good enough to ask for that 8 percent rent increase, the customer is feeling good about it too.”
While UDR ships many of the customer service responsibilities of sales superstars off to other people on site, it does require its leasing staff to have checkpoints throughout the lifetime of a lease and, eventually, for renewals (where they can earn more commissions). “If service isn’t taking care of [a customer], they’ll get involved,” Davis says. “If everything is not going OK, they’ll talk to the manager and maintenance team.”
