Is Internet Access Just an Expectation?

Last week, Apartment Guide released a list of the highest ranking apartment features and community amenities that consumers searched for on ApartmentGuide.com over the past six months (from February 2009 to August 2009). Here are the results:

1. In-Unit Washer and Dryer
2. Pets (allowed)
3. Air Conditioning
4. Some Paid Utilities
5. Washer and Dryer Connections
6. Dishwasher
7. Balcony
8. Garage
9. Cable Ready
10. Furnished Available
11. Swimming Pool
12. Short-Term Lease Available
13. Fitness Center
14. Gated Access
15. Oversized Closets
    

Here's what surprised me most: Wi-Fi, or even wired Internet access, didn't even make the list. (To be fair, it did make the list over at Apartments.com.)

Over 74% of the U.S. population is online, yet renters don't need Internet in their apartment? (About 85% of the population pays for TV service from a cable, satellite or telco provider.)

This doesn't make sense to me, unless Internet access has finally become an expected utility, rather than an amenity. Heat didn't make the list. Water didn't make the list. Electricity didn't make the list. Now, Internet access doesn't make the list. (Just a couple years ago, Wi-Fi was touted as a "must-have amenity" ... I would argue it still is.)

What do you make of this? What are you seeing in the market? Is Internet access not as important, especially if apartment hunters are "being mindful of their budgets," or has it become such an expectation that searchers don't even think to list it as a requirement?

MHN Announces Their Technology Choice Award Winners

Multi-Housing News has announced the winners of their 2009 Technology Choice Awards, as selected by their readers.

I'll echo the comment in the article:

Now, more than ever, your technology choices are critical to efficient operations—the bonus is retaining and attracting satisfied residents.

I'm not going to write much more about this, primarily because I'm not a fan of the selection process employed by MHN. When some of the companies on their original list aren't even categorized correctly, I can't agree with their emphatic statement, "please confidently use this list as your reference."

I would also love to see a study of residents'/prospects' impressions of some of these same services, if for no other reason than to see any possible differences in the results.

Don't get me wrong ... there are many outstanding companies on this list. Congratulations to all of the winners. I've taken the work out of searching for you (where possible) by linking directly to the website of each winner:

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
AMSI
Intuit Real Estate Solutions
One Site by RealPage
Yardi Systems

RESIDENT SCREENING SYSTEMS
First Advantage SafeRent
One Site Screening (LeasingDesk) by RealPage
On-Site.com
Resident Data

INTERNET LISTING SERVICES
ApartmentGuide.com
Apartments.com
ForRent.com
Rent.com

RESIDENT PAYMENT SYSTEMS
NWP Services Corporation
One Site Payments (Velocity) by RealPage
PropertyBridge
ResidentPay by Property Solutions
Yardi Portal/Yardi Checkscan

TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROVIDERS
AT&T
Comcast Cable
Time Warner Cable
Verizon Enhanced Communities

SECURITY
KeyTrak, Inc.
Kwikset
Saflok (Now KABA Multihousing)
Schlage/Ingersoll Rand

UTILITY MANAGEMENT
American Utility Management
ista North America
NWP Services Corporation
Velocity

LEAD MANAGEMENT
CallSource
Lead Tracking Solutions
Level One
Resite Online

RESIDENT PORTALS
Crossfire by RealPage
Property Solutions
Resite Online
Yardi Portal

MARKETING WEBSITES
Crossfire by RealPage
Ellipse Group
Property Solutions
Resite Online

What do you think? Do you agree with these picks? Are there companies (or whole categories) that you would add to the list?

Are Electronic Locks Right for Your Property?

This is a guest post written by Yvette Felix from Saflok. For more information, please visit their website or contact her at yfelix@saf.kaba.com.

Why Choose Electronic Locks?
Choosing an electronic lock system for your property does more than secure access control and enhance safety and life security. Selecting the right system for your building’s unique needs could mean increased operational efficiency and a significant return on investment, not to mention serve as a unique selling point for potential residents. Here are some critical considerations to keep in mind.

Choose a stand-alone lock. Installing a hard-wired system is a significant investment. Battery life in a typical stand-alone lock is approximately two to three years under normal use — a long time to be sure, but it's best to incorporate a battery change into your maintenance schedule at turnover to alleviate any confusion and to ease record keeping.

Streamline Operations
If electronic locks are deployed site-wide (both in the common spaces and at the apartments), the residents only require one key to get anywhere on the property, whether it's the parking garage, the fitness center or there apartment.

Electronic locks also help eliminate lost-key related issues and streamline the move-out process in all types of multihousing properties. A new key should automatically re-key a lost or stolen key by canceling the old key. You shouldn’t have to hassle with the use of a re-keying device on the locks. Especially in situations where the master key is lost, there is no need to re-pin all the locks on your property.

Protect Yourself
Electronic lock audit trails are an important feature to consider. This use-history report details exactly who has been in and out of an apartment or restricted areas throughout your community — this becomes an especially useful report in the event of theft, giving you better control over your liability.

With an electronic system, you also can program various access levels on a key. For example, a visiting contractor could be given a key that gives him access to only one room on the property and the key could be programmed to work only during a specified time.

One Size Does Not Fit All
Don’t forget, one lock sometimes doesn’t fit every door requirement. So choose a provider with a complete lock line-up with unique products for different applications such as common access locks, and locks with unit and suite configurations.

Also, make sure that the locks are ANSI/BHMA-certified. Certification speaks to the fact that the lock has withstood appropriate testing, and adheres to usage parameters and safety criteria as defined by nationally accepted standards.

Do you use electronic locks at your property? What has been your experience? If not, what is preventing you from trying them? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Rent.com and PadZing Cook Up a Tasty Data Buffet

Start with the massive database of vacancy information that drives VaultWare. Then take all the rental rate data from the largest consumer apartment search website. Throw it all together and you have one serious market research tool.

This week, Realty DataTrust and Rent.com today announced an agreement to do exactly that -- they'll integrate the rental rate data from Rent.com's 25,000+ property listings into the site RDT built to analyze apartment market data and trends, PadZing.com. VaultWare, the keeper of the data that currently drives PadZing, is already the leading online apartment availability and reservation system, so the Rent.com data should easily make PadZing one of the most comprehensive sources for current rent and vacancy data in the industry.

If you're not already familiar with PadZing, it's a subscription-based tool that allows users to obtain up-to-date competitive information ... it includes some pretty cool mapping and customization features. (It's a free subscription.)

Both Mike Mueller, CEO of Realty DataTrust, and Peggy Abkemeier, General Manager of Rent.com, are all smiles about the new partnership -- you can check out their happy quotes in the Padzing Pressroom.

Have you tried PadZing previously? What did you think? What data resources do you use most when doing your market research?

Apartment Search Goes Social ... Almost

MyNewPlace, a site that lists apartment and home rentals site, today announced that it has added Facebook Connect to its site. The feature allows its users to get feedback on prospective apartments, condos and home rentals by posting property information to their Facebook page. MyNewPlace claims to be the first real estate and apartments Web site to implement Facebook Connect, allowing consumers to tap into their network of online friends to make more informed decisions about where to live.

Mark Moran, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for MyNewPlace, had this to say about the new feature:

Most people want the opinion of friends, family and roommates before choosing a new place to live. Facebook's more than 150 million users can now quickly and easily log into MyNewPlace using their Facebook account, post properties they are interested in to their Facebook page and get feedback and advice from the people that are most important to them. With Facebook Connect, getting opinions from friends and family is as simple as a click.

Traffic to MyNewPlace appears to be growing rapidly in recent months -– the company claims that over 3 million people use the site monthly. MyNewPlace's internal research indicates that over one third of its visitors already have a Facebook account, which seems quite low to me based on recent data about Facebook's amazing growth.

Trying It Out
Trying the new feature out didn't go so well. Signing in was easy enough, there's a big "Connect with Facebook" button on the sign-in page.

Once a user signs in, they can search for properties like normal. When the user selects a property, they'll see the property profile, which now includes an option to "Post to Facebook":

The user can make a short comment on the property, and a listing then gets posted to the user's Facebook page:

Pretty cool, eh?

Here's where it starts to get less exciting. As a Facebook user, the whole point of posting a property like this to my profile like this would be to have my friends comment on the community and tell me what they think about it, or better yet, what their experiences were if they lived there in the past.

Facebook typically allows users to share posted information like this with their friends through the feature called a "newsfeed." It makes (almost) every interaction on the site a more social experience, and it's a huge reason why Facebook is as popular as it is today.

Well, here's the problem ... the posting from MyNewPlace doesn't automatically get shared with the user's friends through the newsfeed. Which means those friends probably won't have any idea when that person posts a property for comment, unless they go directly to that person's profile page. Others also tried it without any luck.

It misses the most social aspect of the entire site.

When I asked the MyNewPlace rep about the feature (via Twitter), this was the response I received:

Our app allows FB (Facebook) users to post to their profiles. FB shows what it deems to you RE your friends on your home page.

Great ... the feature only works if Facebook wants it to. Well, here's to hoping that Facebook wants features like this to work as much as I do. There is huge potential for multifamily websites to embrace these types of features that enable their prospects and residents to easily share information about the property with their friends.

It will be interesting to see how MyNewPlace works through these issues, how they promote this feature to their users, and how they push similar "sharing" features into the site in the future. They also have a website-building tool, called MyNewSite ... it could be very interesting if they incorporate the Facebook Connect feature directly into their property website templates.

Have you tried the new MyNewPlace Facebook Connect feature? What did you think? How else can other ILS providers and property websites take advantage of social networks like this?