Optimism Abounds for Apartment Executives Entering 2022

The apartment industry has decided to stay calm and move on from the pandemic. Leading executives are ready to enter 2022 on good financial standing, and know that they can overcome nearly anything, according to panelists at an industry conference.

Marcie Williams, President, Rivergate KW Management; Miguel Gutierrez, COO, CAPREIT; and Cindy Fisher, President, Kettler; discussed what they learned the past 18 months and what the coming year holds during National Multifamily Housing Council’s OpTech Conference in national Harbor, Md.

“I’m not going to be depressed anymore,” Williams said. “There’s always going to be challenges and everything is at risk⁠—that’s the business we’re in. If you survived 2020 and the only complaint you have now is that some of your refrigerators don’t match because of supply chain issues, you’ve made out pretty well.”

Fisher said technology played a major role in helping her company manage the pandemic.

“The situation truly accelerated the technology development we needed in our industry,” she said. “Today we can ask ourselves, ‘What data can help us and let’s put it in place.’ We were working on self-guided and virtual tours, we just got there a lot faster after COVID-19 hit because we had to.

“We’ll never go back to the way we were with data. We have so much more visibility now. More, more, more. And we’re getting better at using it. It’s very exciting. We’re all tech savvy now. It doesn’t matter what age you are.”

Fisher said the pandemic reminded her and her corporate team that the industry is “out there,” meaning it’s not being run while sitting in the corporate offices, it’s being run at the community sites “and we need to get out there and see it.”

Gutierrez said online leasing and contact leasing are here to stay. 

“This wasn’t something we had in our affordable housing portfolio, but now we do,” he said. “It helps us to meet the residents where they are in their apartment searching.”

Williams said the pandemic’s technology advances helped create more options for prospective renters and her staff. “For consumers, it’s about realizing that they still want what they want, when they want it, and how they want it,” she said.

Gutierrez said the pandemic brought other operational changes such as more creative employee engagement efforts; the opportunity for remote work by those in the corporate office; and improved, redesigned amenity spaces that can cater to residents who work from home.

He said that while standardization of processes can be a good thing, “the pandemic helped us learn the value of empowering our onsite teams to make decisions based on what was local⁠—what was happening at their community.”

And he said those employees can feel more confident while in the office, thinking, “I have an idea. Let’s talk about it,” he said.