When it comes to apartment leasing solutions, there’s so much more to success than simply acquiring tenants. Sure, you could scoop up people all day to fill your apartments or vacant rooms, but it doesn’t mean much if there’s a high turnover rate that causes headaches on your end.

There are many factors that go into gaining tenants and then subsequently keeping them. By holding onto tenants, you can build a sense of loyalty, and by making your entire property attractive, you can build on your success as positive reviews start rolling in. Tenant retention and reputation management are a big part of what we offer in our leasing services, and that’s why we’re here to offer some tips of what you can do to improve both.

One of the best ways to improve your reputation and to keep tenants is to establish a sense of community in your complex. Instead of just feeling like a place to live, many people will come to call their apartments home if they feel like they truly belong there. Here are some ways to foster community in your apartment complex.

Host Holiday Events

While the scope of events that you can host depends greatly on the nature of your property, the bottom line is that just about any apartment complex is able to host holiday activities if the management is clever enough. Naturally, it helps a lot to have resources at your disposal such as a sizeable lawn, a clubhouse, and a reasonably comfortable office space from which you can manage affairs. But even if all you have is a lawn, you’ve got some options. Here are some to consider:

• Summer Holiday BBQs: Who doesn’t love some delicious, charred meat? The summer presents many opportunities to host a friendly barbecue on your lot, offering some yummy food and a chance for tenants to make friends and socialize. Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Independence Day are all great choices for a summer BBQ, and the good news is that it doesn’t even have to break the bank — if you stick with economical choices like hot dogs, you can feed a ton of people without draining your wallet.
• Halloween Trick Or Treating: Halloween is one of the most exciting holidays for children. While it’s probably best to let your tenants plan their own adult festivities, you can provide a wonderful experience for kids by having some sort of trick or treating activity. Apartments often get glossed over in the trick or treating experience, but you can change that by providing a space where your tenants can set up trick or treating “stations” outside — this allows tenants to meet each other, for their kids to interact and show off their costumes, and to get a delightful head start to their trick or treating fun.
• Christmas Gift Exchanges and Giveaways: Christmas is the season of gift-giving. Why not take advantage of that by creating opportunities for your tenants to give, and receive something in return? Gift exchanges a la Secret Santa can be a fun chance for your tenants to make friends with total strangers, as long as they’re hosted on a volunteer basis. It’s also fun to host giveaways which are accompanied by a little Christmas party in your clubhouse. Invite your tenants over to celebrate the holiday spirit, and end it with a gift raffle. They’ll get a night of good food and a shot at a cool free gift — what’s not to like about that?

Charity and Service Events

Another great way to unite your tenants is to do so through charity. Acts of kindness tend to bring people together, and as the managers of a large community, you have the power to reach a huge amount of people at once. All you need do is send out an email, and maybe announce it on your community bulletin board along with flyers. Not everyone will bite, but a fair amount of people inevitably will, and that’s good enough.

There are plenty of ways to organize a charity and/or service event. You could organize some sort of gift drive; this is a more passive activity where tenants may not directly interact with each other much, but it creates goodwill towards management, and best of all, it helps out someone in need.

There are also service events, where you can rally your tenants together to go perform a service project. There are countless possibilities — you can pick up trash in a public space, organize a food drive, have a charity auction, and so on. If you’re wanting for ideas, all it takes is a quick Google search.

Have Some Dog Days

The “dog days” of summer typically refer to those hot, steamy days where you feel like you can’t do anything except for lie around lethargically — but let’s take these words more literally for a second and entertain the idea of actual dog days. That is, days where the dog owners of your apartment complex can all join together for a day of fun and play.

Granted, this idea only works if you offer pet-friendly apartments, and ideally, you’ll have a little dog park on your property. While mini dog parks are a boon to pet owners, the reality is that they’re seldom occupied by more than one or two people at a time. But, if you announce a day where all dog owners are invited to participate during a specific timeframe, it creates an opportunity for new friendships — both for tenants and dogs alike.

Dogs love playing with their kin, and you can bet a lot of pet owners would jump at the opportunity to allow their dog to play with new friends without needing to take a trip to the local dog park.

Quality Leasing Services and Training

There are many options for apartment leasing solutions, and creating a sense of community is just one of them. But if you really want to reduce vacancies in your apartment complex, the best possible thing you can do is turn to the professionals. At Class, Inc., we provide professional leasing services and training to apartment managers. In working with us, countless apartment complexes have seen a rise in new tenants. We know all the tips and tricks of how to bring in new people, and even more importantly, how to keep them.

Are you looking for apartment vacancy solutions? We’re here to help, and getting started is easy. All you have to do is contact us today for a free quote. We look forward to hearing from you soon!