Situation
- Covid forced students inside, with online remote learning. From new cleaning protocol to local ordinances to university rules, there were lots of new challenges.
- Bryanna Xander, SVP of Leasing and Operations at MultiVersity Housing, recognized the need to double down on resident communication.
- With increased flexibility from students, property teams have to be more flexible too!
- Students, accustomed to spending 10% of their time inside their apartments, are now forced inside 90% of the time.
- Bryanna and MultiVersity doubled down on communications for building wide announcements, tenant retention, and leasing speed.
How MultiVersity Navigated the Past Year
- Bryanna Xander, on navigating the last year.
- "MVPM began looking for different solutions on how to keep the experience of boutique, luxury living alive through one of the darkest periods in our country. We rolled out virtual tours, sending digital gifts to residents, care packages, hosting Virtual Events that we rolled out through a private, resident-only Facebook Group. We communicated heavily on our mitigation and what we were doing to lower the risk of COVID-19 at our properties.
- "We put in extensive cleaning measures, dividers in offices and fitness centers (when states allowed them to reopen), PPE protocol for both staff and vendors alike. We wanted to make sure that when it was time to reopen our doors and let our residents back in, we were ready and that’s exactly what happened! We were able to open our pools, tanning beds, fitness centers, and other amenity areas all while making sure that we were in line with all of the specific CDC and state guidelines."
MultiVersity Deploys ResiDesk
- Bryanna decided to deploy ResiDesk. Here's a look at that decision and how it works today:
- "Going into lease-up for Fall 2021, we knew that it was going to be a challenge because people were still not fully comfortable coming into offices, they were still living at home and taking classes online, so we had to find solutions that made sense for our teams. We rolled out ResiDesk at all of our properties and it has been a HUGE success and such a great product. We are able to communicate with all of our residents and prospects about specials, events, leasing promotions, and even gauge their responses on several property wide items – from the installation of new fitness equipment to amenity hours, etc."
Outcome
- Since rolling out ResiDesk, Bryanna's teams respond portfolio-wide to tenant + prospect requests in under 90 minutes—16x faster than industry average.
- And MVHP teams are more efficient because tenants reply in 20 minutes—80x faster than industry average
- Fewer followups and voicemails!
- Happier tenants are 3.5x more likely to renew!!
Property Spotlight: Events Survey in Slippery Rock
- University Village at Slippery Rock wanted to better understand their tenants and how they could best serve them
- They decided to run a ResiDesk Survey to poll their tenants about what types of resident events they should put on as warmer weather comes and vaccine rollout expands
- Students appreciated it and the team notched a 54% response rate!
- 94% of those responses were positive or neutral, as detected by the ResiDesk Satisfaction Score
- They've since been able to open the tanning beds, tailor new events to their residents, and keep their tenants happier
- The MVHP team has achieved a portfolio-wide resident satisfaction score that is 19% higher than typical portfolios