Apartment Tenant Appreciation Party
August 31, 2009
This past Saturday I went to Carlos Vaz’s recent Tenant Appreciation party for his 9th apartment investment purchase from back in April. He is nearly complete with about an $800,000 rehabilitation (repositioning) of a 266 unit apartment complex. This “was” his best deal to date (though it pales compared to the apartment building he closed last Thursday which will be the subject of an upcoming post).
Whenever CONTI (Carlos’s company) buys and “puts their stamp” on a property he throws an enormous tenant appreciation party to let everyone know that the new apartment property management appreciates them. On every property he hangs a sign that says “New Management, New Attitude.”
The tenants learn that the new attitude means 2 things: 1) They are going to clean 
things up, get rid of the riffraff, and not take any excuses for being a bad tenant. CONTI and Carlos Vaz are very strict with their rules and aren’t known for taking any B.S. Bad tenants soon learn they need to find a different place to mess up. Number 2) is the attitude of mutual respect. He lets them know if you respect his property he will respect them and give them a much nicer home than they’ve had previously at this complex. Good tenancy is rewarded in kind.
They’re going to be appreciated and treated with all the respect they deserve. His goal is to get them bragging to all their friends about how wonderful their apartment is and how it feels like a new home…thus inviting new potential tenants and sources of cash flow. “It goes beyond the numbers” Carlos said, “if you treat them like human beings who have wants and needs like any of us do, and reach out to the community to improve it overall, it’s just good business and in the end you’re highly rewarded.”
When I arrived in the parking lot of the building at noon, I saw balloons and a big Fire Truck with one fireman dressed up as Sparky the Dalmation, greeting children and offering close up looks at the fire engine. I heard music in the back ground and as I walked into the courtyard where Carlos was standing, greeted by the lively music of a hired DJ and the sweet smell of burgers on the grill. There was dancing, an inflatable bouncy playground and a tenant raffle which you would think many of them won the lottery when their ticket number was called.
All day long tenants were talking about how great this is. One lady had lived there for 14 years and said no one had ever done so much in so little time for them and she would see to it personally that Carlos had 100% occupancy.
Carlos also shared the story that the neighboring stripmall had just sent him a thank you letter for his work a few days prior because they had just leased up 2 retail spaces that had been vacant over a year…in the past week.
The 3 police officers standing around enjoying the party were equally impressed. Noting that since Carlos took over, calls to the property were down by 2/3!
I could go on and on about how fun the event was…and keep in mind this was in an apartment complex that prior to this I would never have walked through without myself or an armed escort. I felt as comfortable there as I would have in my own backyard (well, almost).
One of Carlos’s investors in that property was there with his wife. She looked at her husband and said: “Whereever Carlos invests…you’re putting your money there too.” It was a great feeling for him I know to have that big of an impact on his investors.
HOW MUCH DID THE ENTIRE PARTY COST?
At least 300 hamburgers, professionally cooked, a hired DJ, $500 in raffle prizes, and inflatable bouncy playground and party favors galore? Several thousand dollars. But to Carlos….he paid: ZERO.
At least it didn’t cost CONTI anything. The nice part about being someone who consistently closes deals is that your vendors will often pick up the tab for your parties because they want future work. So all Carlos had to do was come up with some ideas and show up.
It really was an amazing thing to watch…both from the business perspective and the human perspective. Carlos knows that these kind of parties create happy tenants that tell prospective tenants how happy they are. He knows the fire/police departments appreciate what he’s doing and local businesses as well. He understands that in this business, the old saying about catching flies with honey instead of vinegar really applies. But at the end of the day, it’s about people and value. If you give value to this world, in business or otherwise, it will come back to you several-fold.
That’s also what we’re doing with this site, “TheMultiFamilyMentor.com” If you haven’t already accepted our Free CD offer while it lasts, please feel free to click on the CD and accept it.
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