Spreading and Refining Sustainable Guidelines

Lots of discussion about the increasing use of sustainable guidelines and controversy over the refinement of these same guidelines. There’s also plenty of anecdotal comments about what the current real estate recession might mean for green building here in the US. Better and more complete coverage can be found at:

1. Jetson Green

2. Building Sustainability

3. Building Green

4. Green Building Law Update

So while others talk about spreading, revising, and postponing, here are two ways to keep track:

1. The new AIA white paper, “Local Leaders in Sustainability”

2. The original clearinghouse, Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency (DSIRE)

HT: Facilities Net

Support your local property manager

Working with an in-house management firm gives an asset manager a healthy appreciation for property managers and their daily obligations. Consider this partial list of weekly duties for a property manager with a stabilized property:

1. Schedule move ins
2. Ensure units are made ready
3. Schedule and supervise contractors
4. Weekly reports to supervisors and ownership
5. Supervise maintenance and leasing teams (typically 2-8 personnel) plus contractors (landscaping, security, utility)
6. Review and approve all invoices and leases
7. Manage resident satisfaction
8. Review and re-price units on a weekly basis
9. Recommend changes in leasing or marketing profile
10. Operate a multi-million dollar enterprise

In short, property managers supervise a small team, reprice and reposition their product on a regular basis, plan for capital expenditures, oversee sales to potential residents and outreach to neighboring businesses, provide entertainment and service to hundreds of residents, work with law enforcement, collect and dispense tens of thousands of dollars each week, and complete a thousand other jobs unknown to the owner.

Some management companies grant more or less responsibilities to managers than this list. Some want them to focus solely on leasing and resident satisfaction while others rely on the property manager as the mayor of a small town. Certainly that was the role I expected a manager at a 700-unit property in Georgia to fill. Managers respond to different challenges; some excel at lease-up properties but become so bored by stabilized properties that they let too much slide while others efficiently manage stabilized properties but overreact at the first sign of crime or occupancy slippage. Although most property managers have an AA or BA, they frequently start off as a leasing agent and work their way up, requiring an immense amount of training and on the job learning.

For all these tasks they are paid very little. Excluding benefits and bonuses, I think the highest paid manager in my portfolio makes about $59,000 for a 640-unit property and the lowest paid full-time manager is paid about $22,000 for a 170-unit property.

One of my midwest properties has turned into a tremendous time suck. It was poorly run for about 15 years by a local firm that gave it no time at all. We’ve uncovered astonishing failures of leasing, maintenance, and operations that would sound libelous if fully recounted. The arrogance and obliviousness of the prior management firm left us with 2 years of work to corret. This year it was my distinct ‘pleasure’ to introduce the manager to the joys of yoga. In that spirit, I recommend this article about the stresses of property mangement from The Cooperator: Stop, Drop and Breathe.

Title HT: Mr. James Garner

Praise for The Cooperator

I’ll be posting links to The Cooperator periodically. The Cooperator is a free publication from Yale-Robbins and targets managers and residents of condos and co-ops. Information includes guides to hiring building staff, insurance coverage for co-op boards and directors, and building retrofits. Information is well presented, provides additional resources, and is applicable to all types of multi-family housing types. The archives are free and I highly recommend it.

The Cooperator

Writing a Green Lease (BOMA Guide)

For non-residential readers, a new lease guide with language specific to green building incentives was released by BOMA (Building Owners and Managers Association), an international organization of landlords and commercial property managers BOMA’s Lease Guide, including green lease language. Much like leases from an apartment association, BOMA leases are the boilerplate upon which many landlords rely. When language likes this makes the industry boilerplate, the concepts have gone mainstream.

I no longer do enough commercial leasing to justify the $70 for this guide, but I found it interesting that the guide specifically identifies the contradictory incentives inherent in most sustainable efforts. Per BOMA:

“The BOMA Green Lease Guide offers an alternative to the typical triple net lease, where the landlord pays for capital improvements but the tenants, who pay the utility bills, reap the benefits of energy savings. The language included in this document gives owners the right as standard procedure to pass through to tenants any capital costs that result in lower total operating costs. The new green language ensures that maintaining, managing, reporting, commissioning and re-commissioning the building to conform to a green certification or rating program is included in the pass through costs.”

(Via FacilitiesNet.com.)

TIRE: Property romance, parts 1 and 2

Story 1:
Mysteriously, single women were leaving our property at an alarming rate. The property was well-lit, conveniently located, and freshly rehabbed. No incidents had recently occurred and rents were not escalating.

On a whim, the RPM drove to the property and happened to catch one of the departing residents on her way to the store. They had a pleasant conversation about the neighborhood, the rents, and the property, but when asked about the staff, the resident hesitated. Finally, she stated “I’m just not that interested in them.”

Confused, the regional asked for clarification.

The resident replied with that everyone-knows-this tone that strikes fear into RPMs and asset managers: “I’ve told [the manager] repeatedly that I’m not interested in dating [the service manager] and neither are the other women here.”

Job postings went up that afternoon.

Story 2:
The regional property manager and the asset manager are reviewing monthly numbers when an ‘urgent call’ is sent through.

Caller: “Do you have a sex policy at Hidden Pines of Oak Hill?”
RPM: “A what?”
Caller: “A harassment or romance policy for your employees?”
RPM: “Absolutely. All of our employees are required to take classes on it regularly.”
Caller: “Then you need to remind that [unprintable adjective] manager about it and tell her to stay away from my husband!”

More job postings.

This is Real Estate

Residential recycling programs

This is not something that has popped up on my radar because none of my markets have new recycling programs. The write up from Multi-Housing News doesn’t provide much information, but a quick Google search was able to find these additional resources:

Tailoring Recycling Programs to Reach Diverse Populations
(California Integrated Waste Management Board)

Setting up a Multi-Family or Apartment Building Recycling Program (document file from Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection)

Recycling Program for Apartment Buildings
(Cooperator)

Recycling: Multi-family Properties and Recycling for Apartments and Condominiums (28-page guide from Arlington County, Virginia)

New York City’s Apartment Building Recycling Initiative (nyc.gov)

Talking Trash: Launch a Multifamily Recycling Program
(Multifamily Executive)

Panelists Explain How to Properly Run a First-Class Recycling Program (Multi-Housing News)

Multifamily projects typically have a difficult time promoting recycling because of resident turnover (inconsistent resident education), inconvenience (inadequate space within the unit or the building), resident anonymity and incomplete participation, and inability of cities to provide public recycling haulage. There are some very good pointers in these links that discuss how to reach diverse populations, identify areas of probable success, and how to education on-site staff.

Befitting its industry focus, the article from MFE identifies the costs for a company like Post.

“Post pays the waste removal company Conex Recycling a $150 flat-rate fee per property per month. Regardless of the size of the property, that service fee covers pickup and disposal of the recyclables, as well as labor and tipping fees. Post saves an estimated $100 per ton recycled, or about $120,000 a year on landfill costs, explains Shannon Sibbitt, the development director of Atlanta-based Conex.”

(Via Multi-Housing News.)

TIRE: Good neighbors

The two residents were making small talk as they watched the football game on one’s large TV. The TV owner talked about how hard it was to keep a regular schedule with shift work, the visitor spoke about his recent weekend trip to jail. A few hours later they parted with expectations of watching games the next week.

The next day, the TV owner comes home to find he’s no longer a TV owner, nor does he own a VCR, and apparently someone either returned or stole his Blockbuster DVD.

Twenty minutes later, the PD roll up and arrest the neighbor. The neighbor needed a lawyer, but not nearly as bad as he needed curtains.

We filed for eviction that afternoon.

This is Real Estate.

Flex your power: Hotel Energy Efficiency

Good sustainability resources for multifamily were once so hard to find that I spent much of my time immersed in the hotel world. I still wander through it periodically to see what new developments might be co-opted for longer-term residents.

Flex your power, a project created by the California Public Utilities Commission, has a multi-page summary of efficiency and conservation practices. The ideas aren’t all new and they’re not particularly detailed, but as something to give your site and service managers, it works very well.

In the DC area, many of our best service managers came from the hotel world and were already familiar with these ideas when we started to introduce them to multifamily projects.

Conference: NeighborWorks “Greening Affordable Housing”

NeighborWorks is sponsoring a Training Institute in DC. Scheduled to run from December 8-12, 2008, here is the full course list.

The one that looks most interesting to me is this two-day course on greening affordable housing

Other areas of focus include:

Affordable Housing

Asset Management

Community and Neighborhood Revitalization

Community Building and Organizing

Community Economic Development

Construction and Production Management

Homeownership and Community Lending

Management and Leadership

Native American Community Development