Avery Valdes Career Background
What is your biggest career achievement?
- My biggest career achievement has been the opportunity to work on the first Ltd. by Greystar property. Ltd. is more than just a brand, it is a new operating model designed to provide rents that are truly affordable. This savings is achieved in many ways, but the most apparent is the limited staffing model which resulted in a 100% self-guided tour operation.
My job became centered around ensuring prospects understood the Ltd. brand promise, and how to successfully complete a self-guided tour. We began pre-leasing on March 26th, 2023 and we quickly realized we needed supplemental material for prospects. Since the trend towards short videos is popular in today’s media, I took the initiative to write a handful of scripts explaining the touring process, and what made Ltd. different. I became the spokesperson for our community in these videos we created to share across a multitude of platforms such as YouTube, social media and our Engrain Touch Tour; we even embedded these videos directly into our self-guided tour platform. These videos have nearly 2,000 views to date, and immediately positively impacted leasing velocity. We received over 100 leases in our first month and reached 93% leased in under 5 months.
Given your past experiences, what event/ project or moment would you revisit and how would you go about it differently based on your current frame of mind?
- Now that renters are conducting more research online before ever stepping foot in a leasing office, and the number of communities they do tour is on average only 2, according to Zillow’s Consumer Housing Trends Report 2023, digital curb appeal has never been more important. More specifically, capturing unit level content, so that future residents can view the actual apartment home they would be renting. Providing detail like this is what can help our communities stay on a prospects short list. Knowing that, I would have partnered with a vendor to capture a walk-through video of each unit as it was delivered or trained the onsite team to. With those videos and pictures, we could host them not only on our website, but embed it in our sitemap as well, which feeds out to a myriad of platforms. This way no matter where our next residents are searching, they can view their new home. Doing this retroactively is not only time consuming for the team, but laborious in terms of record keeping and phased launching. In the future, we will capture these videos as units are delivered to not only help our renters, but our teams as well.
From your perspective, what is the industry lacking to support the modern renter and how do you plan to help supply that need?
- Affordable housing options are what our industry is lacking. Late fees and upfront fees are a hot topic in multifamily housing, so there's a large desire to ensure we are offering affordable living options.
Working in Houston, I learned about the PFC program that communities can partake in to offer reduced rents. When I began my career in marketing, my portfolio consisted of all the PFC assets in Houston. With that, I had the opportunity to educate qualified renters by building out a section on each property website explaining how the program worked. In addition, I helped create collateral and advertise our affordability program online. These were my first steps in trying to help renters learn about their affordable options.
Now, my work with the Ltd. brand has allowed me to take my previous learnings and apply a strong focus on affordable renting. What started as one deal in Houston is now a pipeline of Ltd. communities that will offer rents 10%-20% below market across the nation. I am thrilled to be working on the deals to come, so I can continue to play a role in renters finding their home at a price that is comfortable for them.