Birds of a Feather and Residents of Like Mind

Birds of a feather flock together. You’ve heard it before and face it, you know it’s true. Those of like minds always find a way to get together. Those that are surrounded by those that don’t have like minds eventually wonder off and surround themselves with those that do. We’ve made it half way through 2012 and let me tell you this statement is truer today than ever before.

We live in an era where we have more access to likeminded individuals than ever and guess what? We’re becoming more and more comfortable with flying off to where ever we must to meet up with our tribe.

This new generation is not hesitating to do what they have to do to get acclimated with those who assist them with feeling like they belong and even more so like they are living their best lives.

Have you considered this in your thoughts and plans regarding retaining your residents? What if you are losing residents simply because they lack of feeling of connection and belonging? You do realize that if this is the case nine times out of ten you will never know.

What if you put practices in place that allowed you to more closely gauge your residents’ level of satisfaction? What if you were able to take more control in the area of actually engaging them? Well I’m here to tell you that you can.

It frustrates me to no end to see so many property managers continue to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. In 2010 residents ranked “social activities” as #29 out of 30. I know personally that it wasn’t so much that residents don’t care about connecting socially it’s that they don’t care about managers hosting events that they may or may not hear about and expecting them to come out and have a blast with strangers.

We can’t throw away the idea of doing events all together we have to do it differently, better. We have to do it in a way that it is more effective.

Why are you hosting the particular events you’re hosting? Are you finding some grand idea in an on-line forum and just throwing out there hoping it will stick? Are you creating events based around your personal interests, likes and desires? Are you just doing what you did at your last property only to meet your quota?

Have you considered actually learning what it is that your residents want to do? You do realize that their schedules are all over the place and sometimes trying to get a large percentage of them to come together all at one time is practically impossible now a day? The new way to approach this is to help your residents create their own individual “events” on their own time and to support them and lead them in making this happens.

In a nut shell I’m saying that your residents need you to open the door and give them the OK to create the connections they seek when they seek them and with whom they would rather connect with. This takes a bit of time and focus but once you build this sense of community you will be relieved in knowing that social interaction is going on within your community constantly and not just at some random party that you decide to host.

Your like-minded residents want to meet each other. Be a property manager that cares to connect them. It will be a gift to them in more ways than you can imagine.

For more tips like this or to hire me to come out and assist you with creating communities within your community log onto www.residentkeepers.com