Corporate needs you to spot the differences...

On curb appeal:

So we took on a maintenance contract for a small (~20 unit) apartment building.

"Just make sure someone is there to answer the phones from 5pm to 9pm, because that's when all the complaints come in," the client said.

We always make sure someone is there to answer the phone, but this request stuck with me, primarily because she was absolutely right.

On the day we posted our contact information on the tenant's doors, we got ~20 complaints and maintenance requests.

Some of them were valid (the owners were way behind on maintenance calls, it happens, that's why we're here), but the majority of the calls were vague complaints about "upkeep". We got current on all the maintenance requests. We cleaned the laundry room daily, emptied the trash, and kept the grounds spotless. The paint was fresh, all the utilities functioned fine, I even installed a wasp killer.

And still the calls came in.

"The neighbors are noisy."

"The neighbors are nosy."

"My bathroom door makes noise when I slam it."

"The air is too dry..."

You get the idea.

Not actual complaints, just vaguely random bitching from unhappy tenants.

Unhappy tenants make for unhappy managers and investors, I've found.

Unhappy tenants are hard on their units, hard on their hardware, and hard on their maintenance techs.

That costs money.

Unhappy tenants move out when their lease is up, and that costs money too.

Every time I passed the mud mound guarding the entrance to the building, I felt a little sad for the tenants who had to pass that big pile of ugly every time they came home from a long day at work.

And then it hit me.

Not the mud mound.

The problem.

Tenants were working all day to pay for their apartments, and when they got home from a long day at work the mud mound was the first thing they saw.

So. Time to solve the problem.

The picture below was our solution.

If you guessed that our vague complaint calls fell off completely, you guessed right.

Folks, curb appeal matters.

It shows the world that you care about your property and the people who pay you to live there. If you show them that you don't care, then they'll come to realize that you don't care. Uncaring landlords aren't consistently profitable, and that's a scientific fact.

You don't need high-maintenance landscaping, but you need to let your customers know that you care about them.

Curb appeal is a very, very easy way to accomplish that.