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alexis: welcome, everyone. my name's alexis hammond, and i'm on the marketingteam here at appfolio, and we are providers of web-based property management software. we also host these free educational eventsdesigned for the modern property management professional. today we've got a great presentation fromtrulia's housing economist ralph mclaughlin, who's going to be sharing some of his toptakeaways for 2015. but first off, i just want to start with afew logistics. on the right-hand side of your screen is thegotowebinar application, so please feel free

to ask questions. we have a chat box during our presentationtoday, and we'll try to answer them along the way if we can. one of the most common questions that we getis if we're recording this session, and the good news is that we are. so we'll send a follow-up email with a linkto the blog post later today or tomorrow, and we'll also be posting it on our facebookpages. so i just want to take a quick moment to tellyou a little bit about us. at appfolio, we offer a complete web-basedsolution.

and one of the reasons why we love presentingthese types of educational content is because our software really touches all parts of propertymanagement. our solution includes property managementand accounting, online rent collection, prospects and guest card tracking, marketing tools topost your vacancies. we also offer beautiful websites that arefully integrated with appfolio software, as well as resident screening, the ability toaccept online applications and online leases. we just recently released a mobile inspectionsfeature. most all these features are included in yourmonthly service to help you run a more successful business.

so at the end of this session, we'll ask youa little bit about your interest in learning about appfolio software. so if you don't already love your propertymanagement software, let us know and we will be in touch. so i'm just going to now pass it over to lauraat inman. take it away, laura. laura: great. well, i just want to welcome our audiencethis morning. and good afternoon to you, as well, for thoseof you on the east coast.

i'm always excited to be able to bring thistype of content with appfolio and with trulia rentals. we're seeing so much happen in the rentalmarket that it's just . . . it's amazing that we don't have more information going out foryou. so today's webinar is going to be jam packedwith some amazing sessions, and i'm really glad that you all are able to be here today,as usual. i wanted to take just a quick moment to introducechris brasher with trulia rentals. he heads up the marketing team, and will alsobe on the call today. so we just have a jam packed session, andi'm really looking forward to it.

so, chris, i want to go ahead and hand itover to you. chris: thank you, laura. my name is chris. i am from trulia, and i head up the marketingteam for the rentals division. and i'm going to have the opportunity to kindof tell you a little bit about trulia, and then introduce our speaker today. so trulia, we . . . now i think we have 16mobile apps across our entire portfolio. our company started about 10 years ago, butwe kind of broke into the rental space about four years ago, and have some of the bestleading rentals apps in the industry.

so what we like to say is best app, best renters,and best use of your time. so download our apps, go to our website, andpost your listings, and we are really excited to talk to you today about these top takeawaysfor 2015. to introduce our main speaker and i'm reallyjust the comedy warm-up, i guess you could say. but i have ralph mclaughlin, phd. very smart, intelligent guy here. he is the housing economist for trulia. former professor at san jose state university,director of the real estate development program,

and assistant professor of urban and regionalplanning. and your phd is in planning policy and designfrom uc irvine. how did you decide that? ralph: how did i decide that? well, there was someone there at uc irvinethat i wanted to work with, and he happened to be in that department. and the first thing he said when i showedup there was, "you know what phd stands for?" i said, "oh, doctor of philosophy?" he goes, "no, piled higher and deeper."

chris: well, great. we're excited to hear from you today, ralph. and i think you're going to kick us off here. ralph: great. well, before i go into some of the contenthere, i'd actually like to pass this back to alexis to start off with our first pollquestion. alexis: great. so i'm going to go ahead and launch this poll. and we're asking you guys, "what am i mostconcerned about within 2015?"

so go ahead and select. you've got a), how to capitalize on pricingtrends, b), how to adjust to changing demographics, c), how to deal with turnover and slowingmobility, or d), how to manage evolving leads. so we'll give it a minute, let those votescome in. okay. looks like we've got most of your answershere, so i'm going to close that, and let's take a look at the results. what do you think of those, ralph? ralph: we can't actually see them on our endhere, but could you just briefly talk about

what the results are? alexis: so let's see. we've got 34% to how to capitalize on pricingtrends, 17% said how to adjust to changing demographics, and 22% said how to deal withturnover, slowing mobility, 27% at how to manage evolving leads. ralph: oh, great. so pretty even distribution. so the good news is that we're going to talkabout each one of these in the upcoming presentation, so everyone will be able to get a bit of afill.

all right, so this is the breakdown for whatwe're going to talk about today. we're first going to talk about rental pricetrends. then we'll move into talking about changingin search behavior, followed by turnover and mobility. then we'll talk about evolving leads, andthen we'll summarize with top takeaways for 2015. chris: and ralph, i actually have a questionbefore you begin here. as we were researching this topic, one thingi was really curious about is how long will these price trends continue to last?

we had spoken about, what is it, maybe a two-year,three-year kind of lift in price trends, and we're going to figure out why that is. but how long are these things going to last? ralph: well, it's been an unprecedented runas far as market is, the rental market is concerned. but before i present some of the researchthat we've done here at trulia, i'd actually like to pass it off back to alexis to pollthe audience to see what their opinions are about what will happen in 2014, 2015 and thenwe can match that up with what our prediction. alexis: great, thanks.

and, as you said, in your opinion, what doyou envision happening in 2015? so the answer options are rents continue torise to record-breaking levels, or rents increase slightly, but flatten towards the end of 2015,or rents flatten and possibly decrease in certain metros, or rents begin to drop ashome buying picks up again. so go ahead and log your answers for that. looks like we've got most of your responses. i'm going to close that. and let's take a look at the results. so we've got 21% for rents continue to riseto record-breaking levels, 48% said rents

increase slightly but flatten towards theend of 2015, so that's obviously the top answer, 16% for rents flatten and possibly decreasein certain metros, and 14% for rents begin to drop as home buying picks up again. well, that's a very interesting result there,and i am a big fan of the wisdom of crowds. and in fact, answer b is something that webelieve here will happen coming into 2015 based on research that we've done over thepast year. but, that said, the future is uncertain, andany one of these could be a possibility. but we think the most likely possibility isthat rents will increase slightly, but begin to flatten out at the end of the year.

and of course, i have some graphs here thatwill explain why we think that's the case. before i get into that, i just want to summarizewhat's happened year-over-year for . . . of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in theus. the united states as a whole has seen a 6.2%year-over-year increase across the board, which is a very solid growth number as faras rents are concerned. but many markets outpace that by over twicethe rate of year-over-year growth. in fact, many of those markets are actuallyout here in the west, particularly here in the bay area. but they're also spread out around the restof the country, but primarily on the coasts.

so places like charleston and sarasota, florida,as well as long island and fort myers-cape coral, florida have also experienced prettystrong growth. but what this graph doesn't say, doesn't tellyou, is anything about affordability, about what pressures renters are facing when itcomes to paying rent. and this next slide here better exemplifiesthat. and the most expensive for renters is miami,florida, where 61% of wages go, on average, to rent. but one of the important takeaways from thisslide is that cities can make this list for a couple reasons.

either they have high rents, or low wages,or a combination of both. and in fact, for places like miami, los angeles,riverside, and chicago, they're on the list not necessarily because they have high rents,but primarily because their wages are relatively low. but two of the areas that do make the listare because of high rents, and that's namely new york and san francisco. but the common theme here is that the mostexpensive areas tend to be in coastal markets, with the exception of chicago. although chicago tends to act like a coastalmarket.

it's on a lake. it's a big city. it's got a lot of amenities. so this is a very clear pattern that we'reseeing. but let's get into some of the explanationsof why rents are on the rise. and we really posit three reasons why that'sthe case. increases in income, especially amongst millennials. millennials are starting to get jobs again. they're not employed as much as they werepre-recession, but the 37% back to normal

employment, and that's up from 25% a yearago. so we are seeing pretty strong growth in employmentamongst millennials. increases in households. millennials are starting to move out of theirparents' basements. and that is going to continue to be a keycharacteristic of the housing market recovery in general, but also going to be importantfor the rental market. and as i'll show, the percent living withparents starting to decrease. and, as millennials are moving out but notbuying homes yet. one of the reasons why they're not buyinghomes is that down payments are hard to come

by, especially in some of those expensivemarkets that i talked about earlier. it's difficult for millennials to save upfor a down payment. and so the alternative option is to go forlow-down payment mortgage, but a low-down payment mortgage makes buying a home morecostly than having the standard 20% down. we'll talk a little bit about that in a minute. so this is just a graph here showing thatunemployment, at least amongst the major housing market group here, is declining across theboard, at least for 25- to 54-year-olds. but the unemployment rate is still much higherfor millennials, for 25- to 34-year-olds, than it is for 35- to 54-year-olds.

but we do see an increasing employment rateamongst this age group. and that's going to be key to getting peopleout of their parents' basements. but as we see here, we are at an all-timehigh, at least over the last 20 years, i should say, of 18- to 34-year-olds living with parents. and we're starting to see that decrease alittle bit, and we expect this to continue into 2015. millennials are not buying homes at the ratethat they used to. in fact, if you compare millennials to thesame age cohort over the last 20 years, it is exceptionally low.

chris: i have a question for you, ralph, here. you know, when we spoke, there's also, we'rereleasing reports that millennials, they're also the largest group, even though we seethis home ownership rate is actually decreasing. can you explain a little bit about that? ralph: that's right. so just for the housing market in general,because home ownership rate is low amongst millennials, isn't any reason to panic. they do represent a very, very large group. so even though the home ownership rate islow, the fact that there are so many of them

means that people are still buying homes. there's still a significant amount of homebuyers amongst this age group. we just released our housing predictions for2015 report yesterday, and in that report, we released the results of a survey we conductedabout a month ago. and one of the . . . well, two of the leadingfactors that renters find when it comes to buying a home is saving enough for a downpayment, and that's the top graph here, and the other is not having a stable job, whichis towards the bottom of the screen. but by far, the biggest obstacle that rentersare facing to home ownership is saving enough for a down payment.

so if you don't have enough for a standarddown payment, well, what's your option? you can put less than 20% down and pay privatemortgage insurance, and at the extreme end, you can go through an fha loan, 3.5% down. and if you compare the relative cost of buyingversus renting amongst these different mortgage types, low-down payment loans make it increasinglyexpensive to own. now, that said, in our latest rent versusbuying report that we released in october, buying is still cheaper than renting, especiallyfor the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the us. but our assumption is that someone can put20% down, they itemize tax deductions, and

they stay in their home for about seven years. but if we kind of change our assumptions hereto better reflect millennials, so we assume they can only put 3.5% down, they don't itemizetax deductions, and these restless millennials move frequently, or more frequently, everyfive years, we actually find that renting becomes less cheap than buying in 20 of thelargest metro areas. so markets on the coast become increasinglymore expensive to buy compared to renting. and some of this difference is due to thefact that fha loans and low-down payment loans in the long run make it more expensive forpeople to buy. and this next chart here shows our baselineassumption.

as you can see in every market in the countryof the 100 largest markets, it is cheaper to buy than to rent. but if we change that assumption and lookat low-down payment loans, we can see many markets, especially on the west and east coast,become more expensive to buy than to rent. and this is one of the reasons why we're seeingstrong growth in rental prices. now, flipping to the supply side, we, at leastyear to date, 2014, are seeing that 34% of new home starts are multi-family units. and that is on track to be the highest sharesince 1973. so over 30 . . . well, 40 years now, is thehighest proportion that we've seen.

of that very high proportion of multi-familyunits, 93% of these multi-unit homes are intended for rent, not for sale. and that is on track to be the highest onrecord. and this is just a graph here that shows thistrend. so . . . chris: let me ask you . . . i'm going to askyou question. when we went ahead and polled some of ourcustomers to find out what they thought this would be for them, and is this the time tobe conservative? ralph: well, according to donald davidoff,he's president of d2 demand solutions, he

thinks increasingly so. now, property managers, this is his quotehere, property managers are pressed to achieve higher rental growth than the historical average. but it's been a multi-year run, so i'm, ordavid is, seeing some property managers being conservative on their 2015 budgets, wonderinghow long this will really last. and he says watch new construction in yourarea for pricing trends, which is important. as i just mentioned before, there are a recordnumber of rental units coming onto the market across the country. he suggests that you invest in technologyand process improvements.

and to monitor supply-rich metros where over-supplyis driving increased vacancies. chris: so what does this all mean? you've mentioned that rental prices have beenincreasing in these certain metros, that millennials is that prime target market for this audiencehere. what does this mean for their business in2015? ralph: well, the good news about big increasein supply is that it does mean the opportunity in rental market is growing. so even though new supplies are coming ontothe market, which would suggest prices will moderate, it does mean that there's goingto be a lot more new supply for property managers

to work with, such as [inaudible 00:19:39]. chris: so you're saying no one should selltheir business right now. ralph: no one should sell their business. chris: go out . . . ralph: if your business is managing properties,and we have record numbers of new properties coming onto the market, you would be a foolto get out of your business. i'll say that. on top of that, demand for rentals is goingto continue to be solid. millennials are getting jobs.

they are moving out of their parent's basementsand forming new households, but they aren't quite buying yet. again, like i mentioned, new supply is increasing. there's the largest rental proportion of multi-familyunits in years. and because of these two factors, there islikely to be a . . . continue to be a robust opportunity for property investment and management. chris: i know that a lot of our audience memberstoday are actually . . . you know, they work very closely with investors. they manage the properties they buy, and thiswill be very useful for them.

i understand that a lot of this, that theircustomers that they pitch to will also need to maybe change. and working with roommate situations withmillennials becomes more important as people move out onto their own. so let's kind of change gears here a littlebit. how are renters finding their property changing? and i'll preface this question with, i remember. . . you know, i've been in the industry maybe four or five years now, and i rememberlooking at, like, january 2011, i think it was, when i was screaming in excitement tosee that january, we had 25% mobile traffic.

twenty-five percent mobile traffic. that was incredible. because the previous december, it was, like,14 or 15. so what's happened since then? what's going on? why is this important for 2015? ralph: well, i've got several slides to showyou why it's important. and i've got two sources of data here, onewhat google says, and one from our end. so 57% of users searching for properties withintheir current city.

and that should come as no surprise. most people move close. but that still means 43% are looking outsideof their current market, their current city, for a place to live. but that statistic doesn't tell you anythingabout the average distance of where people are looking. and in fact, according to google data, theaverage user searches for real estate at a maximum of 338 miles away from where theyare located. and some interesting trends, actually, outof that google data, which shows that location,

particularly temperature, for whatever reason,seems to affect the user propensity to move away from home, or at least look for placesoutside of their current area. and so we see more northerly cities, and citiesparticularly in the northeast, where users are looking quite far out of their own areato look for property. but also, there seems to be a coastal bifurcationagain, just like there was in the other data i presented. people on the coast tend to look farther tofind a place than people who are in the interior part of the country, central part of the country. chris: we'll come to this later again, buti think you also mentioned one of those reasons

is that those coastal cities are most expensive. so it's an affordability issue, which i thinkwe'll be referencing later. ralph: it could absolutely be an affordabilityissue particularly san francisco, los angeles the boston/new york/washington corridor. it's incredibly expensive. that could force people to consider relocating,and so therefore their searches go much further out than other parts of the country. so let's get into a little bit of the dataabout your audience, and the data that we have here at trulia.

what you may or may not find surprising isthat 83% of millennials sleep with their iphone. i know many of us probably sleep with theirphone close by, but this is the new normal for the millennials audience. they are attached to their mobile devices. and i've got a couple statistics here justto kind of exemplify that, at least from our end here at trulia. this is from our annual quarterly report toinvestors. so year over year, visits to trulia are upfrom 40.6 million to 55 million. it sounds like pretty impressive growth.

i think it's about 18% or so. but if we look at the growth on mobile, onmobile devices, so people using our mobile app to find properties, that has grown almostby 100%. about 90% growth. mobile traffic over the last year at truliahas gone from about 15.8 million to 29.9 million a week of visitors, which is just amazing,amazing growth, and really exemplifies the point that the new generation of home searchesare using their mobile devices. and they're often using their mobile deviceswhile they are doing a tour. while they are looking at a house, they aresearching for other properties.

and in fact, you mentioned this the otherday, chris, and i experienced it this morning on the train ride into san francisco here,many users, while they're on mass transit, play with their phone, and both of us independentlysaw people using the trulia mobile app, looking for properties while they're crammed ontothe subway. so certainly an interesting trend that we'realso seeing on the ground level here in our day to day experiences. again, we have an incredibly popular mobileapp that many people are using called trulia mobile. it is a beautiful-looking app that isn't justbeauty.

it's also got a lot of brains. it's easy to use. it looks nice, and it's very informative. so for those of you who don't have it, i wouldsuggest that you do check it, you check it out. chris: and so you talked about changing behaviors. we've talked about google search data. we asked another customer, of course, whatthey felt, what changes they've had to make because of these changes that have been happening.

ralph: right. and we talked to chin pathak, who's the chiefmarketing officer at marketplace homes, and he's got a great quote that i think reallymeshes what we just talked about. and he said that we realize that millennialswant things to be simple, fast, efficient, and now, and i would say even not just now. they wanted things yesterday. they're the instant generation. and he also believes that outdated marketingtactics of the '90s are no longer efficiently working to get in front of the new age consumers.

and so his suggestions were to help your businesssucceed is to create an in-house communications department to field phone calls and make outboundcalls, to develop a home concierge service to help residents get accustomed to theirhome and neighborhood, which i thought was a great idea. residents can phone in to their conciergein their community and get information about what's in the area, or what needs they aretrying to fulfill. and he also moved the leasing process online,which i think is key. you know, millennials don't want to go intooffices and sign paperwork. they want to be able to do everything online.

and increasingly, they want to be able todo it from home. chris: i think the marketplace has seen alot of successful from this. so the question how i end each section is,what does all that mean for their business? don't forget the neighborhood. take advantage of online advertising, butdon't overlook local marketing. and we're going to talk a little bit aboutthat in the next series of slides, about why that's important. remember that curb appeal is just as importantas web appeal. again, you can have a great looking websiteor crisp-looking web presence, but the curb

appeal of a community is just as important. you do want to make consumers feel at home. many of them, as i mentioned before, are movingout of their parents' basements, and they may be new to renting, or new to the area,or both. so catering to their needs and making themfeel at home is very important. chris: so we're going to talk more about thatsection right now. but you practice mobility? so at what rate and where are people moving? why is mobility important for property managers?

ralph: well, good question. well, as property managers, you are tryingto get butts in the door, right? and so you need to know where people are movingand at what rate. so this next graph that i'm going to showyou is a general trend for all demographics. and the bad news is that mobility is fallingaggregately. you see mobility since 2001 fall from 14%down to around 12%, and that's the percent of persons who have moved over the past year. but it's not all doom and gloom. if we look at millennials compared to allages, while their mobility has declined somewhat,

it still remains on the order of twice themobility of the general population. even through the great recession and up tothis year, mobility is much higher for millennials than it was for other age groups. and, in fact, the mobility amongst rentersfor millennials is very high. i think that's on the order of 38%. at least that was most recently as 2012. chris: i think that was kind of the generalcensus data. maybe we could assume, if we probably cutthe data another way, that the millennial group may be moving higher than 38% each year,so . . . just based on their moving patterns,

and roommates, and school, and jobs, so . . . ralph: it could be. and there's obvious aggregation issues here. you know, i could split this up a milliondifferent ways and show for different counties and different metropolitan areas, but thatmight lull everyone to sleep. and just a bit of caveat . . . just a caveatabout what i mentioned earlier about fool to leave the property management business. that's, again, talking about the us as a whole. obviously there are markets where things buckthe trend, and you want to be concerned about.

you want to be cognizant about that. so these are kind of big picture . . . thisis a big picture story of what's going on. even better news is that the census asks peopleabout what their main reason for moving is. and one of the reasons is that people moveout to buy a home because they don't want the good news is, that proportion of peoplehas decreased steadily since 2001. it went from about 1.5% of all moves downto about half a percent. so we see quite a different trajectory ofpeople moving to . . . for reasons other than wanting to buy a home, which is good for propertymanagers. chris: and you can say that given the cheaperhousing is one of the . . . has actually increased,

probably the only one in here that has increasedsince 2001. and that's a good point, chris, and it playsvery well into those large search markets that we're seeing in . . . at least on thecoasts, from san francisco and la to new york, boston, and washington, dc. some people are moving at higher rates tofind less expensive housing. now, if we look at the mobility rate by thetype of move, the proportion of people moving within counties is staying relatively flatsince 2001, but the proportion moving between counties has dropped. so again, that is to help emphasize that localis still very, very important.

even though search radius of where peopleare looking for properties has grown, the highest proportion of people moving is withincounties. now, the next slide here is just showing whatareas have seen the largest growth in the share of millennials. and there is, again, some more trends herewith some of the other slides that i presented. millennials are at least tending to be increasinglyin the sun belt metropolitan areas, with places like denver, colorado springs, and peabodywould be the exception, as well as seattle. but we are seeing somewhat of a polarizationto these areas with respect to population growth amongst millennials.

chris: is it "pea-buddy" or "pea-body"? ralph: i've had people debate this with me. i do not know. it very well could be . . . chris: "pea-buddy." ralph: "pea-buddy," yeah. "pea-buddy." i being a californian, my pronunciation ofmarkets outside of here is very low. chris: well, again, we asked another customerwhat she thought about some of these stats,

and some of these mobility data here, andwe'd like to find out what kind of . . . what she said. ralph: so we talked to mary gwyn, who is thepresident of apartment dynamics. and she said that at least during 2014, they'veseen move-outs decrease by 3% and move-ins increase by 6%, which has resulted in a higheroverall occupancy. and that has led to decreased hard and softcosts, both higher occupancy and income, and higher renewal rates with demand. which is good news. and although she says apartment turnover ismuch higher than the census everyone stats,

so to speak, the census that covers everybody,they still have to spend a lot of time on moving new residents in. and she is, however, starting to see vacanciesincrease slightly in certain darling markets, we can talk a little bit about later, butprimarily it is washington, dc. in fact, sam zell, the ceo of . . . i'm notsure if he's the ceo anymore. but anyways, the guy who started equity residential,one of the biggest reits in the united states, recently said one of the reasons that . . . oneof the major markets that took a hit was washington, dc, and that was primarily because of largeincreases in supply in that market. chris: so what does this mean for our audience'sbusiness?

ralph: so what does this mean for your business? it means that with a smaller percent of americansmoving, you may need to turn your focus on maintaining your current residents. although, on the other hand, if rent increasesoutpace income growth, you could see turnover increase, especially if people are lookingfor cheaper housing. lower mobility, however, could create difficultiesfilling vacancies, which could be an obstacle for property managers going into 2015. although the mobility amongst millennialsis much higher, and so catering to their needs with the use of technology and amenities couldbe key to filling vacancies.

the good news is, people moving to buy ratherthan rent is down over the last 13 years or so. that's good news for property managers. although it could increase in the future asmillennials enter the housing market and eventually save up for their down payment. and last, the proportion of within countymoves is relatively stable, but the proportion of between county moves has declined. so posting vacancies or listings in your localvenues may yield more success than outside the market.

but you don't want to ignore national listingservices, because we do still see people moving between counties outside your existing market. so, alexis, i'd just like to hand this offto you a bit to conduct another poll. alexis: yeah, great. so i'm going to launch this one. and the question is, what type of lead ismost valuable to you? answers are a), website or ils lead, b), craigslist,c), phone call, or d), drive-by. so go ahead and log your answer for those. this'll be an interesting one.

votes are coming in. i think we've got most of you guys. i'm going to close this one and take a lookat the results. oh, so we've got phone call leading by 39%,trailed by website or ils lead with 27%, craigslist 20%, and drive-by 14%. ralph: wow, that is a very interesting finding. despite the increases in technology, gettingpeople on the phone still is one of the most important factors. that's very interesting to hear.

now, i've been a bit of a talking head herethe last half an hour or so, so i'd actually like to turn the tables a bit and ask chrissome questions. chris has been studying leads here for thepast several months, and has dug pretty deep into determining what constitutes a good lead. so chris, can you talk about what you foundthe best lead to be? chris: thanks, ralph. i'm really surprised by the poll question,as well, given drive-bys. you know, i'm not a property manager, buti thought drive-bys would have been higher. they are what we call butts in the door.

but with demand for apartments so high propertymanagers don't want to spend time with leads that don't convert. i think that's a basic statement. limited supply creates limited time, and youreally need to fill that vacancy with the right person. so we're going to go through and kind of . . . wecall, it's a numbers game. i like to say you don't have to kiss a lotof frogs in order to close a lead. but leads that schedule an appointment arethree times more likely to convert into paying tenants or residents.

that is what's key here. we know from basic research that we've donethat 6% of all leads convert. we actually did a study of over 77,000 leads,and that 18% of all those that scheduled appointments converted. now, that is where we get that three timesmore likely to convert. so we like to say it's all about the appointment. if you are . . . have a vacancy you reallywant to spend time on getting appointments scheduled. and as we've done this research, we've foundthat many landlords, many property managers,

miss the opportunity to schedule appointmentswith residents. we know that a lot of calls are missed, alot of web or email leads are sent and not followed up with. and so we'd like to get maybe some recommendations. ralph: yeah, so, chris, if you were to summarizewhat three characteristics of a good lead are, what would they be? chris: great. you know, you could say i stole this fromsomebody. mary herrold from jvn realty has a great methodologyto consider what is a good lead.

number one is, is the lead informed? and each of these three things, by the way,you can gather from a drive-by, phone call, website, and craigslist lead. you know, look into the emails, look intothe guest card information to find out, is this a good lead? so number one, informed. how did they find you? what posting did they look at? why are they interested?

you know, they've kind of qualified themselves. they've visited several different websites. i'd like to say they probably looked throughyour photos to find out what amenities are already there. so they're coming already with informationwilling and committed to going to the next step. are they connected? did someone refer them? are they already familiar with the neighborhood?

do they have someone that lives nearby? you know, a connected prospect has alreadybeen socially influenced to look at your property. and the third one, are they confirmed? so did you schedule a specific time? when a prospect calls and is willing to stopby, they've obviously confirmed their interest, they're informed, and you're hoping they'reconnected, but you really need to follow up with your leads to find out those first two,and then follow up with the third. and that's where we want to help everyonetoday. our main suggestion here about how leads arechanging, and how it's so much more important,

with limited supply, to get butts in the dooror have scheduled an appointment, is to prepare a call script. you know, a stat from lts is 77% of peoplethat lease have called you first. ralph: wow. that's pretty interesting. so despite the use of email and texting, peopleare still using the phone. chris: they are still using the phone. they may have already sent you an email lead. they might have already sent something oncraigslist.

i know when i've rented, i usually do both,right? so we'd like to help you with the call scripthere to find out if they are informed, connected, and confirmed. so, number one, be proud of your property. i don't know, have you ever listened, ralph,to a recording of some of these calls that happen between a property manager and a renter? ralph: i actually have not had the pleasure. what's the gist, then? what have you found?

chris: you know, it's a very quick conversation,unfortunately. they last less than 45 seconds as an averagecall. ralph: oh, wow. chris: because usually it is, "hey, what'sthe price here? do you have this available? no? all right, goodbye." and then that's why we want to talk aboutthis. so be proud of your company.

answer the phone like you are the happiestperson in the world. you know, "good afternoon," you know, "i'mfrom this company or this apartments. this is chris. how can i help you?" next, get their name and use it. i think this is cavi's principle of . . . sorry,carnegie's principle about using people's name. "sure, i can help you with that." you know, "where did you learn about the property?"

you know, use their name through the conversation. i realize i put "john" and "john" here, buti meant they're two different people. build upon their interest. "great. i know what unit you're talking about." you know, "why are you interested in thatunit? have you been to visit the property before?" you know, i'm finding out why they're . . . howthey already found out about the property in the second question.

now i'm finding out how connected they are. have they visited the property? why? is there family? or have they driven by before? so, once you've solved their concern, invitethem to come by the property. you know, "looks like this property mightwork well for you." be encouraging. "i'll be available at 5:00 today to show theunit.

will that work for you?" now, what i actually realized is that a lotof our audience members are off-site property managers, fee managers, they . . . or theydo have an on-site office, and it's a much larger community. so two tips to cover here that is not addressedis, one, we do need to be objective about our screening techniques. one tip that we like, of course, for propertymanagers, is when do you find out if people are qualified, credit and income range? but as a landlord or an off-site propertymanager, you may need to do those screening

questions upfront to find out if they're qualifiedfor the property. so, for example, you could say "we take creditover 500 . . . " you know, "over 600. income must be three times rent," which inthis case needs to be $10,000, or $5,000 a month, however the price is. "will you be able to meet that criteria?" if you've done these four things and donean objective screen, schedule that appointment. invite them to come by the property. and try to batch those appointments together. so that is kind of a wrapping up of our entirewebinar here.

so let's kind of review: what are these toptakeaways that we've talked about today, ralph? ralph: all right. so, first and foremost, monitor local pricingtrends. don't be surprised if your rental price trendsflatten out in 2015. and one of the primary reasons for that isthat the oncoming rental supply is largest on record. and again, like i mentioned before, theseare aggregate numbers for the us, and certain markets may move in directions that are differentfrom the country as a whole, so make sure you monitor both the local pricing trendsand the local supply trends.

and that will help you make a determinationof what your advantage will be in your local market. you also want to take advantage of onlineadvertising as we increasingly move into a digital web and online-based world. but don't overlook local marketing. people still move predominantly within counties,at least at rates much higher than between counties. mobility amongst millennials is higher, socatering to their needs for technology and amenities could be key to filling vacancies.

and last, but certainly not least, you shoulddefinitely take into account the recommendations that chris just presented. preparing a call script to help you optimizeeach lead could be a very big advantage when dealing with potential residents. although millennials are increasingly usingtheir mobile devices, they still use their phone. people still like to have that voice to voiceinteraction. chris: i think what we're saying here is asmobile traffic increases, leads are obviously increasing, but even phone calls, of course,are becoming more important.

ralph: yeah. on those mobile devices, most of them alsoact as phones, believe it or not. chris: you know, i used to work for verizon,and this is a funny story real quick, is that i used to always say, "you know what? your phone is really a phone. it's not a camera." you know, now it's the other way around. you know, you kind of want to say it's just. . . it's really an ipod or an internet device. and then oh, by the way, it does phone callsif you ever need to make a call.

so we have a couple of questions that havecome in during this session here that i'll go ahead and kind of address to you, ralph,if i may. you know, what areas of the country -- let'ssee, it comes from jennifer here -- will be most impacted by the oncoming supply? ralph: so, like i hinted at before, washington,dc particularly has been impacted a lot by new supply, as well as the rest of that boston,new york, washington corridor. that doesn't mean that the effects of newsupply is going to be the same as in washington, dc, but there may be more opportunity there. on this side of the country, here in san francisco,at least, we are also experiencing a boom

in supply. but conversely to dc, that boom in supplyis still quite a bit lower than the rate at which demand has increased over the past severalyears. but i can look out our window now here insan francisco and see at least a half dozen cranes within a half mile of new buildingsgoing up, and some of those are new apartments. chris: another question that came up justas you were speaking about this, but what . . . is there a certain stat that peopleshould look at to know about these price trends? ralph: so looking at median rental pricesdoes help. but you'll also want to look at things likejob growth and unemployment growth, especially

amongst millennials. those are very key indicators about what directionthe rental market might move. chris: and what might be an advantage forsomeone to watch those stats as a . . . maybe they're a fee manager, or they run a smallermanagement company maybe they only manage 500, maybe 100, 200 units. you know, why would watching those stats beable to help them if they're in such a localized market? ralph: well, they'll be able to help you budget. just like one of our clients had mentionedearlier, the future is uncertain, but the

more that you can monitor local conditionsin your area, the better you can predict what your budget will be in the oncoming years. and in fact, i found . . . read an interestingthing this morning, and i can't remember who it was attributed to, but the person said,"in the past, real estate has all been about location, location, location. but now it's all about data, data, data." chris: that's a great quote. that's a great quote. where could someone potentially be able tomonitor . . . i know you're kind of inundated

with data every day, but where could a consumeror a property manager watch to find out more about this information? ralph: well, here at trulia, we actually haveongoing month to month price and rent monitors that we release for the hundred largest metropolitanareas in the country. we also do a rent versus buy calculator twicea year, and we also monitor, twice a year, the job growth and unemployment rates . . . actually,we put the inverse of that, which is employment rates amongst different demographics. so if you go to www.trulia.com/trends, youcan see the latest research reports that we've released on these topics.

alexis, we're going to pass it back to you. i don't see other questions we haven't kindof addressed during the webinar, but we still, of course, also want to thank appfolio andinman for hosting this webinar with us today. alexis: awesome. thank you so much, chris. and i want to thank laura, as well, and ofcourse ralph. this was a really informative presentation. and so we do want to be thoughtful of everyone'stime, so if we didn't get to any of your questions, i think we covered most, we'll put them inthe q&a section of the blog post.

and i just want to say, when signing off,you'll be asked just a few questions. we always love to get your feedback on thewebinars, and anything else we can learn from you is always valuable, helps us make thewebinars bigger and better for the future. and like i mentioned before, if you're notalready in love with your current property management software, now's a great time toraise your hand and let us tell you a little bit more about how appfolio can help you runa better business. so thanks so much, everyone, and i hope youall have a great day.