DJ Maldonado-Thomas Career Background
What is your biggest career achievement?
- It's hard to choose my BIGGEST achievement, but I would say completely filling our lease up of 120 additional units less than four months after opening them has been my biggest achievement thus far. The original goal set before me was to have the new phase fully lease in 12 months, and I (along with my team) was able to blow it out of the water! I personally lease over half the units and maintained a closing ratio of 55%. A large part of that success was due to a series of video tours I created and posted on Facebook that gained over 11,000 views and brought tons of traffic to our community.
What is your ultimate career goal within the rental housing industry?
- My ultimate career goal is to help create the greatest property management team there is. I have a personal passion for coaching, training and developing staff. I've been fortunate to have a direct hand in the training and developing of many of my company's new leasing specialists and seeing them grow and succeed makes me feel like a proud parent. I hope to one day be part of the core team of a property management company that helps shape the on-boarding and continuing training of all leasing professionals in that company. In turn, directly contributing to the success of the company and communities by having the best and most capable leasing professionals there are.
What's one rental housing trend you have your eye on?
- I believe the ever-increasing amount of options that are available to consumers to transfer money and make purchases is an important trend that has the potential to greatly impact the rental housing industry. Services such as Venmo, CashApp, Apple Pay, SnapCash, PayPal, mobile banking, and many others are available to consumers with a compatible smart device. Those consumers are becoming a larger and larger part of the rental housing industry and it is important to cater to their preferences. Accepting a larger variety of forms of payment will only increase the amount of prospects that can apply for housing. It can also lead to decreased delinquencies in rent payments by current tenants. Maybe most importantly, it adds a convenience for the busy consumer in an age where traditional forms of payment, likes checks and money orders, are becoming obsolete.