Tori Morris Career Background
What is your biggest career achievement?
- In 2017 I was fortunate to join the lease-up team at Hub, a 750-unit mixed-use rental building in Brooklyn. Building a luxury skyscraper in the middle of an area such as downtown Brooklyn can often be met with resistance from the neighborhood. The success of the new building heavily relied on being able to fit into the renowned community. As the Assistant General Manager I was tasked with being the neighborhood liaison, leading the charge when it came to local business outreach. In order to balance the expectations of those who had lived in the area for 20+ years along with those who had just moved to Hub, it was paramount that we create sophisticated connections with local businesses while preserving the historical identity of the downtown Brooklyn community. I aided in setting up programming between residents and local artists like Urban Glass. We successfully created an exclusive partnership with cultural centers such as BAM and the Mark Morris dance group. Local restaurants like Belle Cheese and Katz’s Deli were featured and brought into the building as a way of introducing residents to small businesses. Today Hub still maintains a close relationship with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. I am so proud to have been at the forefront of a team that valued establishing a connection between the new community of Hub and the celebrated local neighborhood. These relationships will support the cultural legacy that is the downtown Brooklyn community for years to come.
What is your ultimate career goal within the rental housing industry?
- In my nearly 5 years working with Bozzuto I have been very fortunate to work under amazing managers who take care to foster the growth of their employees. It is this same value of development in education that my passion lies in fostering the growth of the next generation of leaders in the rental housing industry. While I love working as a Property Manager, my ultimate goal is to become part of a Learning and Development team. My desire is to see colleagues grow from the wisdom of lessons learned on-site and create training programs designed for aspirational development. I would love to create programing across all departments with a focus on cross-team training in daily activities. I strongly feel our industry has all the tools to set up a successful training program, but too often find it difficult for these training tools to be substantially effective due to lack organization and ease of access to information. Across all fields of the industry it is vital for individuals to be proficient in a bevy of information ranging from technical engineering to marketing to financial performance. I believe implementing a cross-training program would be beneficial for all, increasing productivity and expertise on all levels of business. It is this desire to work with the future leaders of the industry, encouraging them to succeed in their own right, that drives my passion to disseminate information and lessons learned from the collaborative rental housing community.
What's one rental housing trend you have your eye on?
- This past year, 2020, has brought about sweeping changes to how business is done in the rental housing industry. We have emerged into a new reality where leasing an apartment “sight unseen” has become common practice. Flight to suburban American has meant cross-country moves where virtual and app based leasing software have dominated the touring process. The personal touch that used to be so vital when closing a deal has now seemingly been replaced with the ease of an on-demand video or socially distant Zoom call. A new societal norm has been established that requires constant access to technology, needing something fast and needing something now, with no regard to the barriers of physical distance. Today the same mentality that allows us to order groceries with a few taps on a screen encourages us to use these same skills when looking for your next home. Prospects can now search for homes thousands of miles away, receiving a real feel for their future home with virtual tours. Time spent looking for a new home is now drastically cut down, instead of spending 8 hours in one day to see 4 different apartment homes they can now view 8 possible apartments from the comfort of their couch in under an hour thanks to virtual touring. For the management and leasing teams, this means an increase in customer outreach and productivity. The ability for leasing agents to pre-record tours of a rental unit and then send along to hundreds of prospects in a matter of minutes increases the chances of leasing an apartment while simultaneously banking time to complete other vital management tasks. While we become an industry that more heavily relies on the ease of technology to lease apartment homes, we in turn have gained the commodity of time while simultaneously creating a more efficient, customer friendly leasing process.