Paige Sauerwein Career Background

What is your biggest career achievement?

• My biggest career achievement has been setting up multiple pillar apartment communities within my market sector by launching them during the preleasing process. I am particularly proud of the speed at which I was able to successfully lease-up my last apartment community during a pandemic.
  
  When I started out at that lease-up I was hired as the assistant property manager. However, since leasing is one of my strengths, I also led the leasing team. At that community, we introduced 482 units in the city of Bentonville, AR. During my time on that project, my team was able to get the property preleased to 80% within 10 months of operating, and we did not have to offer any concessions or discounts. I was able to personally close 196 deals out of 225 tours I gave to prospective residents, on top of performing my general job duties as the assistant property manager. During this time, I gave back to the community with a particular focus on the leasing agents with whom I shared my knowledge. Since then, two teammates have been promoted to higher positions and are achieving amazing results.

What is your ultimate career goal within the rental housing industry? 

• I was fortunate to meet my current partner Luis through networking in the apartment industry. He is currently working as a maintenance supervisor. My ultimate career goal in the rental housing industry is to own and operate our own property management company together. I am fortunate in that my current company has proven to me that it is possible to have a mission-based organization within our industry, and I would like to have a specific mission in our own company one day. My partner wants to give people with more difficult backgrounds more chances to succeed in a job, where most employers would turn them away. Second chances are rare to come across, and he was fortunate to be given one when he first began his career. I would love to lead a company that empowers underrepresented community members to take on leadership roles within property management.
  
  While our current world is focused on diversifying the workforce, I would like to focus on the inclusion of these team members. I want all members of my team to feel that their opinions are welcome, valued, and important to our organization. We can only improve as a society when everyone can safely be included in conversations and ideas, whether they are in a minority racial group, identify as nonbinary, include themselves in the LGBTQ+ community, or are women wanting to serve in a male-dominated role. I am excited and willing to put in the work to lead that change so that the world can be a more accepting place for my children one day. I am hoping we can get this company open and launched within the next 10 years.

What's one rental housing trend you have your eye on? 

• While they are not new in the technology world, quick response (QR) codes have boomed in popularity this past year. Most restaurants in my area no longer use physical menus but have QR code stickers on the table. With smart devices now having a QR code reader integrated into their camera, they have never been simpler to use. I see the rental housing market utilizing QR codes in both the preleasing process and during a resident’s time living in the community.
  
  Many offices claim to be a “paperless community” but then waste a great deal of paper on brochures, floorplans, flyers, handouts, and more, thinking these items are necessary to close on a prospective tenant. However, I have been able to take the idea of a paperless community further by including a QR code on our staff business cards. These codes take residents to our website, where all the information that would be included on a brochure is already stored. Doing so not only helps the environment, but it sets the tone of use for our prospect portal and resident portal from the beginning of their resident lifecycle.
  
  I would love to take utilizing QR codes one step further and create stickers we can hide within residents’ homes to help them on commonly submitted maintenance requests. My market sector features many young professionals who are living on their own for the first time and do not have the experience to know how to quickly fix easy issues. For example, you could include a QR code sticker on the back of the breaker panel that explains how to reset the breaker if the outlets become overwhelmed. Including these could eliminate frustration for the resident, who would otherwise have to wait for the issue to be fixed, and could give our maintenance team more time to work on larger projects.