The Future of Multifamily: An Insider’s View with RealPage Industry Principals

As part of our Multifamily Women® Summit, we share time with innovative brands as part of our "Meet the Sponsors" series that showcases those brands that are supporting the platform to advance technology, innovation, leadership, and investments.

On today's episode, host Carrie Antrim talked with Krista Hurley and Talisa Dever who are both seasoned Industry Principals at RealPage. When it comes to leveraging technology to drive efficiencies and increase ROI, these women are the go-to authority. They have been instrumental in shaping innovative strategies that have not just disrupted but transformed the way we think about property management and resident engagement.

Krista and Talisa discuss how, according to a recent survey, two-thirds of multifamily renters are satisfied with their current housing situation because it provides them with financial freedom. This indicates that a majority of renters who choose to live in apartments are content with their decision to rent rather than buy a property. Renting offers these individuals the flexibility to allocate their money towards other expenses or investments, giving them more control over their finances.

These insights are invaluable for RealPage as they delve into the minds of their customers and gain a deeper understanding of the industry's direction. By combining multifamily market intelligence with a customer-centric approach and addressing pain points, RealPage can identify areas where technology can bridge gaps and assist its customers.

RealPage places great emphasis on excellence, character, ownership, and teamwork as their core values and guiding principles. These four values serve as the foundation of the company's identity. These values have evolved over time and continue to be the fundamental principles that RealPage strives to uphold. They not only guide the company internally but also shape their interactions with clients and their engagement in the industry. These values are the most crucial aspect of RealPage's culture.

Timestamps:
[00:01:32] RealPage's commitment to innovation.
[00:04:17] Renting as an investment.
[00:07:22] The launch of DemandX platform.
[00:11:24] Using technology as a support tool.
[00:15:43] Supporting the Multifamily Women® Summit.
[00:18:01] Female leadership across industries.

Connect:
Krista Hurley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krista-k-hurley/
Talisa Dever: https://www.linkedin.com/in/talisa-dever/
RealPage: https://www.realpage.com/

Connect with Multifamily Women®:

Multifamily Women® Summit: https://multifamilywomen.com/
Carrie Antrim on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrieantrim/
Be a Guest on the Podcast or at the Summit: https://apps.multifamilywomen.com/speakingrequest
Multifamily Women® Leadership Series: https://apps.multifamilywomen.com/join

Transcript

0:19

welcome to the multifamily women podcast. I'm your host, Carrie Antrim. We are having candid conversations with some of the most successful women in the multifamily industry. But before I introduce my guests and we dive in, I want to remind you that the multifamily women summit is coming up and trust me, you won't want to miss it. So take a moment to visit multifamilywomen. com and secure your place at the summit. today. And if you're gaining value from these podcast episodes, we ask you to support us by subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show. Your feedback helps us to tailor our content to your needs, and it also helps other multifamily professionals discover this resource. Your time and your thoughts are definitely greatly appreciated with this. As part of our Multifamily Women's Summit, we are sharing time with innovative brands as part of our Meet the Sponsors series that showcases these brands that are supporting the platform to advance technology, innovation, leadership, and investments. Today, I'm very excited, I'm speaking with Krista Hurley and Talisa Deaver, who are industry principals at RealPage. When it comes to leveraging technology to drive efficiencies and increase ROI, these women are the go to authority. They've been instrumental in shaping innovative strategies that have not just disrupted, but transformed the way we think about property management and resident engagement. Krista and Talisa, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having us. We're excited to be here. Yes. Thank you, Keri. Of course. I'm glad you're here too. So listen, give us a just RealPage. What should people know about RealPage? That's a great question. Now, I think something important about real page is that innovation is really the core of who we are. It's our commitment to the industry and it's what drives, where we do business and how we partner with our clients every single day. It's really the heartbeat. I think our CEO, Dana Jones said it super well. It's the heartbeat of our organization. And I love the way that she put that real pages. committed to making business easier to do with us on a daily basis. And we've got a big focus on the synergy between technology the people in our industry and making sure that improves the overall customer experience. That's our guiding headline as we move into the rest of 23, we're forecasting into 24 and what we want to bring to our partners. Yeah, I couldn't have said it better. Being 25 years in the business and starting as a core property management system platform, and then just started looking at other areas where we can add that other areas to the ecosystem and really help the multifamily industry improve. I love everything you guys just said, especially about innovation. When you think about innovation, how do you make it so that the innovation is making the lives easier, for your customers rather than some, we talk about this a lot on this podcast, how the word technology or innovation can be scary sometimes for people. How do you balance that with providing the best possible service? And but also managing like customer expectations. Sure. I think that it really does start with listening to your customers being in the business for 25 years and understanding where their pain points are, and even digging into where they may be especially what we just launched and we may talk about this in a little bit, as you ask. Another question, but we just dug into a renter study and we surveyed 2000 renters to better understand them in the market today. So really having that market intelligence along with our customer focus and hearing their pain points, we can assess where technology really does fill in those gaps and help them. Yeah, and I know I'm sure you have a lot of data like you just mentioned and Patrick and I, we love reading Jay Parsons LinkedIn posts on market data. What insights can you share for our listeners regarding all that data? Yeah, so one of them is actually we released at our annual conference real world where we partnered with a global provider of data around renter behavior. And we surveyed 2000 American renters about their beliefs and perceptions of renting and their expectations as they continue to see where the market is headed. And there are some surprising statistics in this study. One of them, being that the J actually. Quoted on LinkedIn, saying that 70% are bullish on the state of renting today and really looking at it as more of an investment rather than actually buying a home due to their flexibility needs in the market today. At least I don't know if you wanted to add any more. I could definitely spill out a lot of data around that study, but it's something that you can look up and have available. It is on our LinkedIn websites on the real page website. So you can dig into that. But it goes into even generations, right? We look at the Gen Z's of the, and the Gen X's and They really want technology, but even further than technology, they want ESG, they want certain, green initiatives and governance around that from their provider of where they're living and the flexibility in that and the study found that two thirds, I think it was 60, 65 or 66% of multifamily renters are satisfied with their current housing situation because it gives them financial freedom. And that's something that when we're tapping into the brains of who are engaging us and wanting to live in our partner's communities. That's something that they need to be very well aware of. So those are the Insights that we're tapping into from an industry principle perspective, but also from just real page wanting to really learn more within the industry and where it's headed. That's really interesting. So you're seeing a shift maybe in perception of renting and now people are actually choosing to rent rather than purchase for the freedom of, location, time, money, everything that you just mentioned. That is super interesting. Yeah, I think about, my, my dad who doesn't have the physicality to get out there and mow their lawn. So he would prefer renting than doing those things. And you could sure live in a place like a condo that has a great HOA, but then you're paying high amount of HOA dues for that. And it's built into the apartment prices and it's more attractive for those older generations as well. Yeah, absolutely. And I think also, with the flexibility of people working from home now, they don't or not even just from home working from anywhere, they can rent an apartment anywhere and still work and travel and do all these things and not be tied down with that mortgage or like you said, mowing the lawn, things like that. Yes, exactly. That's just one of the ways that we've, we really lean into. Allowing our partners to drive where we're taking technology and how that lines up with renter sentiment changes in what customers are asking for and end user customers, right? Our residents, our prospects, we're really trying to bring the synergy between where technology meets the prospects and residents where they are in the industry, how their perception of renting is changing. And we've seen that change drastically across generations and really just allowing our partners to help Drive the conversation and inform us what's most helpful. What's most useful as we develop technology going forward. Yeah. And speaking of going forward. You mentioned you're just coming off of real world and obviously real page is a known brand in the market. So coming off this user conference. What are you excited about for? What's next? At Real World, we announced the launch of our DemandX platform, and that's really the synergy of smart digital advertising, revenue management, and our leasing CRM. And what I like here is that we're looking at demand holistically as an enterprise. As a synergy. And I think really allowing our, when we talk about bringing efficiencies and innovation to our partners, this is a great example of where we're saying, Hey, let us help you break down silos across your organizations. I think a lot of our partners are having these conversations today across different parts of their organization, where marketing is having conversations with pricing strategists and our pricing strategists are having conversations with our operations folks, obviously. But this is giving the tools to help back those conversations. I think it's giving a really important common language, the use of data to make everyone a strategist across that, that lead funnel, but to really allow us to break down the silos of communication and give a common language to those conversations. So we make really efficient decisions. And I think in economic climates, like 2023, as we've come out of the last couple of years that we're an anomaly in our industry this really allows us to. Make business move forward in a more efficient fashion as a whole. So really excited. We announced the launch of that at our real world conference. And just really excited to have customers using that technology, bringing their platforms together. They're using already today. And making those conversations more efficient as a whole. And what I love about DemandX, there's so much to love and there's been so much high energy around the release and launch of DemandX, so we're super excited to see that through the end of this year and well into 2024. But what I'm, what I love to talk about a lot, and you'll find that on LinkedIn or even on certain webcasts that I join, is the use of AI. stigma around adding that into multifamily and saying, Oh, it's going to take my job as your leasing consultant, et cetera. But using AI for demand X, it helps the, like she, like Talisa was mentioning the synergy. But it does it without any human touch and it enhances that human experience. And so I really love that. is informed by the industry's most compelling data set and is able to grab all of that from all the many levers. The leasing, the pricing, and the spend from the digital advertising and really gives them more tools for their job to use so that human element is still there. And, but they have the intelligence of that AI backing them. So I love that piece. I think this is a perfect intersection of some buzzwords. We've heard in the industry, right? Carry centralization, AI technology and Chris at the nail on the head and saying that this is an example of where we're bringing this together, where we're bringing the centralization of processes and communications as it meets technology but allowing, I think the AI technology really allows us to look forward in terms of how we might reskill the people portion of multifamily. And not displace, the intention of using AI technology is never to displace, but the ability to reskill. And I think that opens up some really exciting opportunities around where our workforce in the multifamily space can move, and the career opportunities that can provide from the leasing desk up, as we think about integrating these technologies into our work processes and how that opens up doors, how we can cross spaces and cross different interests. Yeah, because I love that cross spaces because it can it diversifies their portfolio. So they're looking at if you're a leasing agent. Yes, you are aware of all the hats, but you're not traditionally focused on revenue management, or you're not traditionally focused on the marketing spend. You're looking at Selling right, but this allows you to diversify your portfolio and really understand that holistic approach that real pitch is trying to do for them and help with the tools to deliver that. And so now as a leasing agent, you really understand, okay, that marketing spend leads to that lead and that lead was priced because of that revenue management tool. It really does help with their skill sets and growing professionally, in my opinion. Something we talk about a lot in the Multi Family Innovation Council and on, on these podcasts is I think Talisa, you touched on it, using that, the technology and the innovation as a support tool. So it's not coming in and Christy, you mentioned, taking jobs over, anything like that. But it's allowing companies to re skill or up skill employees to be, become more efficient at their jobs and just using this as a tool to help up level that expertise. So I love that you both mentioned that. Okay. So I'm wondering, as the market moves, products evolve and get better, many leaders may know or have used RealPage products at some point in their career, but what is something people may not know about RealPage? Oh, that's an interesting question. I think that we are, we're definitely, we try to be anyway, an open book in terms of our product offerings and what we're trying to accomplish there. But internally with real page, the culture is something that a lot of people don't understand unless they've worked here before. And, 1 of the things that I'm super proud of. Being here for almost 11 years now is that culture and it's people and we have recently launched. And I say recently, in the last 5 years, our be well initiatives or our employee recent research groups, and we have multiple ones that have emerged and 1 of the ones that I'm very proud to be. Part of is empower her which is our employee resource group for women. Now men can join it as well. If they so choose to support that group, but it really does bring a lot of that professional talent to as well as personal growth. I'm a young mom of two battling a career that is taking off and they are, three and For at this point, so they're about to start school and stuff. So it's just being a part of a group that you have a tribe and we really create connections and networking opportunities across the whole real page ecosystem. And, we just recently had our three year anniversary for empower her. And we brought in an outside speaker that was really great for me to hear just. And I can help with that and I can be a resource for you. And have that. So it's just really about raising awareness and creating that safe and open environment for women within the real page company. No, I think our, our employee resource groups are such a, such a. core piece of our culture internally. What I love, I've had the unique experience of having worked at RealPage a decade ago, spent the better part of the last decade on the fee management side, and then I've come back in the last couple of years. And really getting to see the evolution of our culture internally has been a real privilege. About a year ago, our leadership team launched an initiative to get employee input on building out our purpose and our core values. And I thought that was such a unique way to. To get us involved in the discussion and to really see what's important across the organization. And that boiled down to, four core key values, excellence, character, ownership and teamwork. I think those really stand out as the four foundational pillars of who we are as a company. And I continue to see that evolve in the way that we push out our interactions and our partnerships with clients. As we choose to engage in the industry, as we evaluate the value we bring to the table, that continues to be the core foundation of what we're looking to provide. And it's certainly a guiding. Those are guiding principles for our company internally. But I think that, the way that we put an emphasis on internal culture trickles out to the way that we are able to interact with our clients. And that, in my opinion, is that most important part. My job means something today because I'm able to help our partners. And when that stops, then it's time to move on. But I think that's, that's really, there's so much value there and being able to to help push those core pillars out to the way that we interact with our customers on a daily basis. And I think it speaks volumes. Krista, you've been there over 10 years until Lisa, I think you mentioned you were there for 10 years and then took a break and now you're back. That just speaks. Volumes to the culture and the community that you have within RealPage. That is funny. We call them boomerangs because there's so many of them that come back and we love that. It comes back full circle and it really is about the culture here in my opinion. Yeah. That's great. Now, what inspired your excitement around supporting the Multifamily Women's Summit as a sponsor? So I had the privilege of coming last year where I was able to meet you in person, Carrie. It was such an amazing event. I came out of that and not to use our empower her, but I came out empowered as a woman in multifamily. The level of conversations that I was able to have with professionals that really just wanted to help or even just hear. Not even help. Hey, how can I help you with your career? Nope. Let me hear your story. And then the speakers that you were able to bring in again, just resonated with me. And I thought this was such an, a wonderful opportunity for RealPage to continue getting involved. Involved in the industry and really help with that. That equality for women in our, in multifamily. And so I came out of it with a bull with horns saying, we've got to sponsor this event. We have to be there again this year to represent RealPage and also just to grow. RealPage can grow from it. I know I can personally and professionally. I just had an amazing time last year and wanted to make sure that we were on the books this year. This will be my first year at the Multifamily Women's Summit, but Krista's excitement when she came back from summit last year was so palpable when she shared with our team that I think there was this energy and excitement around, Hey, I think we can, we can be a great team. Partner in, in terms of sponsorship there. And like she said, just really lifting up, I think the women in the industry, and there are so many great female leaders in multifamily and to be able to give them the opportunity to share their expertise share their unique experiences, I think is super empowering. So I love we love what you all are doing. We love the opportunity to partner here and really just, seeing the praises of all the female leaders in our space. I'm so glad to hear that. We do work hard to create that, you mentioned culture in our last question about real page. And it's the same thing for this summit. It's all about the culture and the experience. And we just want everyone when they leave to say, I'm so glad I came. And Krista, it sounds like you said that and Talisa, I'm so excited that it's your first time. I love first timers. It's going to be so fun. We've we try to keep things fun and surprising and keep everybody on their toes and it's just a great time. So I'm really glad to hear that it impacted you, Krista so much that you took it back to your team, because yes, we do try to curate. Not only leaders from within the industry, but also, women with outside perspectives that, worked for Disney or other, large corporations, you name it so that we can really get. A broad perspective and bring new, fresh ideas, right? Like innovation. Isn't that what it's all about? I love it. And what a great opportunity to learn. I think, learning happens by looking outside our industry. I think that's where we get new, innovative ideas as well. And so I think that's such a great opportunity for us to see female leadership across other industries. I think it brings new ideas to the table and allows us to build upon those specifically for multifamily. Absolutely. So we're coming up on our time. Do you want to leave our audience with any final thoughts? Come this year, if you can, it's only a couple of weeks away. And if you can't next year, you have a whole year to plan. It is one of the best events that I'm so excited to be there. So if you are there in a couple of weeks, cannot wait to connect with you. Yes, we'd love to meet you, Kristen. I will be there along with one of our other colleagues Dana Gardner. So we would love to connect and say hello. And speaking of connecting, what's the best way for our audience to get in touch with you prior to the event, at the event, after the event, for me, I'm most active on LinkedIn. You can always reach out to RealPage or my email and contact information from the RealPage website, but really I'm most active on LinkedIn. Thank you. Same here. LinkedIn is a fantastic tool. It's an easy way to connect. But we'd love to, we'd love to connect there, connect in person talk before or after any way that we can be helpful. We'd love to be. Yes. Awesome. Thank you guys so much for being on the show. And this was really good. I feel like we just had a rapid fire. You guys had so much to say, and I love it because it shows your passion and your commitment to the multifamily industry. So I appreciate you spending the time. Thank you so much, Carrie. I appreciate the opportunity. Can't wait to see you next week. Thank you. Excited about the event. Yes, absolutely. Now, before we say goodbye, I want to remind our listeners to connect with Krista and Talisa on LinkedIn. That's Krista Hurley and Talisa Deaver. We will link their LinkedIn profiles in the show notes, so be sure to check those out for a recap of this conversation, along with all the other resources we mentioned. We'll link to RealPage and all that good stuff. These resources can provide additional insights and tools and help you in your journey. As we wrap up today's episode, I'd also like to extend an invitation for you to join our Women's Leadership Series. By becoming a part of this initiative, you'll gain access to our private Group with over 5, 000 members. It's just a great place to exchange ideas, inspire one another and grow together. And you can find that on multifamilywomen. com and click on join. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next time.