NAA 2008 Education Session: Design is The New Black

Leasing Apartments with Smart Design was a fascinating session led by Lori Snider of Creativity for Rent and Sanford Steinberg of Steinberg Design Collaborative, LLP. Design is the differentiator in today’s cookie-cutter multi-family housing market they argue. Even for the most mundane of products, which unfortunately are more of the norm than the exception, design can add emotional appeal, value and can make the community desirable. There is so much information in the world of design that one hour hardly seemed fair to Lori and Sanford, yet they were able to rapidly divulge information that left all of us satisfied. To highlight that point, in 1970, there were three notable design magazines available on newsstands. Today, that number exceeds 50. Design truly is the new black.

We decided that the best way to present this information for our bloggy purposes would be in bullet point style, so below are some design elements and tips that we look forward to exploring further.

• Be something to somebody and not everything to everybody. How deep is that? Sounds like a saying from Confucius but it is true; we need to ask ourselves what demographic am I trying to cater too? Who is looking at my community and who is my prospective customer?

• Where is the surprise? We all like surprises so why not present them in our rehab and/or design work.

• Where are the impact areas? Are your customers being impacted upon viewing presented space, i.e. community models? If no impact is being made then a change needs to be made, particularly if it involves space. Wasted space (the keyword here is wasted, not just space in general) is exactly that a wasting of usable space.

• Large framed mirrors are in.

• Design elements your customers can touch, for example water faucets, door handles, door knobs, lamps, drawers and cabinets, can be very powerful and can create an emotional attachment to the unit in question.

• The number one want by residents inside the apartment is storage space so make a point to showcase the storage space available inside your units! This includes closet space, possible pantry space, laundry room space, etc. This includes knowing the exact measurements for the space of your closets and utility rooms. Letting your customer know that a specific closet/room is 6x8 is much more powerful than saying ‘This is a large space’.

• Count the number of cupboards and drawers in your units. Saying you have 20 of something sounds much more powerful than saying lots and lots of something.

• Use real plants in the clubhouse and in your models instead of plastic plants. Customers and renters want green, so give them green. The natural kind, not the plastic kind. Besides, how hard is it to keep up with a plant? If you can’t do that, then how can you keep up with a full model renting for $1100 a month? Real green could equal real green (money!).

• Offer a one color accent wall that the prospective renter can pick out. This element gives a sense of ownership to the renter as well as autonomy which in turn give them a want to stay longer. Plus an accent wall looks damn cool.

• Smaller furniture makes floorplans look larger. Why use old 80’s giant oak furniture when you can use a sleeker more post-modern 00’s steel or ‘framed’ look and enhance the size of your floorplans by allowing more space to be visible. Clutter (see wasted space) is not a design element, it’s just clutter. Let the floodplains be a design element itself by proclaiming its own space.

• The consumer buys the community not the company. Design your marketing and your community on the feel of the community not the feel of the company. A community in Plano, TX should not look or be marketed like a community in San Francisco, CA even if they are owned by the same community. These are two different cultures taking up two different spaces. Design your community by who makes up your community, where your community is located, and why your community is where it is for this time and place.

We did not include two design elements that we would like to expand on at a later date because we feel that an entire post needs to be devoted to them and them alone. However, these tips and design elements listed above we found to be very important and we hope that even if you just use one or two, that you find yourself taking a closer look at design and what design can do for you and your community.