Stewart Hsu

With the anticipation of a child on Christmas eve (seriously!), I attended the Multifamily Brainstorming Conference held at Harrah’s Rio hotel in Las Vegas November 13-16, 2007. Steve Roach, President of BH Management, and Charlie Young, President of Stellar Property Management, separately had both encouraged me to attend this conference as a relative new-comer to the multifamily industry. Both have been unofficial mentors for me; they are good, kind people — I am grateful to know them.

The idea behind the conference is to get multi-family professionals to brainstorm on the toughest, most pressing, real-world problems people are facing in the industry with the intent to share ideas to help each other succeed. The event exceeding my expectations. It was by far my favorite conference to date… and as you can tell from my previous posts I’ve been to my share of them this year.

If you are relatively new to this business, and could only attend one conference, this would be it. My suggestion though would be to wait until you have at least 50 units under management for a period of at least 6 months, so that you have some real world experience to bring to the table. The more units and more experience you have, the more you’ll enjoy this conference — as you’ll be mixing with like minded, experience folks. Most of the people I met were Presidents, Managers, and Owners of 2,000 units and up. Organizations that have less than 5,000 units were referred to as “small”. For context, AIMCO, whom I believe is the largest apartment operator in the U.S., has over 300,000 units under management.

I estimated there were approx 800 people participating. They broke out the folks into two groups — multifamily professionals (property managers, leasing agents, all levels of property supervisors) and multifamily executives (CEOs, Presidents, COO, Owners). I participated in the latter group, though wanted to be in both places as there was tons to learn and absorb. They randomly assign people to tables, where there are 6-8 people per table. Topics are generated based on feedback solicited from registered attendees in advance. Each table brainstorms on an idea. Facilators are present to help ensure the comments stay positive (otherwise you get the rubber duck!) and stay focused on the issue posed to the table. Notes are captured from each table, and after the conference, all particpiates receive the notes generated from all the tables. What a wonderful concept! Do we live in a world of abundance or what?

I met a couple of great guys from Westlake Realty Group, based in the San Francisco area. Robert, the CEO, hit the nail on the head for me over breakfast one morning. He said it’s not about the information, it’s all in the excecution. How many times have you heard to write down your goals and put together a plan? Now, how many people actually do it? (hint, hint)

What I loved about the event more than anything else is the sense of camaraderie, a sense of openness and the willingness to share and help others. I got this feeling from “all levels” of people, not just executives, but managers, owners, consultants, and vendors.

People were focused on the creation, not the competition, of ideas.

It was a wonderful experience I wish for each of you looking to make multi-family your business.

Contact Tami Siewruk, CIO Multifamily Pro, a wonderful individual, for more information.
http://multifamilypro.com/brainstorming.htm

I look forward to seeing you there next year!