Katy Apartments

You’re about to start hearing a lot about this year’s winners of our PARAGON, Apartment Career and Education (ACE) and Anthony Pusateri Career Promotion awards. We’ll honor all of them at our NAA Education Conference and Exposition in June. In the meantime, I’d like to let you know about an innovative program being done by the Arizona Multihousing Association (AMA) to introduce job seekers to our industry. AMA is being recognized with a Pusateri Award for its October job fair.

AMA’s Jump Start Training program was created as a supplement to the association’s wildly successful property management job fair held in October for more than 600 job seekers. The association’s Education Committee was looking for a way to prepare people with strong customer service, sales or maintenance backgrounds for successful careers in property management using skills they already had. It came up with the two-day Jump Start program for prospective leasing consultants and maintenance technicians.

The course provides an overview of property management before diving into position-specific topics such as leasing dynamics, appliance and electrical, phone techniques and pest control. AMA members and associate members volunteer their time to teach the course. Course participants receive a certificate of completion at the end of the two days. AMA sends their names to its membership, so that companies hiring for entry-level positions can contact them.

Since October, the association has been offering the program on the second Monday and Tuesday of every month. It also has made some of the course components available online through its Learning Management System. Some management companies are using the Jump Start program as a refresher for current employees.

Our industry has a constant need for talented people to fill entry-level positions. Many already have valuable experience, but they just don’t know how to transfer that experience to our industry. The Jump Start program is a great example of how to bridge that gap.

Pam Shelton, AMA Education Committee Chair and principal at Allison-Shelton Real Estate Services, recently commented that, “It’s (Jump Start) an incredible way to introduce people to the industry. There are a lot of people who would do well in multifamily housing, but they simply don’t know what it’s all about – or sometimes, that we even exist.”

She also said that once someone starts a career in multifamily housing, they never want to leave. “You may start out as a leasing consultant, and 20 years later, you own your own property management company.” Pam should know. She started in our industry more than 30 years ago as a leasing consultant, and now she co-owns her own firm.

To learn more about the Jump Start Program, please visit the AMA website.

Back in the day I used to sit in my elementary school’s computer lab, playing the game Oregon Trail.

Originally developed in the early 70s to teach school children about the harsh realities of 19^th century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail, the game was a real gut check.

Sitting in front of Apple computers the size of coffee tables, my classmates and I each assumed the role of a wagon leader, guiding our party of settlers from Missouri to Oregon. We had to use guns and bullets to hunt wild animals, keep our fellow travelers in check and make adult decisions—such as whether or not we should attempt to ford a river. More often than not, one of our oxen drowned in the process.

It was heavy stuff for a 9-year-old.

Even worse, members of our wagon party could die at any time from measles, a snake bite, typhoid, cholera, exhaustion or a broken leg. When the game wanted to truly break us down, a “you have died from dysentery” message would pop up on the screen—a turn-of-events so devastating that it once caused a classmate to burst into tears. Seeing her wagon Mother perish in such a savage manner was too much for her to handle.

“The Hunger Games” was a fairytale compared to this.

But despite the death and starvation and horrendous computer graphics, we forged ahead—with or without our oxen and family members—in search of a better future. It was 1848 and there was untapped fortune and opportunity to be had.

Two centuries later, those same opportunities (minus the oxen) are still available—in rural North Dakota.

Today, the country’s biggest and most productive oil field is drawing thousands of workers with the promise of plentiful and profitable jobs to serve the booming energy exploration industry. There’s no shortage of employment—but now there’s a serious housing crisis.

Officials estimate that Williston, N.D., a town of 14,716 according to the 2010 U.S. Census, could grow to as much as 50,000 during the next 15 years. Neighboring cities such as Minot, Dickinson, Stanley and others also are showing the early signs of burgeoning population growth—all due to the seemingly limitless supply of oil.

Many of the modern-day pioneers who are traveling to these towns for work are struggling to find a place to live. Some have no choice but to shack-up in jam-packed rudimentary dorm-style facilities. Others hope they can fit into overcrowded hotels and extended-stay facilities. In even more extreme cases, some are spending $12,500 a month to sleep on the floor of a dilapidated farmhouse and others are considering online listings for renting 1970s-model conversion vans. Covered wagons might be next.

With so many in desperate need of housing, apartment developers have recognized a potential long-term growth opportunity and many are choosing to invest in these risky rural markets. Others are more cautious—recognizing that stories of overnight boomtowns are often bookended with similar stories of overnight busts. One thing’s for sure: no one pays above market-rate to live in a ghost town.

But for now, these towns in North Dakota are showing no sign of slowing down.

Or dysentery, for that matter.

For more on the development opportunities in North Dakota, check out Frank Mauck’s article “Where There’s A Williston, There’s A Way” in the May issue of units, which mails May 8.