Born out of the multifamily world, Treplus Communities is blazing trails in the active adult sector.
The Columbus, Ohio-based developer has three active adult rental communities in Ohio, with more on the way in the Buckeye State and beyond. The company’s communities are single-story, and with dens and even one-car garages, they resemble freestanding homes more than multifamily buildings.
In May, Treplus gained a well-capitalized partner in Welltower (NYSE: WELL), a move that will give the active adult operator more tools with which to grow. With far fewer staff than a typical senior living community and a model poised to capture the baby boomer demographic as it ages, the active adult sector has stood out to investors and capital providers as a relative bright spot during the pandemic.
“We feel good about our product,” said Treplus CEO Jane Arthur Roslovic during her recent appearance on SHN+ TALKS. “We have been on a really nice run since about February or March, and we’ve seen a real uptick in demand.”
For Roslovic, being an early player in an emerging real estate sub-sector has been an exciting journey — even if what to call the product type is still an active discussion.
“What does active adult mean? It’s a challenging topic, it’s challenging to market,” Roslovic said. “Everybody who is in this business is thinking about it. Something will bubble up.”
We are pleased to share the recording and this transcript of the SHN+ TALKS conversation with SHN+ members. Read on to learn about:
— How Treplus got involved with Welltower and how the two companies are collaborating
— Why Treplus decided to branch out into active adult after spending many years in the multifamily industry
— How Treplus is catering to the baby boomers and what Roslovic thinks they want out of senior housing
The following has been edited for clarity.
[00:01:36] Tim Regan: I want to start with a check-in on Treplus. Earlier this year, I remember we talked about how you felt a little insulated from some of the other challenges the industry is having. Do you still feel that way?
[00:01:48] Jane Arthur-Roslovic: Well, first of all, thank you, Tim. We really appreciate the time to spend with you. It’s always a pleasure to be with you and talk to you about what’s going on in this world of active adult housing. We’ve weathered, to some degree, the pandemic pretty well. Our leasing velocity has slowed. We had just opened a new property a few months before the pandemic started.
But for the most part we feel good about our product. The private entrances were something that helped us tremendously. Our residents weren’t house-bound. They had the opportunity to come and go as much as they could during the pandemic. Once the weather got nice — and I can’t say whether it was vaccines or not — the velocity picked up tremendously.
We have been on a really nice run since about February or March, and we’ve seen a real uptick in demand. I don’t know if it was because people were so sick of sitting in their homes and seeing all the repairs that needed to be made and the money that needed to be spent — that could be part of it. We also saw that a lot of our market was interested in being closer to their families.
We had numerous people who moved from out of the Columbus area, or for that matter out of the state, and moved into our communities to be closer to their families. We’ve created such lovely communities of people who are 55 and older. They have instant community in friends, people who have the same interests. And they have an ability to engage in to that community already. We’re super excited that we’re still having all of our activities, but it’s about ready to be winter and I think we’re all waiting to see what that looks like.
[00:04:13] Tim: Labor, that’s the big challenge. I asked you if you felt insulated from that, I guess my assumption would be that with an active adult model, you don’t need to have so many staff.
[00:04:42] Jane: We don’t have to deal with it to the level that the other senior housing markets have to deal with it, but I will tell you, it is challenging to fill the positions we have with qualified people, and retaining them and training them and keeping them interested. It is a really fascinating time. We don’t necessarily get resumes that fit what we’re looking for. From a construction standpoint, we have a very close relationship with RGC. But from property management and from a corporate standpoint, we’re looking for the best people.
[00:05:43] Tim: You came to the senior housing industry from the condo multifamily world. How did you get into senior housing and active adult? What was your first impression of the industry? What was that learning curve like?
[00:06:01] Jane: Our family has been in the multifamily business since the ’60s, and actually, Treplus is owned by my brother and my sister and I. We are all members of the active adult sector. We fit into this category, and we decided we’d pivot from the typical general-purpose, market-rate apartment acquisitions we were doing. We had been in development, but then pivoted into acquisitions. We had done some condos as well. We committed ourselves to the active adult market-rate sector, we did extensive research, focus groups — and just jumped in.
First of all, we thought it was underserved and also very misunderstood — and still is. The learning curve, huge. It is not at all like multifamily, nor is it like senior living. It is definitely its own asset class, which is why I think you’ll find not just the NAHB, but also the ULI both have committed to setting up councils in that area to really understand what this means.
[00:07:33] What do your communities look like in terms of physical property and services?
[00:07:59] Jane: In Delaware, our project is 92 units. It’s called Burr Oak Commons. They’re composed of one-plus and two-plus units, which means they have a den in both of those units. We have two-unit buildings and we go up to as many as five units in a building. They all have attached garages, they’re all single-story. Our units range from 1,200 to 1,600 square feet. The one-bedroom is sizable and the one-bedroom has a one-car garage, and the den is a nice-sized den. It is not intended to be another bedroom. You can put a daybed in there for when the grandkids come over, but nobody’s going to live in there for too long.
Then the two-pluses, the den is a sizable den, and again, more intended for a daybed and a desk. Lots of open air. All one-story, large hallways, lever door handles intended for people who can age in place. High ceilings, front porches, rear patios. It’s delightful, especially on a day like today in Columbus, you can drive up there and you’ll have a lot of our residents on their front porches just watching what’s going on.
The heart of our community is the commons building, which is around 4,000 square feet. It offers a business center, a mailroom, a fitness center, bourbon and billiard rooms with wine lockers and nice socializing areas and a catering kitchen. It’s intended to be the heart of the community where the residents get together, and we have a lifestyle coordinator who creates all the monthly activities with the residents.
This project was 92 units, and we want to keep them on the smaller side. Maybe around 120 is ideal, just so that there’s that sense of community and they all know one another. The testimonials on our website will show that the residents love the size of the units because they feel like a home.
[00:11:17] Tim: We have a question from our audience: what is the average age of entry at your communities?
[00:11:25] Jane: Our residents range from 55 to 98. It’s been interesting because we see that profile is different from one project to another. I will tell you what they’re averaging around the low 70s, but again, it’s from project to project. We still very much have people who are working, and of course, during the pandemic, working from home. The business center is a popular place for those people who are working from home.
[00:12:01] Tim: How did you land on that design? Also, the mix of amenities and services that you offer, what was the thinking that went into that?
[00:12:29] Jane: We knew that people were downsizing. Typically, our resident is coming from a home. We will have residents who are coming from another apartment project and they just don’t want to be living with millennials. When you’re downsizing from a home, it’s tough to go from 2,000, 3,000 square feet into 500 or 600 square feet. When we were designing these projects, we had that in mind. We knew somebody was going to still want to have their home decorations, and they had to have someplace to store those and they were still going to want to have family members come over and visit as well as friends.
That’s why we kept them on the larger side. We also felt that there was really no other product out there that was a single story, we had a lot of residents who did not want to live below anyone. They wanted just to be a single story and we went for a more contemporary look because again, we were creating a brand, and our whole intent was to scale. We felt that we needed to stand out from our competitors.
[00:14:07] Tim: is there anything that you wish you could put in this design that maybe you’re still figuring out how?
[00:14:27] Jane: [chuckles] My sister wants a pickleball court, and we go round and round on that one. It’s a running joke, but we always pick sites that are near a lot of those types of activities. And, again, it’s that sense of community, having people still feel like they’re a part of the larger community as well. We’re always tweaking. You just can’t help yourself. Our resident satisfactions truly tell us what we’re doing right and what’s working and what’s not. Our property management team and our development and construction team are talking on a regular basis on if there’s tweaking to be done.
We have no major overhauls planned. We’ve created a brand. We’ve spent a lot of money and time making sure it’s the right thing, and we feel very good about it.
[00:15:37] Tim: How did you land on a rental as opposed to going the for-sale route?
[00:16:07] Jane: We really felt that this demographic has fiscal and time management issues. Renting is a way for them to have control over both. Our resident wants to travel now, but a good amount of them have retired or have cut way back. And like I said earlier, some of them are still working. A lot of people who are downsizing from homes, they like the idea that they’re going to know how much their rent is. They don’t need to replace a roof. They don’t need to replace HVAC. They can make a phone call and somebody will be there in a flash or within 24 hours at minimum to identify the issue if not repair the issue.
They’ve sold their home, which could be their largest asset. Right now, investing that money is the way to go, not plowing it back into another condo with condo fees, and you’re still paying real estate taxes. It’s just sensible from a fiscal and time management issue. That’s why we did it and sticking to it.
[00:17:49] Tim: Walk me through what is the development process for a typical Treplus community.
[00:18:12] Jane: Let me start with saying we have an amazing development team.
It is a challenge. Next to leasing velocity during the pandemic, this would be the second-biggest challenge. We have six or seven spectacular sites that meet our criteria. We demand a larger site. We want suburban infill.
We also are very lucky. I know you’re going to delve into this a little bit later, but we have a phenomenal relationship with Welltower and their business insights group. The information that we’ve gleaned from them and they’ve gleaned from us is allowing us to select sites that make sense for the active adult customer. That’s been a real joy for our team to work with their team with smart people on both sides of the table looking for those sites.
Acreage is important, walking paths, retail, close to other housing developments, doctors’ offices. Again, we have people moving in who’ve been in those communities for up to 50 years. Actually, we have one instance where that woman has lived there for 70 years in Pickerington, Ohio. In fact, there’s a road there named after her family. The people who’ve lived there a long time, they want to be by their doctors, their friends, the retail that they know, and the people coming in love to have friends who know all of that.
[00:20:14] Is it ever hard to find these sites for an active adult community?
[00:20:38] Jane: It’s hard. We have smart people working with smart people. They are energetic, and they understand what we’re looking for. They’re very focused on what they’re looking for, so we have demographics that we have to look at as well. It’s hard.
[00:21:02] Tim: Things like lumber, steel, construction labor, have been tight. I know that affected development projects across the industry. I know lumber has come back down from those crazy prices from earlier this year, but I wanted to check in, how big are those challenges currently?
[00:21:33] Jane: Pretty much everybody who is on this call will say lumber has gotten better. We are fortunate in that we have a very seasoned and knowledgeable team on construction within Treplus. We do have RGC that is currently building for us. We’ve had a relationship for a long time and what’s important there is they’ve been around a long time and they’ve had relationships that have been around a long time.
In this business, as in any business, relationships are key, especially when labor is so challenging. I would say that labor and supply chains are just tough. We just started construction on a project in Centerville, Ohio. We’re getting ready to start a project in Grove City. Everybody holds their breaths on appliances and windows down to the furniture for the commons, carpeting, flooring — everything. Everybody who is on this call is probably looking to their reps to make sure that delivery is on time and on budget. The bottom line is it’s challenging.
[00:23:07] Tim: Another question from the audience. What geographic areas are you looking in, how far west do you want to go? I know that you’re currently in Ohio, but tell us more about the geographic areas you’re looking at and how far west you’re willing to go.
[00:23:34] Jane: We’ve got to be sensible, we’ve got to be smart. We manage our own properties and property management is key to the active adult product asset class. We’ve got to be careful about how far out we go at this early stage. We’re not a startup, but we’ve just got to be careful because we’re very hands-on. We want to make sure that we’ve got the right property manager, that they’re getting the right training, that they understand what they’re doing, and they do it the Treplus way.
I know we have Zoom, but my team will tell you I am all about being in-person. I think you get a lot out of being in-person. We’re really concentrated Ohio and Indiana right now. We are expanding in the Midwest. We’re looking at lots of sites in the Midwest right now, and as I said from the very beginning, it’s a brand and we’re rolling it out. To what velocity, I can’t tell you. California scares me, pretty much from a development perspective. We’re growing but in a very focused and methodical way.
[00:25:11] Tim: Some CEOs have told me that they like to grow no further than a four-hour drive from their headquarters or something like that. Do you have a similar metric in your head?
[00:25:25] Jane: Over the next 12 to 18 months, we’re very much in that mode. I think after 18 months, we’ll be looking for sites. It takes quite a bit of time to open them, but we will be looking further than that.
[00:25:51] Tim: Looking at active adult as a product type and how these deals tend to come together, what similarities and differences do you see from multifamily housing?
[00:26:09] Jane: We’ll just start with the resident. These residents typically have owned their own home, and they have a little more time on their hands than our multifamily renter has. To say they’re demanding would be an understatement. We very much want to serve them the way they want to be served. Service is key. Not just for our facility techs, but for our community directors and our leasing specialists. That’s a big difference. The leasing velocity is also very different than multifamily. The turnover, very different than multifamily.
I don’t like to say that we provide services like the senior housing market does, though the senior housing market truly is service-provider oriented. Where we do provide services is in the amenities of resident engagement. That resident engagement component is just key and multifamily doesn’t have it, typically. I might get some pushback on that, but that’s my take.
[00:27:45] Tim: We got another question from the audience while you were talking. Are you concerned about Treplus residents aging in place and the communities becoming less active? I was curious about this too.
[00:28:11] Jane: I get asked that a lot. We’re not in that business, and there is room for all of us. I am a firm believer in that and as are my partners. We aren’t going to be providing that and America is only getting older. Every day, we have people turning 55. For a long time, we will keep these projects filled.
People will have to age out. Sure, like any multifamily project, you’re going to get older people who are going to age. It’s a home, it’s where somebody lives. Are we going to provide the services like an IL and an AL? No. We do not have commercial kitchens for us to convert to an IL. We just don’t. We aren’t going to provide meals.
[00:29:21] Tim: We have another question about resident engagement, looking just for a little bit more clarity. What do you specifically mean when you say resident engagement? What does that look like at Treplus?
[00:29:31] Jane: It’s really up to the residents. We work with the residents so that they are engaged and they own what they’re doing. We as a company do a handful of activities a year that are rather large and that are not just for the community, but for people outside the community or potential residents. We have fabulous community gardens at our sites. We have people who have never gardened in their life who are gardening. We have master gardeners at our properties who enjoy thoroughly teaching and learning, and we have a really nice relationship with the Franklin Park Conservatory, which is the largest conservatory that works across the country with community gardens.
They do inner-city gardens and community gardens like ours and. It’s a really terrific relationship. We have pool sharks — and we have pool tables, which was a request by the residents that we gave them. We have darts to book groups to walking clubs. It’s really driven by the residents. The lifestyle coordinator does manage the budget for that, but it’s not bingo. We have people in their 90s playing poker until two o’clock on Thursday mornings at some of the properties.
[00:31:22] Tim: I can believe it. We also had another question from the audience. Do you have on-site storage? You mentioned people are downsizing, is there a place for them to put some of this stuff?
[00:31:34] Jane: Back to the size of our units, they’re 1,200 to 1,600 square feet. When people walk in, our garages are oversized, there’s a lot of storage within the units. People are downsizing, they know what they’re moving into. No, we don’t provide on-site storage and we’ve never been asked to provide on-site storage. I do know of occasions where people do have storage units, but people are thrilled with the amount of storage we provide in the unit.
[00:32:15] Tim: What do capital providers or investors think of the active adult space and how do they look at it in your view versus more traditional senior living?
[00:32:47] Jane: The capital providers that we work with and want to work with understand active adult, and that it is, again, not multifamily. Leasing velocity is much slower, but turnover is different, and they’re looking for a durable cash flow. My siblings and I, this is the business we’re in, and that’s what we’re looking for. This is why we got into this business.
I can’t speak to the senior housing business model. I’ve never run a pro forma on what that looks like. I don’t understand the staffing. I just can’t speak to it at all. I can speak to what we do at Treplus, and where we come from in multifamily, and there’s some similarities, but I think that those two issues are similar, turnover and cash flow.
[00:33:57] Tim: Welltower is I think your newest or one of your newest capital partners. How did that relationship come about?
[00:34:34] Jane: It is a fun story. It’s a Covid story. Shankh [Mitra] has been very vocal about how active he was last year, and we all read about how active Welltower is and the direction Welltower is going in. It is very exciting. My brother and sister and I couldn’t be more excited to have a relationship with some really smart and great people. and like I said, not just the people in finance, but on the development and construction side and in business insights.
Our project down in Pickerington got a phone call from a broker who said that they had somebody who was interested in buying Redbud. That person, my leasing person, wasn’t aware that it was for sale. She called me, and I said, ‘Well, it’s not for sale, and just tell them to call me.’ They called, and we had a nice chat, and I told them that we don’t sell our projects. We build and hold. That’s why we spend so much time and money on construction.
Ann [Arthur Cook], Geoff [William Arthur] and I, our intent from the beginning was to build and hold. I explained to this broker that we build and hold, and we’re creating a brand and it was our desire to scale. He said, ‘Oh, this is even better. Let me get back to you.’ Within 48 hours, an NDA was signed. We were thrilled. Shankh and John Olympitis came out to Columbus that Monday, and about two weeks later, we had a whole bunch more Welltower people there with our masks on. It was an interesting time. Again, it’s in its infancy stage. We’ve just started construction on our first project with them.
Like any new relationship, there have been some bumps and learning curves. I think that’s to be expected, but it’s nice that Shankh and his team have the exact same vision that we have. Ann, Geoff and I couldn’t be more thrilled. More importantly, everyone who works with us out in the properties, we had to have their buy-in as well because this is a shift in how we’ve been managing. We’ve gone from a purely family-owned company to having a partner the size of a whale, but they’ve all embraced it and they all are excited about it. We’ve kept them apprised all the way along of what’s going on. They know what the partnership means to not just us, but to their futures as well.
[00:38:10] Tim: I don’t want to put you on the spot, but what were some of the things that you shared with Welltower, and what were some of the things that you had learned from them?
[00:38:23] Jane: I’m not diving deep on that, but I will tell you, with the business insights group, we really are looking at what’s the age and from how far away they moved. We only have so much information on our residents. Again, we have to be very careful about what we share, but we’ve gotten a lot of information, and from our resident satisfaction reports. Our residents are really good about giving us the true sense. It’s funny, we usually are getting 8s to 10s. I’m going to say we’re heavy on the 10s, but when I see a 4, it’s always because they need a work order done right then.
That’s very, very, very rare, but that’s what we’ve worked with Welltower on. Demographic information, mostly, and from what we’ve gotten from our residents thus far.
[00:39:38] Tim: We’ve talked a little bit today about how Treplus is building a brand for the baby boomers. Active adult is in a unique position, in that the rest of the senior living industry, they’re going to see the baby boomers after you. What do baby boomers want right now? You said they want to be independent, they want to travel, so how do you translate that into a senior housing experience?
[00:40:19] Jane: I think the number one thing is they never want to feel isolated, and after the last year, the active adult learned what isolation looks like. That’s not fun for anybody, and especially as you age, connectivity is key to having a vibrant life. I think the active adult is all about vibrancy, and it’s been really tragic that the travel industry has been so hard hit because I know that a lot of our residents are just itching to travel.
I think isolation, connectivity, those are number one. They want to be around like-kind people, people who are home or are on the same schedule they’re on. They want to be able to get together at a moment’s notice for cocktails or play darts.
The neighborhood that they were probably living in is starting to transition. They see downsizing as the reality. You do hear about baby boomers who might upsize, and it’s funny. I was at the Frontgate Outlet Store the other day, and I stopped a couple and asked them if they were downsizing. They said, no, they were upsizing.
I got into a conversation with them and we started laughing. They said, ‘Probably the biggest mistake we’ve made. We should have spent the money traveling and doing other things.’
[00:42:47] Tim: We got another question from the audience. You talked a little bit earlier about how Treplus communities are not somewhere where you want the residents to really age in place. That makes sense to me. The question from our audience, and I’ll probably tack on to this at the end, was, are there plans to facilitate any healthcare for residents, perhaps leveraging Welltower’s health system partnerships? For example, working with the health system or payers to enroll residents in a Medicare Advantage plan that supports access to services.
[00:43:39] Jane: We have a concierge service that they have access to, that they can call and look into home health services. We can’t just say it’s in active adult. That’s true for multifamily. That’s true for the condo world, the single-family home world. We, again, are not going to provide services. That will be on the residents themselves and how they’re going to address their aging. That’s not the business that we’re in.
[00:44:29] Tim: What about the first part of the question about plans to facilitate the health care of residents?
[00:44:34] Jane: No. What we do facilitate, we work with Wellbeats, which is a virtual fitness program, and we brought that to our residents during Covid. And boy, what a great amenity that has been. We see how much they’re using it and we have Wellbeats Wednesdays and they come up to our fitness center. Really, that’s what we have got to promote: the active, vibrant part of it. That’s our business.
[00:45:16] Tim: You had mentioned some of your thinking about how you choose a technology vendor and also more generally what software you’re using to collect and track data. Tell us more about that.
[00:45:41] Jane: I’m going to give a shout-out to Best Buy and Holiday Retirement because they figured out that not everybody in the baby boomer sector knows how to use technology. We are actually thick into teaching our residents. We have tech classes on using the services that we provide, which is our concierge service and Wellbeats.
Back to the property management, they embraced the virtual tour and how to communicate with residents. We do use Sherpa integrated with RealPage. I’ll tell you every day, if it’s not me, it’s our VP of property management, our VP of marketing, our lifestyle coordinator — we’re getting at least five new products that help assist the active adult senior housing industry. It’s crazy. Picking one, being an early adapter is hard. It’s kind of shooting in the dark.
[00:47:30] Tim: I’ve talked with leaders of companies who have said, ‘We want to try everything, we want to try it all, but we can’t.’ It seems tough.
[00:47:45] Jane: It really is. You have to remember that we can be excited about it at the corporate level. But again, property management has to have the buy-in. Also, how do you communicate the activities? Do you communicate on paper? Do you communicate on the digital boards that you have in part of your facility? Do you do in-home TV? Do you do texts? Do you do phone calls? Emails? It goes on and on. That is something that we’re working through, and I’ll tell you, it’s a weekly conversation. It’s a group meeting weekly, and with this pandemic, it just was exponential discussion.
[00:48:55] Tim: You and I have talked at length and I think there’s been a lot of discussion out there about how “55+” is just not a good descriptor for the typical age of residents in these communities. We also sometimes see active adult used to refer to things that are really independent living, and sometimes the other way around. I don’t think anyone has the answer to this, but do you feel like 55+ and active adult is still suitable? What would you call it?
[00:49:35] Jane: I’m part of the 55+ council for the NAHB and for the ULI, and we don’t know. We know it’s an issue for so many reasons. The Housing for Older Peoples Act, HOPA Act, was enacted a long time ago. It’s for people who are 55 and older. We have people who live in our communities who have walkers or wheelchairs. What does active adult mean? It’s a challenging topic. It’s challenging to market. It’s challenging to interpret, and I think that everybody who is in this business is thinking about it. Something will bubble up. It’s being talked about a lot. As soon as I know, as soon as we come up with an answer for that, we’ll let you know, so it’s an opportunity.
[00:51:10] Tim: I want to spend the last little bit of our day talking about the future. Remind us, how do you see Treplus growing in the months and years to come? What do you have your eye on right now?
[00:51:27] Jane: We have a robust pipeline, and we plan to move out of Ohio soon. We’re sticking with the product we have. We’re going to continue to tweak it, make it better, listen to our residents. I see it spreading organically to some degree. I can see where our resident might have a friend in Indiana, a friend in North Carolina, a friend in Michigan. We’ve already had phone calls from out of state, people looking for our product because they were surfing the web.
I think we’re going to stick to our knitting and do what we do, and I think we still are on a learning curve to some degree, and the training of our property management group is good. It’s very tailored to the active adult and what they’re looking for, and that’s what we’re going to do. We’re not treading into IL, AL, or MC.
[00:52:44] Tim: This is a weird time for the senior living industry and senior housing in general. We’re still in the middle of this pandemic. From your perspective, what are you most worried about right now? What are you most excited about right now?
[00:53:08] Jane: I’m most worried about our economy. What does it look like? I’m not an economist, but boy, it’s all over the board right now. Cap rates are great. There’s a lot of money to be invested out there, but how long is that going to last? Are we really in inflationary times? What is our resident thinking about the economy? What’s happening to social security? There’s a lot to that. The economy is what I’m most worried about.
What am I most excited about? Our asset class is getting stronger every day. Our residents, our market is getting more people into it every day, and the more the active adult understands that this is an opportunity or a place for them to call home, that excites me. We’re just one small company that is trying to have a loud voice. I love meeting other active adult developers because we all feel the same way. We’re excited about what we’re in. There’s plenty to go around, so it’s an exciting time, really exciting.
It’s exciting because we’re not senior living. It is truly its own asset class. That’s pretty cool. Who knew that that would happen in my lifetime?
[00:54:47] Tim: Blazing trails. We’re getting some more audience questions, which is great. Our first question that we got was, can you talk about marketing? You’ve mentioned the importance of building a brand. Do you think that the Treplus brand name has resonance in the market in senior living? I generally hear that it’s all about the local reputation and referrals, and that having a brand isn’t as important. What would you say to that?
[00:55:16] Jane: We’re America, brands are very important. From a marketing standpoint, we have people from out of state already calling, finding out about us, and asking when we are coming. Honestly, because we send the right message, we’re getting out there, and I think that I could see somebody moving out of Ohio wanting to find another Treplus community in another area, especially if they’re moving for family purposes.
We’ve had a couple of instances where family members felt that their parents needed to be closer to them and they moved out. They were sad because they had become a part of a community. Again, we have a couple of testimonials on our website that just speak volumes to why we’re doing a good job with the branding and the service that we give to our residents.
[00:56:46] Tim: I have noticed other multifamily companies or other real estate companies in general eyeing active adult as a way to potentially try to capture some of the demand or the demographic changes that are happening in this country. What does it take for someone coming from the multifamily world to be successful in the senior housing space? Do you think some of these companies are going to fail trying to do this?
[00:57:32] Jane: What it takes is patience. The multifamily developer, and leasing velocity, marketing, it’s just totally different. Our resident isn’t necessarily going on apartments.com. We market on apartments.com and we do get people from that, but I’m just saying it’s intensive. It’s very service-oriented, and for our community directors and our leasing specialists, it’s a lot of handholding. People are moving from a 3,000-square foot house. It’s chock-full of stuff that they’ve had in there for 40 years. How do we get rid of this? We have to have people on staff who understand how that works and the emotional part of that. That’s not what multifamily is.
[00:58:46] Tim: I’ve heard some say that they think that active adult is a decent way to meet the middle market, with the idea being that because you’re not offering care, you can offer rates that are much more agreeable than an independent living community. What are your thoughts on that trend? Do you think Active Adult is a good vehicle for meeting the middle market?
[00:59:32] Jane: Yes, I do. I absolutely do. We don’t provide the services that IL and AL provide, and that’s expensive. Those are worth every nickel. It’s really what that resident is looking for. We are providing more services than the multifamily. We’re inherently going to be a little higher because we provide more services and we provide bigger units in most situations and attached garages. We’re really not an apartment, per se. We’re a home. I think that’s why we get the rents we get.
[01:00:25] Tim: We’re out of time. I just want to thank you again, Jane, for a great discussion. I know that you and I could talk until happy hour.
Companies featured in this article:
