Committed to curb appeal: including regional landscaping directors on its executive team has helped Mid-America greatly improve its communities' curb appeal through the diligent use of capital investments.

Apartment professionals have long understood the importance of excellent curb appeal in their efforts to attract residents. Despite the plethora of marketing avenues available through print, Internet and creative promotional programs, owners and managers cannot rule out the significance of the old fashioned "drive-by" to rant apartment homes. Those who own mid manage apartment communities, especially garden-style apartment communities, must maintain an intense focus on eye-catching landscaping to remain competitive.

At Mid-America Apartment Communities, landscape and curb appeal are viewed as key components of success. To support these success factors, the company employs several practices to make landscape operations more efficient through improved agronomic methods and diligent use of capital investments that add value to the properties and reduce long-term costs. As a result, more than 60 percent of Mid-America's portfolio has been recognized by more than 40 independent associations with 36 landscape awards during the past seven years, including a NAA PARAGON Award for best garden-style community in 2002.

Hire a Regional Landscape Director

When Mid-America was founded in 1977, then-CEO George Cates placed a strategic emphasis on high-quality landscaping, fostering a company culture of curb appeal that continues today. The driving force behind Mid-America's landscape initiatives is the company's Land Group.

The Land Group consists of regional landscape directors who focus on the microclimatic issues affecting landscaping and the subsequent financial effect to property operations for each community.

These directors are highly trained and educated with degrees in landscape architecture, horticulture, agronomy, business management and agricultural business.

Mid-America's regional landscape directors visit each of their communities every six to seven weeks. These visits are pre-arranged and focus on specific issues facing the community in relation to the landscaping and the season.

Regional landscape directors are integral in solving both large and small landscaping challenges. For example. Mid-America's Coastal Region (Florida) faces annual water restrictions due to drought conditions, and the regional landscape director must manage the irrigation systems to ensure compliance with municipal and legal guidelines on irrigation frequency while balancing the threat of plant mortality. The Coastal Region director was able to use this expertise to develop a watering schedule that was designed to water the plants only enough to keep them alive without sacrificing the water restriction guidelines. Several years ago, when Florida was afflicted with the worst drought in 75 years, Mid-America communities lost less than $30,000 in vegetative value due to the director's plan and knowledge of the conditions needed to keep the plants alive.

Curb Appeal Audit Walks. One specific responsibility of the Mid-America regional landscape director is to develop a quarterly community walk to identify opportunities for landscape maintenance and capital improvements. Each director attaches applicable comments and photos to these written audits for more clarity and then distributes them electronically to the appropriate landscape vendors and operations leaders.

Mid-America's Land Group relies on these walks as an effective means of developing consistent standards and accountability for its landscape supplier partners. Additionally, the audits assist in communicating the Land Group's plans and efforts to improve overall curb appeal for the communities.

Landscape Basics. In addition to carrying out conventional landscape management duties, Mid-America's Land Group is involved in twice-yearly training meetings for the company's community leaders. These meetings train leaders on specific issues (i.e. pruning, turf maintenance, annual floral installations, etc.) and overall curb appeal awareness using a PowerPoint presentation containing photos of "good" and "bad" landscaping. Community leaders are given handouts for taking notes and attaching in their landscape folder as a reference guide once back on property.

This visual guide of landscape maintenance standards is designed to communicate in basic terms to community leaders and teams about the expectations that Mid-America has for its landscape supplier partners during their weekly visits. During the training, each of the landscape directors focuses on real-time issues that are facing their specific regions. In some cases, the directors introduce new plants or floral color that they expect to incorporate into landscape design in the coming year.

Overall, this visual presentation not only equips managers with useful tools regarding the scientific nature of this arena, but also effectively communicates why curb appeal matters so much. Although quantifying the value of excel lent curb appeal in the context of a community's financial success is challenging, the importance of high-quality grounds maintenance and cleanliness for a community's residents and potential residents cannot be disputed.

Landscape Quality Audits. As Mid-America continues to grow in size and demographic separation, one key support goal for the Land Group will be how to maintain its successful track record of consistent appeal through timely onsite visits.

The company's current strategy is to have landscape supplier partners schedule monthly audits with onsite management to inspect, grade and communicate plans for the coming 30 days. This audit is sent to the regional landscape director for comment and follow-up during next the community visit. Additionally, these audits are pulled during yearly reviews with landscape supplier partners to assess improvements, gauge increases on the contract and discuss points for future business growth.

In these audits, landscape directors focus on the vendors' plans to resolve issues and improve the service by following up on past evaluations. These audits are primarily aimed at strengthening the communication between supplier partners and onsite management--where real, consistent results can be achieved and establishing written accountability, creating guidelines for future improvements and measuring the vendors' abilities to follow through with an actionable plan.

Creative Cost-Saving Solutions

Creating a more efficient and successful landscape operation may require large scale changes, such as Mid-America's creation of a focused, highly trained staff of regional experts, or it may only take simple improvements to a company's current practices. Apartment owners and managers should evaluate currant practices and seek out new and creative ways to save costs. A few examples of money-saving techniques are:

1. Groundcover At Mid-America, the "groundcover initiative" is a multi-year program aimed at planting vegetative cover in established beds to reduce the need for mulch, thus reducing overall mulch costs. For every dollar Mid-America invests in adding plants to eliminate mulch, a dollar will be saved in mulch expense within three years. This program is coordinated, evaluated and implemented for accountability by the Land Group. The program was fully implemented at the end of 2003 and is assessed quarterly by each director to ensure accuracy and accountability. (See chart.)

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2. Regional/National Landscape Supplier Partnerships By developing alliances or strong supplier partnerships in the company's larger markets, the Land Group is improving its maintenance pricing, enhancing communication and increasing efficiencies due to a lower learning curve when supplier partners am brought into new Mid-America communities. The "preferred" suppliers know the Mid-America standards and expectations and can quickly produce results and improvements to curb appeal.

These partnerships enable Mid-America to maintain controlled overhead growth within the Land Group, allowing the group to increase its support roles without losing key performance efficacies. Additionally, the partnership program of the Land Group is in line with the company's growth in large-tier markets.

3. Irrigation Mid-America has initiated a program supporting water conservation and cost controls through wells, meters and zone design. Through this program, Mid-America is equipping communities with the necessary controls for reduced water costs. For example, on some of Mid-America's larger properties, the lead landscape technician is trained on irrigation basics--such as head/rotor replacement, small value repairs and lateral line repairs--to control the extensive labor costs from professional irrigation contractors. During the past four years, these communities have seen double digit expense improvement by enlisting the internal Mid-America landscape technicians to complete all irrigation repairs.

More with Less

Creating and maintaining attractive landscaping on multifamily housing communities requires a commitment to curb appeal excellence by the owners, but does not necessarily require more of a capital investment than what many companies currently spend on their landscape programs.

By focusing the right people on the task at hand, working with property operations management through communication and training and finding new and creative ways to improve current landscape practices, multifamily housing operators can get more return out of their curb appeal efforts.

David Nischwitz, Vice President, Director of Landscape Operations, Mid-America Apartment Communities, is a 13-year veteran of the landscape beautification and design industry. He oversees all landscape and curb appeal operations for Mid-America Apartment Communities, a multifamily housing REIT that spans 12 states and more than 36,000 units across the Southeast and South Central United States. He can be reached at 901/248-4129 or [e-mail].