Here is a great article we found from the Wall Street Journal. We hope it's helpful to your business!

Read the original post here. 

JANUARY 4, 2011, 11:03 AM ET

UDR Inc.

The Savoye

Chris Lang has spent a decade living in apartment communities filled with strangers.

But at the Savoye, an upscale complex just outside of Dallas, he knows 20 residents by name, neighbors with whom he attends social activities ranging from brunch to move night. He credits owner UDR Inc.’s in-house social-networking site, where residents can post pictures and brief personal blurbs, with taking him beyond stranger status.

“It actually does feel like there is a community,” the 35-year-old says. “Most apartment complexes I’ve been in, you’re lucky if you can get a ‘hello’ out of your neighbors.”

A rental landlord spearheading social networking? That’s just the tip of the electronic iceberg. As we write in today’s Journal, the nation’s apartment owners, long an old-fashioned bunch known more for thick bundles of leasing paperwork and unreachable maintenance staff, are embracing technology. They want to appear more relevant to Generation X and the Echo Boomers, a large, rent-happy bunch that’s comfortable doing everything online. “We’re adapting to the way they want to do business with us,” says H. Andrew Cantor, UDR’s vice president of investor relations.

Many owners are ramping up their websites and smart-phone apps, adding detailed pictures and comprehensive video tours. Tenants can ink and renew leases online—without ever stepping foot on the property—and, as Lang might discover, chat up that cute gal from 4D. In-house social networking sites could someday be mined to specifically to market to people looking for say, a dog-friendly community or one filled with runners.

With the bulk of renters starting their search online, landlords are increasing their electronic presence, making sure they’re found in via Web searches, visible on Facebook and Twitter.AvalonBay Communities Inc. has pictures on photo-sharing site Flickr. Rental giant Equity Residential has distributed six Flip video cameras to staffers who are filming floor plans. The videos will be edited and uploaded to YouTube LLC early next year.

But landlords have taken their sites well beyond advertising vehicles. In some cases, prospective tenants see the actual view an apartment would offer. AvalonBay is piloting a program across eight communities that lets prospective tenants see what exact units are available, view individual floor plans and put specific apartments on hold online.

Operators are also using technology to help keep residents. Tenants can electronically pay rent, submit a maintenance request and even print a guest parking pass for friends at any hour of the day.

This is where social networking comes in: Residents who make friends, they reason, are more likely to stick around for another lease term or two.

About one-third of AvalonBay’s communities have individual Facebook pages and each complex is expected to be online next year, says VP of Marketing Kevin Thompson. Some operators pay outside firms to monitor the page and keep it up-to-date, while others leave it up to each community.

The results appear mixed. Just four people “like” Equity Residential’s Chandler Courtapartments in Chandler, Ariz., and no one has posted on the “wall” since July of 2009. But nearly 2,000 people like Avalon Fort Greene in New York City. Postings include someone looking to arrange a play date and an offer of $50 a day for a dog sitter.

AvalonBay is exploring way to augment Facebook with a community-centric centric site.

Part of the problem is that, given Facebook’s millions of members, non-residents could easily post and snoop. (Do you really want to tell the world you’ll be out of town?) That’s one reason why UDR facilitates friendships internally. So far, 50 communities are on board, with more expected next year. The company wouldn’t discuss cost, except to say it is not “overly significant.”

Residents can, of course, avoid the feature. So can landlords.

Jamie Lefrak, whose family-owned company operates thousands of apartments in New York and on the West Coast, says he has no plans to dabble in online social networking. His reason? “My tenants have lives.”

Follow Dawn on Twitter @dwotapka

Great Carpet Advice for Asthma/Allergy Sufferers

Great Advice on Carpet and Asthma from an Indiana Carpet Cleaner

I love it when I find great information online about carpet. In the maelstrom of myth and misinformation surrounding carpet on the internet, every now and then I find a nugget of solid advice. In this case, it’s a blog post written by David Gruttadaurio who owns UBS Clean Care in Indiana.

David’s blog post is entitled, Carpeting and Asthma/Allergy Sufferers - a Bad Mix?, and it is a straightforward, comprehensive look at the topic that is fun to read. I urge you to read his original post, but here are some excerpts:

Is ripping out the carpet the answer? 

This is what I do know for sure - only 12 people out of 100 clean their carpeting… ever. Of that number, about a third chooses to do it themselves. Vacuuming? Most people say they vacuum every week. The honest ones tell me they’re lucky to vacuum the carpets once a month...

How many people would tolerate their hard surface flooring (tile, wood, etc.) having spills and food and mud and grease all over it… and then keep it that way for years!...

Is it any wonder that health issues are aggravated by an unhealthy and bacteria infested carpet? It’s not the poor carpet’s fault. All it needs is routine maintenance.

How routine? Vacuum it twice a week with a quality vacuum that has high-efficiency micro-filtration bags. Micro-filtration bags will trap even the tiniest of particles, such as dust mites and their feces, to keep it from becoming airborne.

Then have it professionally cleaned at least once a year (preferably twice a year). Every major carpet manufacturer recommends this same routine.

The construction issue

Many people feel that since hard flooring is… well, hard… that it’s a more sanitary surface since there is no place for the dust to settle. And this is true. But if you are an allergy or asthma sufferer, this is really bad news.

The very ‘complaint’ that people have about carpeting is actually its best characteristic: The fact that it has soft and fuzzy fibers make it act like a filter or a sink. It traps and holds all of the junk and contaminants we haul in to our homes on our clothing and shoes.

Hard floors cannot do that. The dust (a lot of which is dust mite do-do) has nowhere to land so it’s constantly airborne and being breathed in.

In fact, one way to prove that to you is to watch the air in a home when the sun is shining through a window. With clean, carpeted surfaces, you see some dust in the air, but not much. In a home with hard floors, you see much more dust because there is less surface in the home that holds onto dust.

Even if your vacuum doesn't have a good filter bag, these dust-mite allergens disappear from the air about 20 minutes after vacuuming. This is because they are heavy enough that they’ve settled back down into the carpet. And if the vacuum uses micro-filtration bags or if it has a HEPA filter, the allergens are efficiently removed before even becoming airborne during vacuuming.

David outlines the following two options:

#1: Have carpet in the home hold onto contaminants, keeping them away from your breathing space, and remove these contaminants with regular vacuuming and cleaning...

#2: Have hard floors in the home, which do not hold contaminants but instead allows them to "hang out" in the air, likely triggering allergen reactions from the occupants...

Here’s the bottom line of living with carpeting: Your carpet is a terrific filter. But you gotta clean it! If you don’t, the pollens, dander, dust, etc. will build up until your carpet is completely overrun with this stuff, aggravating allergies, asthma and many other breathing conditions.

Thank you, David. I couldn’t say it better myself.

~Bethany

 Georgina Sikorski, Executive Director, CARE 

1 of 3 - Georgina Sikorski, Executive Director of CARE (Carpet America Recovery Effort) provides an update on the organization's goals, various constituency groups. CARE has worked with entrepreneurial groups to develop new products manufactured from recycled carpet and has worked hard to create a carpet collection network. Sikorski also talks about the group's efforts to encourage government agencies to procure products produced by CARE members and how industry members can assist in CARE’s work. 

To see the interview, click on the header above.