Student Housing Business is the voice of the student housing industry.
Issue link: https://studenthousingbusiness.epubxp.com/i/488341
INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS STUDENT HOUSING BUSINESS .COM MARCH/APRIL 2015 63 455 Epps Bridge Pkwy, Athens, GA 30606 LandmarkProperties.com | 706.543.1910 THE MARK AT ATHENS: 928 BEDS DEVELOPMENT | CONSTRUCTION | MANAGEMENT | INVESTMENT Landmark Properties is a fully integrated real estate firm specializing in the investment, development, construction and management of high quality communities. With over 6,000 beds currently under development, Landmark is one of the most active student housing developers in the country. Landmark is pursuing the following opportunities: development sites near major universities, JV development opportunities, older apartment complexes pedestrian to campus, and third party management opportunities. with family and friends back home via Skype and other social media tools. Marketing 101 If a property has what interna- tional students want, such as easy access or walkability to campus and good Internet connection with ample space to focus on academics, it's then up to the management to make sure students in countries thousands of miles away know about it. For Hrabe, of Trinitas Ventures, "the number one lead source is always resident referrals. As a student coming to a new country, international students are apt to lease at a community where their friends live and have had good experiences." According to Benefel, "The best way to market to international students is hitting them in their home countries. By sending fy- ers or packages to study abroad program directors or international studies programs in foreign coun- tries, we've been able to deter- mine the traffc from our targeted universities." Ambling also reaches out to the international organizations on the campuses where their prop- erties are located. Benefel says that Ambling will establish a rela- tionship with a campus's Chinese Student Association or provide shuttle services from the airport. Similarly, Ambling will often translate its marketing collateral into Farsi, Mandarin and vari- ous European languages. Lease contracts and documents stay in English, but frequently an inter- national student will have a guar- antor or advisor to assist them through the language barrier. Ambling has also made strides to improve its search results in Baidu, the Chinese equivalent of Google. "Cultural misunderstandings are a huge problem. We have to under- stand where international students are coming from, as well as col- loquial terms," says Benefel. For instance, Asian students are used to providing "key money," or a year's worth of rent to lease an apartment. Ambling has begun uti- lizing the phrase "zero key money" to convey that only a much smaller International students often do not arrive on campus with a friend group and utilize common spaces to socialize and learn about other cultures.