There are several reasons Sequoia Equities is a decorated industry leader, but the key differentiator is our company culture and its direct effect on our bottom line.
Sequoia’s internal employee mantra, “The Experience Matters”, is embedded into all of our associates’ interactions with our prospective customers, residents, vendors, and owners/investors. As a result, they are committed to providing sales, management, and customer service support of the highest caliber. Sequoia empowers our on-site management team members to deliver operational excellence daily through thorough training on financial decision making and its direct correlation to their property’s net operating income and asset value.
To reinforce this, our company’s compensation and rewards programs align to the business objectives and financial performance of your asset. The executive administration at Sequoia understands that strategic investments in our company culture and brand experience, are the key ingredients in our success. As a result, our company has received local and national recognition for excellence in training, marketing, and property management.
Click below to see more in-depth information relating to our core property management services.
Training & Benchmarking:
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Staying true to our corporate slogan of
“The Experience Matters,” we’ve carefully designed our training programs to be meaningful, practical, and a beneficial investment of time.
- Our employee turnover continues to be well below the industry average of 60%. In addition, we consistently fill many of our open positions by internal team members earning promotions.
- Sequoia University offers two training tracks for new and seasoned team members, which allows our new team members to be completely up-to-speed within 30 days of their start date.
- Online course registration and credits system.
- Blended learning environments allow our team members to spend 70% of their training time in a classroom setting, and 30% learning virtually, which has enabled us to keep our per employee annualized training cost well below the industry standard cost.*
- Hands-on maintenance training that takes service team members out of the classroom and into the field to disassemble appliances, turn apartments, and troubleshoot common repair requests.
* Based on an industry poll of 35 reputable management companies.
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Marketing:
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Sequoia’s performance has historically outperformed the market, and continues to do so, even in difficult economic times. We believe creativity must be applied to achieve bottom-line results. Through prudent research, we are able to create actionable marketing plans with strategies that allow us to compete effectively in dynamic markets, while discovering and embracing emerging customer groups. Our forward-thinking investments in brand experience allow Sequoia to enjoy low customer acquisition and resident retention costs, while maintaining optimal occupancy and income.
To fully benefit from the costs of acquisition, Sequoia provides a differentiated product that is adapted to the needs of our target customers and/or market segments. Sequoia’s differentiator is that we deliver upon our promise to make the experience matter, through creating a customer-centric organization, that starts and stops with a strategic customer experience management plan.
Our plan comes to life through S Club, a campaign that carefully attends to how we create value for our customers, over the life of our relationship with them. S Club, presents a comprehensive framework for our company to build customer equity as the basis for achieving long-term competitive advantage in our industry.
By placing emphasis on customer experience, we can elongate the average length of residency, which reduces our turnover and customer acquisition costs.
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Strategic Repositioning:
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Sequoia’s in-house renovations team has the experience and know-how to deliver full unit renovations quickly to minimize down time and vacancy loss. Our deep-rooted vendor relationships allow us to optimize expense control throughout the entire construction process. We have successfully repositioned community profiles and enhanced monthly rent premiums substantially, as a result of our renovations.
- We offer several renovation styles, which allow us to adjust our construction costs and maximize rent premiums successfully in a variety of markets with varying demographic profiles.
- Individual budgets are created corroboratively between renovations team, contractors, and Sequoia’s executive management to ensure expense control and positive return on investment.
- Unit improvements vary based on the asset and demographic profile, but could include: cabinets, flooring, countertops, appliances, fireplaces, doors, windows, electrical, and plumbing.
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Asset Management:
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Our seasoned risk management team oversees all aspects of potential hazards, threats, or disasters to our communities, residents, and employees. This begins at the time of due diligence and continues throughout the entire lifecycle of ownership/management of the asset.
- Due diligence: During a potential takeover, our risk management team conducts a thorough audit of resident files and necessary repairs needed for the physical asset. We also identify possible safety issues that could affect our residents and/or employees.
- Semi-annual risk walks: Twice per year we partner with our on-site managers to facilitate a full risk audit and confirm that our teams and properties are in compliance with all safety requirements.
- Action planning: When a safety violation occurs, action plans are developed to communicate, document and ensure resolution.
- 1/12 Unit Inspections: Each month our teams complete unit inspections for their communities and look for possible risk due to water intrusion, ventilation, fire prevention, etc.
- Legal inquiries: All legal inquiries, worker’s compensation claims, and incident reports are handled by our risk department.
- Contracts & Insurance: All vendor and insurance contracts are approved through our risk management department to make certain the appropriate verbiage and requirements are met.
- Major payments: We confirm all major construction and renovations payments to prevent overages and ensure that billing is in-line with contracts.
- Training: Our department frequently reaches out to site team members in order to proactively train our team on new risk trends, and other policies pertaining to our department.
- Mold O&M: Our Mold Operations & Maintenance Flowchart provides our site team members a step-by-step procedure geared toward preserving our assets, providing excellent customer service and preventing fungal growth in instances of building water intrusion and/or resident housekeeping issues.
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Student Housing:
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As an emerging leader, Sequoia’s award-winning Student Housing Division specializes in the management of student communities.
Our experienced executive team has an incomparable understanding of how to analyze various student markets, which drives how we market, lease, and operate our communities. We have a proven track record of stabilizing new acquisitions, pre-leasing construction, and resurrecting underperforming student assets.
Sequoia Equities’ Student Housing allows us to effectively target our marketing, retention, and public relations strategies to our student customers. Sequoia also leverages several social media platforms to create viral student marketing campaigns.
Sequoia’s foremost competitive advantage is our ability to develop and maintain partnerships with key university personnel and departments on campus.
