{"id":13985,"date":"2015-10-23T05:00:57","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T12:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/?p=13985"},"modified":"2020-12-24T03:34:53","modified_gmt":"2020-12-24T11:34:53","slug":"executives-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/executives-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Executives of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Fifield_151014_379\"
Steve and Randy Fifield with Jeff Adler, Vice President, Yardi Matrix.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You may think the secret to success is money, recognition or luck, but Steven and Randy Fifield, MHN\u2019s 2015 Executives of the Year, shared that their success started with peanut butter and jelly. At the annual Multi-Housing News Excellence Awards<\/a>\u00a0on October 14th at Club 101 in Manhattan, the Fifields engaged in a panel discussion with Yardi Matrix Vice President Jeff Adler (photo, left), and shared some advice, insights and anecdotes from their long careers in real estate as Chairs of the Fifield Companies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While discussing the ins and outs of experiential marketing, Randy\u00a0said that in order to make apartment living attractive to busy professionals with money to spend, she\u2019d serve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to people who work in the area and would stop in on their lunch break. \u201cWhat they do is they work in the CBD (central business district) and then they come home to let the dog out because we have beautiful parks around the neighborhood, and they\u2019d eat peanut butter and jelly because they could talk on the phone and nothing would drip on them and they\u2019d let the dog out, have this great life and then walk back to work,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Obviously the road to success is not literally paved with peanut butter and jelly, but serving homemade sandwiches is just one anecdote that personifies the Fifields\u2019 knack for giving renters what they want before they even know exactly what that is. It\u2019s not an easy feat, especially in a market where the renters themselves are evolving almost as quickly\u00a0as their demands are. \u201cThe median age has been moving up; 95 percent of the renters are college graduates. The median income in virtually all these transit-oriented urban projects has been over $100,000. It\u2019s a totally different market, this urban in-fill market. You\u2019re getting well-paid, hard-working, well-educated people. They call it renters by choice, as opposed to renters by necessity,\u201d noted Steven.<\/p>\n

\u201cApartments today are smaller, living spaces are smaller, but those amenities and those services are greater,\u201d observed Randy. Steven\u00a0said those services include exercise instructors, dog care services and other amenities, which he says are comparable to a \u201cfive-star hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n

While living like you\u2019re on a resort may seem decadent, the Fifields realize that, for most of their residents, renting by choice is a way for them to splurge on things they wouldn\u2019t necessarily have if they were paying a mortgage and keeping up with their own home. \u201cWe have 60-year-old partners in law firms who are renting units with half-a-million-dollar-a-year incomes,\u201d said Steven. \u201cIt\u2019s a diverse group, and the ages are spread. It\u2019s [ages] 26-33 and each year that\u2019s gone by, [the renters\u2019 average age has] moved up another year. I think a lot of people are choosing not to own, or getting out of houses and not even buying condos.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Fifields understand that their high-income, career-oriented renters want more out of their living arrangements, and they use this information to inform their strategy in other asset classes as well. \u201cYou see that the hotel, residential and office businesses are all starting to overlap, and it\u2019s all related to this experiential approach,\u201d said Steven, noting that office lobbies that\u00a0were once sparse and utilitarian now resemble hotel lobbies, with more attention to seating options and Wi-Fi capabilities. \u201cPeople will schedule meetings and they\u2019ll actually meet in the lobbies instead of in their offices,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

While the cubicle setup is the norm in most offices, Randy\u00a0contends that many employees don\u2019t work optimally in this environment, citing noise and limited conference room space as obstacles to efficient performance. In Fifield office buildings, there is a modified approach to this layout, with a mix of communal and individual work space. \u201cIf you want those communal opportunities, they\u2019re available to you as you choose them,\u201d she said. \u201cThis office environment also becomes an extension of your home, and the comfort level and the quality of your work is better, because you\u2019re relaxed. You can work, live and play inside your office space, and we cultivate that same experience in our office buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Find out all of the 2015\u00a0MHN Excellence Awards winners here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may think the secret to success is money, recognition or luck, but Steven and Randy Fifield, MHN\u2019s 2015 Executives of the Year, shared that their success started with peanut butter and jelly. At the annual Multi-Housing News Excellence Awards\u00a0on October 14th at Club 101 in Manhattan, the Fifields engaged in a panel discussion with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":442,"featured_media":13986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_s2mail":"yes","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[289,1280,595,1279,29,543],"class_list":["post-13985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-apartments","tag-excellence-awards","tag-industry","tag-mhn","tag-multifamily","tag-renting"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nYardi Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You may think the secret to success is money, recognition or luck, but Steven and Randy Fifield, MHN\u2019s 2015 Executives of the Year, shared that their\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Executives of the Year\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"You may think the secret to success is money, recognition or luck, but Steven and Randy Fifield, MHN\u2019s 2015 Executives of the Year, shared that their\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/executives-of-the-year\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Yardi Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-10-23T12:00:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-12-24T11:34:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2015\/10\/Fifield_151014_379.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"900\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Yardi Blog Staff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Yardi Blog Staff\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/executives-of-the-year\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/executives-of-the-year\/\",\"name\":\"Executives of the Year - 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