Corporate Housing Providers Blog – - Advice, News, and More

There’s been a lot of talk about providing healthcare for employees these days.  One of the many versions of the new healthcare reform bill creates a tax credit for small businesses that provide their employees with health insurance.  But it’s hard to weigh the cost-benefit analysis of providing that health insurance. (more…)

Joe Girard is in the Guinness Book of World Records for selling 1, 425 cars in 1973 alone. In his book, How to Sell Anything to Anybody, he describes what he calls “birddogs” as a simple referral process between himself and people to whom he has sold cars. He offers a small reward in exchange for a referral to his office. (more…)

In a recent discussion thread on CHPA’s group on LinkedIn, Jim Drass discussed negotiating lower rents with your property. As discussed in a previous blog, hotels are slashing their rates by as much as a third, and in order to keep up the corporate housing industry had better adjust to the current market as well. The New York Times reported that as the real estate market has cooled, many buildings are seeing more vacancies and making more concessions to attract tenants. As Drass says, it’s an excellent time to negotiate a drop in rent or an increase in concessions.

AHRN, or Army Housing Referral Network, is a new website that caters to military personnel in search of apartments. It’s a free service, and it’s easy to sign up, but third-party providers beware: I attempted to sign up for a Fort in the Midwest and was told I needed to have an actual physical address in order to participate in the website. I passed my contact info along to the project manager and asked to be contacted when the website reached a stage of further development. So unless you carry long-term leases in the area you want to list in, you’re going to get kicked off of the site.

In a previous blog, I discussed upcoming trade show conferences. I chose to list the obvious ones you may want to attend (SHRM, NBTA, Worldwide ERC, and CHPA). But it doesn’t hurt to reach out to your target market and attend their trade shows as well. For example, if you attend the Travel Medical Professionals Conference in Las Vegas from September 21st-23rd, you may be the only provider with a booth there. The website allconferences.com offers a comprehensive list of conferences across the country, organized by trade.

In a recent CHPA newsletter, it was announced that Furnished Quarters had donated over 1, 600 items to Furnish a Future, a program run by The Partnership for the Homeless in New York City. The program furnished houses for those who were previously without homes. Participants in the program select furniture from a warehouse in Brooklyn, and the program delivers it to their apartment. (more…)