The Apartment Department
Multifamily marketing does not stand still. Neither do we. The Apartment Department is a podcast for multifamily (apartment) marketers, operators and industry partners who want to think differently about how marketing drives performance. Through conversations with marketing leaders, suppliers, and operators who are shaping the future of multifamily, we focus on what they are building, testing, and refining to strengthen marketing teams and drive measurable results. Our goal is simple. We want you to leave each episode with a new perspective and at least one idea worth testing. Hosted by Anne Baum and Chris Johnson, exploring how strategy, systems, and performance intersect in multifamily. Produced by Carlos Marquez.
Episodes
What if renters aren't choosing communities based on amenities at all?
In this episode, Lia Nichole Smith, Chief Brand Strategist at Spherexx, joins Anne Baum and Chris Johnson to explore the rise of identity economics and what it means for the future of multifamily.
Lia argues that today's renters are increasingly making housing decisions based on identity, belonging, and community fit rather than simply comparing fe...
Andrea Taylor, Founder and CEO of Livsee, joins Anne Baum and Chris Johnson to discuss how AI is reshaping multifamily leasing, pricing, and operations by turning renter conversations into a continuous source of intelligence.
Andrea shares how operators are using AI-powered follow-up to re-engage lost leads, improve tour conversion, and uncover what prospects and residents actually care about. These signals are then ...
This week, Anne and Chris sit down with Martin Canchola, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Apartment SEO and founder of Multifamily Builders Club, for a conversation about how apartment search is evolving and what multifamily marketers should actually be paying attention to right now.
Martin explains why many of the SEO fundamentals marketers have heard about for years, like local listings, reputation manageme...
This week on The Apartment Department, Anne Baum and Chris Johnson sit down with Brian Miller, Director of Partner Experience and Engagement at Zillow Rentals, for a conversation about what marketing teams are really navigating right now.
Drawing from conversations with operators and marketers across the country, Brian shares the patterns he’s seeing across the industry, including affordability pressure, rising...
This week, Anne and Chris welcome back Jude Chiy, founder and CEO of Flamingo, for one of their most candid and wide-ranging conversations yet. Jude opens up about the early struggles that shaped his leadership style, including hiring mistakes that pushed him to completely rethink how he builds and manages a team, and how those hard lessons led him to build a company where every role, every feature, and every decisi...
Marketing and operations are aligned around the same goal: stronger performance across the portfolio. In practice, that alignment often takes shape through reactive and responsive workflows.
In this episode, Justin Godwin, Director of Marketing Strategy and Innovation at Cushman & Wakefield, breaks down what it actually takes to evolve that dynamic at scale.
From restructuring a lean marketing team supporting hund...
What role does visual content actually play in apartment performance—and why are most operators still treating it like a one-off asset instead of a system?
In this episode, Anne Baum and Chris Johnson sit down with Izzy Carunungan of LCP (Lights, Camera, Pixels) to unpack how photos, 3D tours, and unit-level media are evolving from marketing “nice-to-haves” into operational infrastructure.
They explo...
Marketing cannot operate in a silo. When strategy lives in one department and execution lives in another, performance breaks down.
In this episode, Paul McClain, founder of AiinaT Brand Solutions, joins us to share how he helps bridge the gap between marketing strategy and site teams. From digital audits and attribution conversations to middle funnel exposure and renter behavior shifts, Paul breaks down what happens ...
In this episode, Jillian Fickert of Buckingham Companies joins Anne Baum and Chris Johnson for a practical conversation about what it really takes to make marketing a trusted, strategic function inside a multifamily organization.
They explore how marketing leaders can move beyond the “cost center” label by building credibility through transparency, shared language, and clear performance visibility. Jillia...
In this episode of The Apartment Department, Anne and Chris sit down with D.D. Cobb, Regional Director at Apartments.com, to unpack how the apartment search has fundamentally changed.
Today’s renters are making decisions long before they ever tour a property. Powered by AI, mobile-first search, and radically different expectations around transparency, the traditional prospect journey is being replaced by a digi...
In this episode Anne and Chris sit down with Kara Rafferty, National Director of Sales at Apartment Geo-Fencing, for a long-anticipated conversation on what collaboration in multifamily really looks like.
Kara brings a wide-ranging perspective shaped by years on the vendor side of the industry, deep involvement with apartment associations, and a passion for building relationships that go beyond transactions. The conv...
In this episode, Chris and Anne speak with Tamela Coval and Tami Siewruk, two of the creators of Multifamily NEXT, a series of hands-on workshops designed to integrate artificial intelligence into the apartment industry. The guests explain that their "hackathon-style" events are moving beyond abstract concepts to help property owners and executives achieve AI fluency and operational efficiency. They emphasize that w...
In this episode, Chris and Anne speak with Ben Pleat, the co-founder and CEO of Cobu. A technology platform designed to help multifamily marketers and owners drive resident satisfaction and community engagement, which in turn boosts occupancy and retention rates. Pleat shares that the genesis of Cobu was inspired by his mother's feeling of isolation despite living in a luxury Manhattan apartment building, revealing ...
In this episode, we sit down with Brent Camp of Asset Living and Arthur Kosmider of LeFrak to explore how Artificial Intelligence is reshaping property management and rental housing. Their perspective is clear: AI isn’t here to replace people, it’s here to remove the repetitive, low-value tasks that drain time and energy from on-site teams.
Brent and Arthur break down how automation is transforming everyd...
In this episode, Daniel Paulino, VP of Real Estate at Reputation.com discusses the growing importance of digital reputation, dubbed "digital curb appeal", for the multifamily housing industry, particularly how it affects property visibility in search engines and AI-driven recommendations. Daniel explains that a simple average star rating is no longer sufficient; Google’s algorithm uses nine different factors, ...
In this episode of The Apartment Department, co-host Chris Johnson sits down with Minna Song, CEO of EliseAI, to discuss how artificial intelligence is transforming multifamily operations. For nearly a decade, EliseAI has helped properties automate leasing, maintenance, and resident communications—cutting lead-to-lease times from 30 days to just 14 and boosting renewal retention by 9%.
Minna shares how EliseAI&...
In this episode, Justin Jones, Shelly Steitz, and Anne Baum recap their experience at the Blueprint Conference including the vibe, their favorite takeaways for key technologies and AI, the opportunity for vendors and operators to co-build and co-collaborate, and some advice for first-timers in 2026.
Flamingo - Resident Retention App
400K+ units use Flamingo’s Resident Retention Platform to stop Retention Lea...
In this episode, Chris and Anne talk with Marge Enrique about her extensive journey in transforming her company's approach to marketing data, emphasizing the importance of moving beyond simple last-touch attribution to a more comprehensive multi-touch model using tools like HyLy and Remarkably. Enrique details her strategies for data cleaning, source tracking, and building in-house attribution models, contrasting th...
Have you ever wondered how the reputation and resident experience of your property actually impact marketing success and NOI? In this episode, Devin Shurtleff, CEO of Opiniion, shares their data around the ROI of reputation. In addition, the conversation highlights the critical role of resident satisfaction in multifamily marketing, emphasizing how positive online reviews and feedback directly impact key...
Data is transforming how multifamily operators approach marketing, from measuring KPIs to optimizing lead conversion. Understanding which metrics matter and how to act on them is critical for improving occupancy and revenue.
In this episode of The Apartment Department, Aimee Farmer, VP of Marketing at Middleburg Communities, shares how she’s redefining marketing through data-driven strategies. The conversation ...
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