Student housing presents unique challenges to property managers, especially considering that, in most cases, all the units of a property have to be turned at the same time.

Turning an entire property at once can place significant strain not only on the facility but also on available resources. If not done efficiently, this kind of turn can quickly eat into a manager’s bottom line.

Managers turning a student housing property often shoulder the entire project management load—sourcing product, storage and labor individually and missing out on key benefits that come from vertically integrating those tasks.

In the past, it was all but impossible to find a supplier or service provider that could handle all the critical aspects of turning a whole property. Even if there was such a partner, it was highly unlikely that
they were integrated into the existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or other purchasing mechanisms.

Today, big box retailers like The Home Depot have integrated their product catalogs and full suite of services into a number of major ERP service providers, such as Yardi, RealPage and more—opening the door for an entirely new type of highly efficient manager-supplier relationship.

Project management is the key to getting a student housing facility turned and ready for a new batch of residents in time and on budget, eliminating many of the inefficiencies that lead to additional costs and cut into profits.

It starts with proactively sourcing product well in advance of the turn—-typically around December—-looking ahead to June and July. This is probably the service for which retailers like The Home Depot are most well-known, especially with the company’s recent acquisition of Interline Brands, which specializes in MRO sourcing and fulfillment.

Once the product is sourced, the obvious need is to establish a reliable schedule for fulfillment and delivery, which is where the footprint of a national retailer like The Home Depot really comes into play.

With more than 2,200 stores, managers can lean on that footprint—especially to help with temporary storage and a sort of makeshift staging area when the time comes to start installing.

For example, a facility might need all new appliances, but instead of being forced to find a place for hundreds of washers and dryers when they’re delivered all at once, managers can break up the delivery to make installation and storage much more manageable.

Maybe 50 are needed this week, 50 the next, and so on until the installation is completed, and far more efficiently than in the past.

Then the installation itself can prove costly—previously forcing managers to once again find a separate partner or individual contractors to handle the painting, flooring, appliances, plumbing, etc. By vertically integrating with a single partner, however, managers can rely on the same team handling their product procurement, storage, delivery and now—services and installation.

Student housing managers can dramatically streamline the process of turning an entire property with a single partner, and still have one person helping to get it done along the way. The Home Depot, for example, has a dedicated outside sales force whose sole purpose is to make sure this process goes off without a hitch.