Yael (00:12)

Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of our show. It's such a beautiful day today in New York, and we have a very special guest with us. We're going to talk all about the multifamily industry and hear from one of the leading voices about where the future of living is headed. Please welcome Amanda Kitts. Amanda, thank you so much for coming to our show.

Amanda (00:38)

Yael, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I'm glad you're having a good day in New York — it is raining here in Charlotte, North Carolina. It's been raining for three days, so I'm glad you're having a bright sunny day.

Yael (00:49)

I was just going to say that — I know North Carolina and South Carolina are experiencing some rain.

Amanda (00:56)

We have to have the rain to have the flowers.

Yael (00:58)

We gotta have the rain to have the flowers. I'm really excited for our conversation today, particularly because I know that the way you lead is different from typical multifamily leaders. You've been around for nearly 30 years and seen this industry shift so many times. You're from Cleveland originally, you moved to Charlotte in 2002, and now you're the VP of Operations at RPM Living. How did it all get started? What was it in those first years that made you decide to build a career in multifamily?

Amanda (01:44)

I was young, just like everyone else, figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. I was a very early mom, so I didn't go to college and was just trying to figure things out. I got into nursing and planned on being a nurse, working for a hospital that was going to pay my way through college. I did that for maybe two or three years and thought: this just isn't for me. I'm from Cleveland, and it would snow really badly. I'd work from seven to three and then there'd be a blizzard, so I'd have to work until eight, nine, ten o'clock until the next shift could come in — and that left me in a daycare conundrum. I thought: I don't really love working weekends and holidays. I'll get a desk job. And that's how I got started. I got a job as a receptionist at a real estate company and thought — perfect. No weekends, no holidays. And then now look at me. Vice president of property management for the fourth largest property management company in the United States. I have approximately 10,000 units, 42 properties, and I cover the mid-Atlantic — from the Baltimore-DC area to coastal Savannah, Georgia. It's been amazing, but I do work weekends and holidays and I don't get off at five o'clock. What I thought was going to be a nice easy nine-to-five has turned out to be this amazing career, full of hard work and dedication. But it's been very rewarding, very good for me as a mother. I raised four kids — sometimes by myself — and I didn't miss PTA meetings, basketball games, or parent-teacher conferences. I was still able to contribute to volunteer events at their schools. This career has loved me back as much as I've poured into it.

Yael (03:47)

That's beautiful. And such a valuable lesson for our listeners — that it's possible to build a career while doing other things, and to find the right culture to help you nurture your own goals and your family. It takes me to the first question about your leadership style. You mentioned in one of our calls that you never want to be the smartest person in the room and that people always remember how you make them feel. Could you tell me about your current team and how you lead such a large organization? How do you balance growth while staying personal?

Amanda (04:26)

Everyone wants to be managed differently. You can't treat everybody the same — and you surely can't treat everyone how you want to be treated, because how I want to be talked to might be very different from how they want to be. It's about acknowledging everyone's management style, how they like to learn, how they want to lead, and how they want to be led. One of our little sayings in the group is: progress, not perfection. We don't expect anyone to be perfect, but we do expect progress. My management style is like Kobe Bryant — rest in peace — competition and the constant drive to get better every day, to hone in on your craft. Our team welcomes feedback. I always try to make sure they're in a good place to receive it — if they've had an awful day and needed 10 leases and got one, I'm not going to pile on negative feedback. I also ask: do you want me to fix it, or do you want me to feel it? Because I'm going to listen and react differently depending on that. Just communicating with all of them helps us be a cohesive group. When I joined RPM in September of 2023, my group had maybe 11 active properties and maybe 15 or 16 total in the pipeline. We're at 42 properties today with 24 clients, just in my region alone. That growth shows how hard our teams work and how much they care. They have passion that's just unmatched. And internal growth is truly the best growth — when a current client says "you guys are getting the next deal," that means everything to us.

Yael (06:47)

I really feel it when I work with RPM — from the community manager to the property manager to the regional manager. Building culture starts from the top, and it starts with people realizing their workplace and leadership genuinely cares about them.

Amanda (07:07)

When Goldie Bartlett, our division president, joined — someone posted something on LinkedIn and my feed blew up. I got 15 or 20 text messages from people across the industry saying: you guys are getting a good one. And since she and I have been working together, I can say she embodies culture. She is all about the people. She wants to make sure that we're happy, that we're being grown, that we're being heard. I'll be on the phone with her talking about internal challenges or things I want to do better, and she's jotting notes — and sometimes by the end of that day she's already looping me in on how she's going to address it. She really, really cares. And that makes us all want to do anything for her.

Yael (08:00)

Let's talk about the day-to-day. You've mentioned that you treat each property like it's your own multimillion-dollar investment. Each property is its own ecosystem, its own geography, its own lifestyle. Can you share a specific example of that mindset and how it makes a real difference?

Amanda (08:34)

If we were standing in an elevator and you asked what I do for a living, I'd say: I rent apartments — and I play whack-a-mole. You're always trying to hit the biggest fire. But on a serious note, I look at every asset personally. Sometimes I work for a family who all put their money into this pot and bought a multimillion-dollar deal. So I think: if this was me and my brother's hard-earned money, how would I want to staff it? How do I want it to portray itself to the community? What kind of community partner do I want this apartment community to be? What do I want people who live here to feel? Home is personal, so we take it personally. We know that you're going to get married, have a baby, get a divorce at one of our apartment communities. You might have to bury your parents. You might bury your dog. All those life-cycle things happen at our properties. We want to be strategic on growing rents and honoring our fiduciary responsibility to clients — but we also want a young Amanda to say: you can start off leasing and answering phones here, and the sky is the limit. When you take that personal approach, it just matters so much more. Our clients are not a number. Our people are not a number. And it shows in everything we do day to day.

Yael (10:18)

When you scale that philosophy — from 11 to 42 properties — what was the key to making it grow so quickly in two years?

Amanda (10:37)

Culture comes from the top down, and so does that leadership philosophy. If my boss's boss's boss takes it personally, I'm going to take it personally. All the way from our CEO and president — he cares. He's on vacation with his family and he'll pop into an apartment community just to see how things are going. Jason Berkovitz can come to Charlotte and play golf with us at a regular outing just because he wants to meet us. We also have a great business development person, Mollie McCauley, in Raleigh, North Carolina — she's really good at her job, clients trust her, and she makes recommendations in geographic areas where we have a solid footprint and know we can make an immediate difference. And we're a boutique-style management company. We're the fourth largest, but our regionals — we try to cap them at a specific unit count so they can have that personalized touch and not be professional firefighters. They're fire preventers. When you do that, you grow organically because when you have a lower unit count and you're providing those personal touches, you do well and the growth follows.

Yael (12:04)

When we think about the resident side — a lot of your properties are in a lease-up phase. How do you separate a successful lease-up from one that struggles? What's your philosophy on leasing faster?

Amanda (12:34)

RPM isn't a new company — the presence in Texas and the Midwest is enormous and a lot of our methods are tried and true. RPM also has a fantastic in-house marketing group that helps with so much behind the scenes — brand identity, what colors feel like, everything that makes you feel something when you visit a community. And a transition team handles all the heavy back-end work: I don't have to build out Yardi, I don't have to set up the water department account. Our operators focus on operating. Our philosophy on lease-ups is that you get to set the experience of what the resident life cycle will feel like from the very first phone call to check rates or the first hardhat tour. We all have kitchens, bathrooms, amenities. But at the end of the day, it's the service and how the experience makes people feel that sets RPM apart from our competitors.

Yael (14:15)

I know a lot of properties wait until they're at 50 or 75% occupancy before they start investing in resident experience. I know you don't do that. Can you share your approach?

Amanda (14:39)

In our region, we believe in rolling it out at 5 or 10% occupied. Whether it's a fitness class — what better way to meet your neighbors and find like-minded people — or events with adult beverages, pool parties, paint-and-sip, anything that gets people connected early so they can start meeting friends, get to know us, know that we're different, and recommend their friends. We're absolutely not waiting until 50 to 70% to roll out anything. Most of our clients completely agree. They want to build the kinds of communities where people are close-knit and feel connected and have a reason to stay and renew their lease. We focus more on resident experience than anything else.

Yael (15:38)

How do you differentiate an amenity you think will make an impact from one you'd rather pilot first?

Amanda (15:50)

A lot of clients will ask us: what should we build? Do we need a dog park and a dog spa? How many pet stations? When we think about amenities, we look at the property as a whole — like a developer. How will we activate this space? How will people use it? Will it get people connected? Can we do resident events here? Will it add value? Sometimes you'll look at other properties' websites and they'll talk about a state-of-the-art fitness center and a 10,000 square foot clubhouse — but what does it matter if no one's using it? Making sure spaces are appointed well so that we can actually activate them is probably the most important part. And even for smaller communities without a lot of amenities — BTR communities without a clubhouse or pool — we still find ways to have resident events so that people can meet their neighbors and feel a bigger sense of purpose in living at an RPM community.

Yael (17:05)

I wanted to ask you specifically about Tulu. You brought us to the Southeast market where not many properties had us yet. How did you make that decision?

Amanda (17:21)

The particular property we worked on in Charlotte didn't have the mixed-use retail, dining, and walkability that a lot of residents love — the CVS on the corner type of thing. The walkability score just wasn't there. So for me it was a no-brainer, and an easy sell to our client as well. The lockers are gorgeous — they look very high end. And to be able to tell residents we have something that someone else doesn't was a big perk. I'm glad we were one of the first to launch Tulu in Charlotte. And honestly, when we're talking to our other clients about Tulu now, the answer isn't really no — it's when. Are we doing it this year? Are we doing it in January with the new budget season? Residents feel the value. We've seen it in our penetration rates and usage. Being able to borrow a VR headset for game night with friends, or the Dyson vacuum — I'm still blown away that it's the number one used item in the lockers, between that and the ice cream. People just appreciate that there's something different there. That's what we all strive for: to always be unique in the marketplace, to have something different, to be a pioneer. We were excited to partner with Tulu and it's been really, really good.

Yael (18:47)

Do you have a specific tactic or strategy for gathering resident feedback?

Amanda (19:04)

All of the above. Our regional managers visit once a week and they're the first line of intelligence gathering — asking residents face to face: how do you like the lockers, the gym? Is there anything you'd like to see differently? Residents are probably a little more likely to tell us raw feedback because they see us often and know us. We also use surveys. And people are not shy about leaving comments on Instagram, Facebook, or in emails — whether things go good or bad. Face-to-face contact probably works best for us.

Yael (19:40)

As a startup, we've only grown from feedback — from residents telling us what they didn't like and what they wanted more of. And it also creates trust.

Amanda (20:06)

Absolutely. If we can take that resident feedback and really listen, it makes us better. A regional manager once told me: you don't earn your reputation by being perfect, you earn it by how you handle it when you're not. I welcome that feedback. What could we have done better? We ask our clients that. We ask each other that. Feedback really does help us improve operations.

Yael (20:38)

That takes me to the next question — about handling experiences that are not perfect. Have you ever had an experience where things didn't go as planned, where you got bad feedback about something you tried implementing?

Amanda (21:12)

If you're not making mistakes, you're probably not trying hard enough. It could be anything — taking an amenity away from a property, converting a tennis court to pickleball, or rolling out something like ID verification that had to be done just right. I've also worked through a pandemic, and that forever changed how we think about business — not everything has to be status quo. Whether it was a parking lot repaving job where we forgot to line up a tow truck and residents' cars got towed, to changing office hours based on resident feedback — at the end of the day, all that matters is that you ask for feedback along the way and use those lessons to make sure you don't repeat the bad and do repeat the good. After every lease-up, we do a debrief: what went well, what could we have done better, and then we fine-tune the process. Same thing with dispositions. Same thing with resident events. It's always about communicating. Let's repeat what worked, maybe even make it better, and make sure what wasn't good doesn't happen again.

Yael (23:01)

Amanda, I wanted to ask you about technology. Everyone is talking about AI. What do you think the role of technology is going to play in shaping resident experience, how do you currently use it, and where do you see it going?

Amanda (23:03)

Technology is huge. We have to embrace it. I think we'll keep doing technology mixed in with human interactions, because home is personal and we take it personally — we don't want a bot doing everything for us. But in areas where we can centralize or have a bot manage after-hours chats, we're going to embrace that technology to help us work smarter and not harder. We have internal groups that are piloting everything — AI collections, AI answering the phone. We'll use it when it's good for the resident experience. There are some things we won't use technology for — our accounting group, for example. We're not outsourcing that or using any methods that would take away from the client's assurance that their financials are being handled well. Right now, knowing where the resident base wants that personal attention, we're going to keep giving it to them. They want to be greeted at the door. We're meeting them with a snack and a drink. We're doing tours ourselves. There are also residents who are really busy and prefer to swipe their ID, swipe their credit card, and see the apartment themselves. We're going to embrace both — depending on what our clients want and what our residents really want.

Yael (25:23)

So a hybrid approach — with discernment that sticks to your values and the why behind what you're doing, while helping your team stay productive.

Amanda (25:27)

For sure. Exactly.

Yael (25:47)

I know you're a big fan of the Southeast market. In one of our conversations you said it's attractive because it's three hours from the mountain and three hours from the beach. Beyond geography, where do you see Charlotte and the broader Southeast heading in the next five to ten years?

Amanda (26:03)

The Southeast has been attractive for a very long time — not just because of the beach and the mountains, but our infrastructure is really good. There's a beautiful job story here. People want to come. The climate's good. The schools are good. The job opportunities are endless. Look at the universities we have and the amount of people who come here for higher education and then stay. We have a lot of love for our sports teams — SEC, ACC — it's a big deal here. Corridors like I-85 and I-77 make infrastructure and development and jobs so appealing. There's just continued growth here for many years to come. If you build it, they will come — and we keep proving that. People are graduating from universities in the Carolinas and Georgia and wanting to stay. It's still very attractive.

Yael (27:09)

Investing in infrastructure is crucial. And when you start seeing buildings with New York City-caliber standards coming to the Southeast market, it just elevates the whole region. The word of mouth and organic growth is so accelerated because young professionals move around, and if they had a great experience in one city they look for that same standard wherever they land next.

Amanda (27:59)

Exactly — and brand. That's why we want RPM to be different. I want people to look at RPM in South Carolina and say, I'm moving to Oklahoma, what do you guys have there? Because I had such a good experience. All of our division presidents share that mission — for RPM to be a leader in customer service so that people know us by that brand. They treat us differently there. That's what we want.

Yael (28:24)

To poke at that — like Equinox, where people swear by it and will only use that gym. Do you see a path where a multifamily brand like RPM could get to that level of brand loyalty?

Amanda (28:43)

I do think there's some brand loyalty amongst our customers, but let's be honest — some customers are looking for the best deal they can get, and there's always a new lease-up. And there are a lot of really good management companies out there. But yes, I do think there's some brand loyalty, and I could hope that one day someone says: I'm only renting from RPM. Just like we only buy certain purses or use certain foundations. Will that carry over to apartment living? I hope so. And imagine if a resident said: I will only live where there's a Tulu. How cool would that be? If that becomes a must-have, a preference — that would be so amazing for your organization too.

Yael (29:39)

We're at 400 locations right now and we've been getting messages on Instagram and customer support saying: I'm moving to New Jersey, which buildings are you at? I moved from the Netherlands to London — do you have any buildings there? And we do. It's nice that people are even asking. And when they're on leasing tours asking the agent: are you ever going to bring Tulu here? The end consumer is the obsession every brand needs to have. If we own trust with the end user, everything else follows — financials, operations, staff happiness.

Amanda (30:36)

We've seen Apple do it successfully, right? You're either Apple or you're not, and you very rarely switch back. I would love to see that for Tulu and for RPM Living — people saying: I really want to stay at an RPM community because they made me feel different, they took care of me, they exceeded my expectations. That would be an amazing goal to aspire to.

Yael (31:03)

Agreed. And Amanda, as we wrap up — you've been in this industry for around 27 years and seen everything. Where do you think multifamily is heading, and what gets you most excited about the future of residential living?

Amanda (31:26)

I think we're headed for more apartments. Whether it's interest rates or the cost of homeownership today, rental housing is thriving and will continue to thrive. A lot of our demographic chooses renting — they don't want to be tied down to a place for 15 or 30 years. I think it's up to us in the industry to continue to make rental housing a genuine option for everybody. Whether you're paying $1,500 for a studio or $15,000 for a penthouse in Manhattan, we want everyone to have access to good apartments. And then just staying ahead of what people need — anticipating their needs before they even know they have them. One of our core values is to be a good human. If we continue that trajectory of just being good to people, the future is very bright.

Yael (32:31)

Amanda Kitts, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your wisdom. Is there any last advice for anyone starting their career in multifamily today?

Amanda (32:58)

Thank you for having me — I really appreciate you even considering me for your podcast. For people just starting out, or for people who are in a role and want to continue to grow: be a sponge. Keep learning. Stay humble and ask a lot of questions. Talk less, listen more. And just keep trying. There is a way for everyone to be successful in this industry, whether you're on the vendor side, a startup with big goals and ambitions, or someone just looking to be in property management. There's a place for everyone. Work hard. Just keep absorbing everything like a sponge.

Yael (33:36)

Amazing. Thank you so much, Amanda.

Amanda (33:38)

Thank you.