Pine Meadows Apartments, located in the heart of Gainesville, is one of best apartment communities in Alachua County. Pine Meadow offers its residents and future residents, an affordable and well maintained living environment. The apartments are located within 2 miles of Oaks Mall and various shopping centers, a movie theater, grocery stores, University of Florida, and local eateries. Additionally, it is only 2 miles from a hospital, schools, and the ramp to interstate 75. The community is an HUD/Tax Credit funded community and is therefore regulated by HUD/DCA. The property consistently receives high marks from HUD/DCA during their annual inspection of the property. With all of these things going for it, the property was already a gem in the Gainesville area.
In an earlier article we mentioned that Pine Meadow had applied for renovations and were hopeful to receive them. They did officially receive funding and upgrades were made property wide! As if the above mentioned were not enough reasons to make this community a great place to call home, now there are even more reasons to love Pine Meadow!
Within the past two years, Pine Meadow has successfully remodeled every unit to include new carpet and wood plank flooring, new paint, new windows, new air conditioning and heating units, new stoves, new refrigerators, new microwave ovens, upgraded bathroom appliances and fixtures!
This was quite a transition for the families that lived on-site. Many of the residents had been living in their same apartment for over 10 years! The residents were asked to move into temporary housing for one week while their apartments were being transformed. Two Men and a Truck assisted with moving every Wednesday. Chaundra Wilson, the manager says that 7 families were moved at a time. Although moving temporarily was inconvenient, when it was all said and done, their residents were extremely happy with the results. Every single renter decided to stay!
Alongside of all of that, each buildings exterior was upgraded, they received a new playground & volleyball court, a new community center with computer lab was added, a car wash station, barbeque grills & a pavilion were established, and their laundry room was fully upgraded.
With all of these enhancements to the community, Pine Meadow is able to offer many new services to their residents such as free carwash/vacuum services, weekly literacy classes, a homework club for school aged children, and many more.
The staff at Pine Meadow worked very hard every day during the transition period to make the process seamless and they continue to put just as much effort in today. The property continues to improve and has a great staff in place to ensure that this community will only shine brighter as the days go by.
Check out photos below to see what a difference the renovations made!
We would like to extend our sincerest congratulations to Brandi Cole, the Community Manager of San Jose Apartments, for her recent acquisition of her CAM designation through our local apartment association, The Apartment Association of Greater Orlando.
The Certified Apartment Manager (CAM) designation, which is offered by the National Apartment Association and it’s affiliates, assist Community Managers with their financial management skills, ability to report financial performance, increase the community’s Net Operating Income and improve management of on-site staff. The CAM designation requires the below nine courses to be completed within a twelve month period totaling over 56 hours of material:
- Management of Residential Issues
- Legal Responsibilities
- Human Resource Management
- Fair Housing
- Marketing
- Property Maintenance for Managers
- Risk Management
- Financial Management
- Research, Analysis and Evaluation
In addition to successfully completing the above coursework you must have worked in the apartment industry for at least 12 months and pass a comprehensive four hour 190 question exam in order to obtain the CAM designation. Acquiring your CAM designation is no easy task!
As you can see, this achievement takes many hours of dedication and hard work. We applaud Brandi on her designation and her desire to further her knowledge in the apartment industry. Congratulations Brandi!!
The RAM Compliance division held a team meeting on June 25th and 26th at the Panama City Corporate office. The entire team including Wendi LeMense, Sonya Knight, Nikki Winecoff, Nadine Jean-Noel, Denise Medina, Eric Sangster, Kelsey Brites and the two newest RAM Specialists, Barbara Loughner and Yasi Otero, met for OneSite and Tax Credit Compliance training and some good old fashioned team building. Barbara, previously the manager at Magnolia Pointe Apartments in Panama City, FL is now a Compliance and OneSite Specialist, devoting half of her time to the Compliance Division and the other half assisting in the OneSite Division. We are happy to have her assistance. Yasi comes to us from Seminole Ridge Apartments in Orlando, FL where she worked as a Leasing Agent. She has a great deal of knowledge with Tax Credit Compliance and has hit the ground running. She is assisting Eric in the Orlando office and he is very happy to have her and so are we. It was a great opportunity to introduce Barbara and Yasi to the division and to give them some insight into just how everything works in our department.
Being spread out from Miami to Orlando to Charlotte, NC, we rarely have an opportunity to have the entire group together so we all enjoyed this opportunity to spend time together and train on OneSite and a variety of compliance topics and issues. As you are probably aware, maintaining compliance for our extensive portfolio of apartment communities, each with its own unique layered funding and regulation requirements, is not an easy task. There are many gray areas and each community has its own set of requirements. Nothing in this business is uniform. Fortunately, our Compliance Specialists are top notch and they have an excellent understanding of what is required to maintain compliance. They also provide outstanding support to the site staff and are here to assist them in any way possible.
Of course our team meeting wasn’t all work. We had a great time taking a sunset sailboat cruise, visiting our beautiful beaches and sampling the local fare eating at Spinnaker Beach Club, J. Michaels and Schooners. We all enjoyed our time together and everyone went home re-energized with a better understanding of OneSite and how it relates to Compliance, as well as how we can continue to support the on-site staff and assure that our communities stay in compliance.
