NAA’s 20 in Their Twenties celebrates the best and brightest in the rental housing industry. They are individuals who are 29 years or younger that have made great professional achievements in their career and have the potential to go far.

Winner Spotlight: Samantha Hoover 

What is your biggest career achievement?

• In 2020, I was awarded Property Manager of the Year for CF Real Estate Services. This award recognizes the “best in class” community leader for overall property performance including numerous financial metrics, economic occupancy, service request completion, overall resident satisfaction, compliance to education, online reputation, and various other Key Performance Indicators.This achievement was exponentially special because it was open to the entire company, not just the student housing division, Campus First. CF Real Estate Services has an impressive multifamily portfolio, including new luxury assets in urban environments. There are many high-profile communities within our organization, so to win an award based on a multitude of measurable operational benchmarks in a very competitive environment is an incredible honor.

What is your ultimate career goal within the rental housing industry? 

• My ultimate career goal is performance based, not position or title aspirations. While I want to continue advancing my career with increasing levels of responsibilities, that ultimately means taking my on-site property management experience and expanding those efforts across a larger platform.In my career thus far, I’ve been successful turning around distressed properties into stabilized assets that over-perform in all aspects of operations. Taking those skills, and applying the same methodical approach to reposition a troubled asset is what I find most gratifying.There are various career paths that would allow me to focus my experience to further my career, but ultimately replicating that “secret sauce” to better performing assets is step one. Step two is building and leading a team that can tackle multiple focus sites simultaneously, and bring value to my organization by exponential bottom-line improvement across a portfolio.

What's one rental housing trend you have your eye on? 

• How do you move 350 new residents from all around the globe into their homes in one day during a worldwide pandemic? This was the challenges I faced last summer, with not much time to plan. In years pasts, we would coordinate one big walk-through process which involved multiple stations for each of the required tasks required to complete the check in process. That was no longer an option with strict COVID precautions that had to be implemented. I could not expose my team, my new residents and all of their accompanying family.When thinking about what was open in our city, we realized most people were still comfortable going through drive-throughs at fast-food restaurants. We saw that as an opportunity to capitalize on a fast, convenient, and most importantly, SAFE way to help residents through the check in process. Taking a very similar approach to the drive-through concept, we made designated parking spots for our new residents to park, and while they were in the comfort of their car, we had employees go to them to complete the check in process.Without having to even open their car door, new residents were checked in and pulled away with the keys to their new home. While this sounds simple, there was a lot of organizing and communication that had to be coordinated with new residents before they planned their move in. We had to make the most of our day with varied move in times to avoid traffic, we called residents to ensure they understood the new steps and their time to move in, and we moved almost all of our move-in day paperwork to pre-move in virtual copies. Our “pandemic move-in” went off without a hitch, and even post pandemic will be a great way to host move-in days. We got to pamper our residents to a new level and I believe the concept of drive-up move ins will become a new trend. Besides, who wants to stand in line during a South Carolina summer heat wave to wait for keys?!?