A Sweet Surprise for Turn Teams Courtesy of Swamp Rentals

For most people, move-out day means dropping off your keys, staying with a friend or heading to your hometown for a few days, and then picking up a new key to a fresh apartment a week later. What most people don't see is that these apartment managers, maintenance, and leasing teams work around the clock, and will barely sleep for two weeks, to get an estimated 4,300 apartments ready for the next residents.

We teamed up with Kona Ice of Gainesville this week to make this move-in season sweeter for apartment management and staff at over 40 student apartment communities. On August 10, 11 and 15th, our team brought the Kona Ice truck to surprise these communities and showed our appreciation by serving the all-too-often underappreciated staff members who were racing the clock to get the recently vacated apartments ready for new incoming residents this fall.

With 7,190 apartment units in Gainesville categorized as "student housing," there is a lot of work to do to prepare for Fall move-ins. According to Swamp Rentals analytics, renters have contacted Gainesville leasing teams through the website 18,453 times so far in 2016. Applications were submitted, leases were signed, and now apartment managers have anywhere from 5-14 days between move-outs and move-ins to get these apartments ready. Even better, these apartments are mostly leased by the bedroom, so each of these front doors has 1-6 individually leased bedrooms inside that will need to be repaired, cleaned, have carpets steamed, walls painted, and key packets prepared all before this year's mass move in day on Friday, Aug. 19. 

This is why Swamp Rentals and Kona Ice wanted to do something for those who work tirelessly to make their apartments a home away from home for students. The pair is surprising the communities by pulling up and serving them delicious Kona Ice. Hopefully the truck's colorful appearance and tropical music brought the teams a bit of paradise to their most hectic time.

Swamp Rentals served up an estimated 500 treats this week to help the apartment management teams cool off! The reactions from these turn teams were absolutely incredible. I would run in the office to let the staff know that we were outside with Kona Ice, and I got quite a few looks of disbelief and exclamations of 'You've got to be kidding me!" Then they would gather out front of the office to grab their ice and choose their favorite flavor. It was amazing that we could give them a 5 minute break from the craziness of turn to unwind with a cool Kona treat. There also were a couple of shaved ice snow balls thrown, but my lips are sealed on that one.