HOW THE APARTMENT
INDUSTRY CHANGED
OVER THE LAST 50 YEARS
AAMD Staff Member Christopher Dean sits down with long-time industry experts
to discuss how the industry has changed.
Foy Bailey Julie Evans-Schmitt Mike Fiorillo Susan Lind
Dennis Malone Sharon O'Connell Terry Simone Don Werner
Christopher Dean: The way we do business in the
Apartment industry, our tools and resources etc. have
obviously changed a lot over the course of 50 years. What
are some of the significant changes, differences or trends
that have been altered… or don’t even exist anymore?
Susan: A big one is the desk telephone. We used to
highly value it and always answer the phone. It was
our only way of communicating with the outside
world.
Mike: That doesn’t exist anymore… another big one
was pagers.
Chris: How did people
use pagers to manage
apartments?
Mike: Maintenance
teams depended on
their pagers, and were
paged at night or during
the day when they were
needed.
www.aamdhq.org
Sharon: We’d page each other to just come to the
office.
Foy: Something else that was big and is rarely used
today is the master key! It used to be for anybody
who needed to access a unit,
they used the master key.
Chris: How did master keys
work?
Foy: The vendors came to
do work, you would just
give them the master key.
If you wanted to go show
apartments, you took master
keys to open any door.
Chris: You just gave a master
key to any vendor who is doing
work?
Terry: There wasn’t a concern for key control. It was
just the culture.
JANUARY 2018 • TRENDS | 33