2026 IREM Spring Seminar
Get Ready for a Wicked Time!
The schedule is as follows:
8:00-9:00 am Networking with Vendors & Registration
9:00-10:30 am Education – Session 1
Keynote Speaker: Bill Nye Apartment Guy
Resolving Conflict Before It Becomes Wicked
Not all conflict is as it seems. Beneath every disagreement lies a hidden story, and only three core forces truly drive conflict. In this wickedly insightful session, attendees will uncover what those forces are, how to identify the real cause behind the tension, and how to move conversations from confrontation to collaboration.
Drawing on proven negotiation techniques used by the world’s most elite negotiators, including the FBI, this session reveals how to defuse even the most challenging situations and turn opposition into opportunity.
This is a can’t-miss experience that will transform how you approach conflict, casting a powerful spell on your professional relationships, and perhaps your personal ones too.
10:45 am-12:30 pm Education – Session 2
Speaker: Mary Herrold
There’s No Place Like Your Community: The Magic of Leasing
Follow the yellow brick road to leasing success! In today’s world, Dorothy isn’t just escaping Kansas. She’s dodging digital cyclones and battling flying monkeys of misinformation to discover the perfect place to call home. In this spellbinding 75-minute seminar, Mary Herrold channels decades of multifamily experience and wields some black-and-white facts to reveal what makes a prospect drop a house on most options and choose you as “the one” before she picks up the phone or drops in.
You’ll learn how to cast the right spells and mix magical ingredients that cut through the Wicked quagmire of competition, transforming your community from grayscale to living color, and attracting the right residents for your community. You’ll track the renter’s journey Over the Rainbow from attraction to retention and master new skills you need to have your residents stay for good! Click your heels: your journey to leasing magic starts here!
12:30-1:30 pm Lunch
1:30-2:00 pm Networking with Vendors
2:00-3:30pm Education – Session 3
Speaker: Chad Venne, CPM
Who’s the Wizard Behind the Curtain—and What’s the Plan for Oz?
How Owners Think About Leasing, Strategy, and Success
Pull back the curtain and step into Oz as this engaging session explores multifamily leasing from the owner’s perspective. Participants will discover who the “Wizard” really is—an individual owner, local operator, national platform, or developer—and how each brings a different plan for Oz based on their goals and where the property sits in its life cycle. From new lease-ups to sale or refinance positioning and long-term holds, this session will demystify how owners think about rents, concessions, and performance. Attendees will leave with practical ways to align leasing strategy with ownership objectives, structure concessions with purpose, interpret true market rent, and—most importantly—report results back to owners in a way that builds trust, credibility, and long-term success. Educational, practical, and wickedly fun, this session helps leasing professionals see beyond the curtain and lease with intention.
3:30-4:30pm Happy Hour / Networking
Vendor Information
Exhibit hours are from 8:30am-2:00pm. You are welcome to join us for a networking happy hour from 3:30-4:30pm as well. Lunch is included for 2 reps. (May purchase additional lunch tickets for $50/person). Vendor raffles will be given away around 12:30pm.
*You may not set up before 7:00am
Approximately 150 Real Estate Professionals from the Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay areas will be attending this event. As a special marketing opportunity to local vendors, suppliers and contractors, we will be including our popular vendor trade show. This opportunity will give you the chance to reach approximately 150 commercial and residential property managers who control the purchasing for their properties. For attendees, this is a one-stop shopping opportunity. For you, it is a chance to present your company and product to this target market.
If you are already an Industry Partner of IREM, this event is being offered to you for $500.00 (a $250 savings!).
If you are not a member in the Industry Partner IREM program, this event will be offered to you for $750.00.
If you are not a member in the Industry Partner IREM program but WANT to become one, this event will be offered to you for $965.00 (includes an IREM Milwaukee membership & Vendor Booth! Prior application and approval process required).
Registration includes:
- The opportunity to advertise your products/services to property managers and real estate professionals
- Continuous display of product or service from 8:30am-2:00pm
- A skirted 8-foot table to display your products or services
- Up to two complimentary lunches for your representatives
- Optional (but a mistake to miss!) “Vendor Raffle” (Attendees visit each vendor and receive a stamp on their card to be eligible to win vendor supplied door prizes. Each vendor may bring a door prize to give away at the end of the day.)
- Your company logo on all invitations, marketing material, agenda, signage at the event
- Honorable mention at the event
Tickets
$50.00 Additional Vendor Representative (two included in the Exhibitor Registration)
