Leasing Season is here! You want to attract high-quality residents, convince them that your units are the perfect fit, and finally get a lease signed—and do it faster and more efficiently than the rest.
To help you stay on top of your game, we put together a Leasing Season Playbook to offer the expertise you need to make sure your processes are on point (and enabled by the latest technology).
There are six main categories that make up the Leasing Season Playbook: Marketing Listings, Showings, Screenings, Signing the Lease, Move-in, and Follow-up.
Know Your Renters: Writing the perfect rental listing starts with identifying your ideal renter. Don’t know what your residents want? Check out this infographic from our latest Renters’ Report, that surveyed 1,200 renters across the country.
Writing the Listing: Once you know who your target residents are, you can then begin focusing on attracting them. Based on looking at the most successful listings, we put together a guide that you can follow to write listings that shine.
Listing and Vacancy Syndication: Since you are sharing the same listings across multiple sites, why should you post the same information on each one? That’s why platforms like Buildium, can make distributing the information to multiple listing sites like Trulia and Zillow easy with the click of a button.
How to Post a Rental on Facebook Marketplace
Facebook Marketplace is a newer channel that property managers can leverage to get the word out about vacancies through their social networks. For more info, check out this video.
Your Company’s Digital Presence: Your own online marketing is key to promoting your listings. Make sure that your website provides an accurate representation of your company and that your social media accounts are active. Did you know that 1 in 2 millennial apartment hunters turn to property managers’ websites to find an apartment?
Nurturing Leads:
Once you have potential residents interested, you have to act fast. Getting back in touch first could be the difference between signing a lease and losing out on quality, prospective residents.
Automating Your Showings Process: The good news is that you can rely on technology to help make your showings process as efficient as possible. Partners like Showings Coordinator powered by Tenant Turner, make this a simple integration to your property management software and can handle pre-qualification, follow-ups, scheduling, confirmations and cancellations—you could reduce your no-shows by 75%!
The Low-down on Self-showings: Do the Benefits Outweigh the Risks?
Doing some detective work on your residents should never be overlooked since an eviction can cost a property owner thousands—and also take up your time to handle it right. That’s precisely why a screening partner is essential. And TransUnion (one of the three credit bureaus) has created a Resident Score that can more accurately predict evictions by 15%.
Signing the lease is often the entry point for your residents to the technology you provide. So you should make sure that this process is smooth, clear, and introduces your resident site as the central destination for info, payments, and communication.
Did you know that 3 out of 4 millenials want to be able to pay their rent online—eager to adopt technology like electronic lease signing and online maintenance requests? Click To Tweet
Setting expectations during this stage is the recommended path—and your incoming residents will appreciate the clarity. Third-party software like HappyCo’s Happy Inspector can also help you streamline and organize the move-in process, reducing tenant disputes by 50%.
Check out our infographic covering residents who leave stuff behind.
Congratulations on finding a great resident! Now, it’s up to your excellent customer service to make renters truly feel at home in the property they’ve chosen. After all, the cost of finding a new renter is always high in an increasingly competitive rental market with move-out costs that can easily exceed $4,000 per instance (National Apartment Association). Start by knowing what’s important to retaining renters and knock it out of the park with your personal touch.
Infographic: Incentives to Retain Renters
Video: Leasing Season Playbook If you can’t get enough of this Leasing Season Playbook, stream our more in depth video on demand.
