Leasing Velocity

Company Profile

A multifamily developer and operator managing a portfolio of over 2,000 units in Omaha.

The company uses the Appfolio property management system for managing leads. The company also uses the ShoreTel phone system.
Company advertises on and gets leads from: Apartment Guide and Apartments.com. Each building has its own website, and they also advertise on other local platforms. Specific phone numbers have been designated for each building and lead source.
When a prospect submits an inquiry on the building website, a guest card gets created in Appfolio.
When a call is received, the agent answering the phone creates a guest card in Appfolio.
Ideally, when a prospect calls, the following information is captured:

  • Prospect’s name and contact information
  • Desired move-in date
  • Desired unit type (beds/baths/floor/ amenities …)
  • Desired monthly rent

 

Business Goal

To understand …

  • The demand for unit types by move-in date by building
  • The difference between demand and supply (unit availability)
  • How many leads were being generated from various lead sources
  • How many leads were being converted into showings, eventually, into leases
  • How quickly a lead turned into a visit and a lease
  • The cost per lead by lead source

And then take this information to:

  • Set rents based on gap between supply vs demand by unit type and move-in date
  • Shift leads received for building that have limited supply to other buildings that have more available units
  • Motivate leasing teams to collaborate and promote specific unit types
  • Improve process for capturing leads and following up on them
  • Allocate advertising budget based on most useful lead sources

 

Appfolio® and Shoretel are trademarks of respective owners

 

The Challenge

There are several challenges that make it hard to get at the desired metrics:

  • Guest cards are not always created by the agent when an inquiry is received, or the guest card doesn’t contain important fields.
  • Duplicate guest cards get filled out for the same prospect (online submission, phone call, text etc.)
  • Phone system is not integrated with Appfolio, so extra work is required to determine number of inbound phone calls by building and lead source.
  • Sometimes, existing tenants call the marketing phone numbers for maintenance requests. Such tenant calls had to be identified and separated from leads.

 

Solution

Metric-X developed an Excel-based solution that combines leads that came in as inbound phone calls as well as Appfolio guest card data. Appfolio guest card reports are exported to Excel. Call logs are exported from the ShoreTel phone system. These call logs and guest card exports are combined with additional metadata, and prepared for analysis.

Lookup tables were created to determine the building and lead source from the inbound phone number.

The gap between the number of inbound phone calls that were answered and the number of guest cards created was calculated.

Leasing Velocity Metrics

These are some of the metrics for forecasting supply, generating leads, and converting the leads to leases at the right rents

  1. Demand by unit type by move-in date (for example, “How many inquiries are being received for 2 BR / 1 BA units in September?”)
  2. Supply (upcoming vacancies by unit type) vs Demand (leads by unit type)
  3. Leads by Lead Source (apartments.com, apartmentguide.com, building website, advertisements)
  4. Number of inbound calls by time of day
  5. Cost per lead
  6. Gap between desired rent, market rent and advertised rent

 

Benefits

As a result of this solution, the customer is able to:

  • Balance supply and demand because there is visibility on which unit types are being requested
  • Understand how much return they are getting for their spend on apartmentguide.com and apartments .com
  • Have a basis for making improvements in staff training and processes in order to manage leads (and lead data) more effectively
  • Set rents by taking into account the demand and upcoming vacancies

 

Tools

  1. Appfolio property management system
  2. Shoretel phone system
  3. Excel
  4. Tableau

Imagine having the ability match demand to supply, and be able to adjust rents based on the inquiries being received. 

More Information

A solution like this is not only limited to users of Appfolio. We can develop a similar solution for you. Which property management system do you use?  Please contact us if you would like to discuss the

Appfolio Leasing Velocity

in more detail.