Peak leasing season is here and this time of year tends to be one of the most lively (and stressful) periods for the leasing office and your community…
While the biggest time for leasing may be demanding, the accomplishments that come with this season make it all the more fulfilling and exciting! It’s important to take advantage of what your community has to offer in order to secure the leases needed to meet your community’s goals. With that being said, here are a few strategies every community should adopt to optimize occupancy rates this peak season:
Maximize tours
Tours are one of the most influential aspects of selling your community to prospective residents. You want renters to picture themselves living in the units you show, to feel what a day in the life of this community is like, and get them excited about all that your community has to offer. The easiest way to sell a community: Keep things clean, organized, and functioning. That means arriving for the tour on time and testing the light switches in a unit beforehand to make sure there are no bulbs out. Cleaning any debris and dust left by past residents. And, ensuring common areas of the community are orderly. According to Bay Property Management Group, “Nothing turns a potential tenant away faster than a dirty home interior. Therefore, be sure to inspect the property beforehand and make sure it is clean.”
A big red flag to renters is when they step onto the property and see weeds are growing everywhere, food is spilled on the ground, or resident packages are left haphazardly around the lobby or package room. Don’t let this be your community! Hire a lawn care service to come to your property on a periodic basis, ask your cleaning service to come more regularly (or do cleaning yourself as needed), and remove all packages from your community entirely with off-site package management instead! Let’s face it, when residents see deliveries aren’t cared for, it becomes harder to picture themself living in a community that doesn’t have secure delivery of their goods.
Be choosy in what your community advertises
It can be costly to promote your community, so you need to ensure you’re advertising your best amenities and offerings. For this, it’s crucial to stay up-to-date on multifamily trends so you know what community amenities renters are seeking. While having computers and printers may have been a real selling point in the past, these days most residents have their own laptops, desktops, or phones that function as computers.
Did you know that according to Progressive Grocer, “More than half of consumers age 18-45 (55% of ages 18-34; 60% of ages 35-44) have more delivery subscriptions (Amazon Prime, DoorDash, UberEats, etc.) than streaming service subscriptions (Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, etc.).”
If the demographic of your community is receiving a great deal of deliveries, do some research and make sure you’re advertising how the community plans to handle resident packages. Residents are always looking for the next best thing at their community. Show them you offer the best of the best! Plus, just because residents have more delivery subscriptions than streaming subscriptions, doesn’t mean they don’t want good connection when they’re having a movie night (mentioning your community has stellar wifi is always a plus). Stay on top of industry trends (we recommend subscribing to our free monthly newsletter), and market your community’s best new features.
Take advantage of positive resident reviews
When residents are looking for a new community, reviews mean everything! Review Push says “Positive reviews make future residents more likely to choose to live in these apartments because they know that the management of the apartment or complex is going to listen to them.”
Monitor your community’s reviews- if you’re seeing negativity, this can be used as constructive feedback as to what the community can improve upon. Does maintenance staff fix issues in a timely manner? Has the coffee machine in the lobby been out of service for too long? Is the community losing resident packages to porch pirates? Think through how you can make improvements to appease returning residents and appeal to new ones. This might look like finding a new system to make sure maintenance staff sees work orders faster, or finding a package solution that prevents porch pirates entirely. Additionally, leave responses to negative comments or a direct message to the resident to try and understand their concerns. This can be a useful tool to show residents that you’re listening, and your community is working to resolve any issues.
Positive reviews, on the other hand, can be used as testimonials to the community and should be advertised to prospective residents when possible. Leverage positive feedback might just be the reason someone signs the lease!
Keep these tools in mind this peak season, and you’re golden. We hope this is your best peak leasing season yet! And if you’re looking for a package solution to boost your curb appeal for tours, a shiny new amenity to advertise to renters, and a solution that will have residents raving, request a quote here.
