If you’re like me, you are seeing more content on the internet about centralized leasing in the multifamily space (like this articles😎 ). When I see this, the next two logical questions I ask myself are “What” and “Why”. What is centralized leasing and why is it good for my customers and my company?
While the topic itself has been talked about for a few years now, the rate of adoption we are seeing has certainly accelerated. Unsurprisingly we can tie this to the new wave of tech adoption we’ve seen since early 2020 which has led to the changing demands of our customers and the changes in the workforce landscape.
From my perspective, there are two motivating factors as a business that we take into account when looking at things like new strategies (as eluded to above).
- Is it good for my customers?
- Is it good for my company?
When the answer to both of these questions are “Yes!” then we’ve found something worth exploring.
What Does Centralized Leasing Look Like?
Let’s start by defining centralized leasing. This term will practically look different for different property management companies, using the most likely overlaps we can define centralized leasing as:
Centralizing your leasing activity for multiple sites in one operations center (whether physical or remote) using a combination of people and technology.
A combination of people and technology. This description really stands out to me. Each property management company who dives into the world of centralized leasing will have to make a choice of what that combination looks like.
So if that is the what of it, next we ask the why? Why is centralized leasing better for my customers and my company?
Relieve Over Burdened Onsite Teams
Does centralized leasing mean no more onsite teams? Definitely not. However, centralized leasing does provide the opportunity to need less onsite team members. Recent data shows that for every 2 job openings there is 1 person actively seeking employment. The labor shortage is real and with ever increasing wages it is becoming harder for businesses to stay competitive. So across the country we are seeing understaffed onsite teams. Additionally, for those onsite teams who are fully staffed, they are dealing with 6x more prospects than ever before. So, what benefits do we see for our customers and our company by giving back onsite teams time by centralizing some of our leasing efforts?
- Customer Benefits
- Prompt and timely responses to inquiries
- 24/7 access to get common questions answered
- Access to people who are knowledgable on multiple sites (sister properties)
- A modern experience they have come to expect
- Company Benefits
- Short on labor doesn’t have to mean short of customer service
- Increased efficiencies for onsite teams
- Onsite teams time is freed up to focus on building meaningful and impactful relationships
- Cross sell opportunities
Better Marketing With Centralized Leasing
Centralizing our leasing efforts gives us new opportunity to have more control over our strategies and their implementation. This makes a whole new level of customer experience possible. Modern customers in multifamily demands hyper-personalization and multiple channel outreach. 80% of customers are more likely to purchase a product or service from a brand who provides personalized experiences.
By leveraging centralized leasing we gain the ability to create brand and message consistency across our portfolios. This means ensuring that all of our properties are communicating to our customers on their channel of choice with messaging that resonates with them.
Furthermore, onsite teams today are trained for dozens of “micro jobs”. Package management, landscaping, sales, marketing, customer service, finances and accounting, and lease management to just name a few. By centralizing our leasing efforts, we can train leasing agents in only a few key roles, allowing them to become marketing and sales experts. As a result of this, the onsite team will gain expertise in the areas they still manage as well (like resident retention).
- Customer Benefits
- Ability to communicate on the channel of their choice (text, email, chat, etc)
- Receives messaging relevant to their wants and needs
- Convenience of experiencing leasing from their phones
- Instant feedback and engagement from properties
- Company Benefits
- Brand consistency
- Omni-Channel marketing and communication
- Automation, cutting back on labor requirements
- Increase engagement and conversions
Increasing The Bottom Line
While there are many more benefits to centralized leasing we could list, all of these benefits ultimately mean increasing the bottom line at each and every one of our properties.
Increasing occupancy and increasing resident renewals drive up our NOI. Centralized leasing is directly impacting both of these metrics. With centralized leasing efforts we can take advantage of tools that will help us increase conversions and renew more residents.
Centralized leasing allows us to:
- Drive more engagement and conversion with immediate and timely responses to inquiries
- Facilitate the sales process with specialized staff for sales and leasing
- Create more meaningful resident experiences with freed up onsite teams
- Leverage new and powerful technology
Ultimately, if you can put a centralized leasing strategy in place that makes sense for your portfolio, you can generate more revenue while creating a better experience for your customers.
Conclusion
When considering if centralized leasing is right for your portfolio, understanding your people to tech landscape is important. Leveraging AI, automation, and centralized leasing “ready” products helps each property management company get the most benefit possible from a centralized leasing strategy. Some major improvements you’d achieve that we’ve highlighted in this post include:
- Relieving overburdened onsite teams
- Create better, more cohesive marketing strategies
- Increasing the bottom line (NOI)
Click the link below to learn more about how Nurture Boss can help your portfolio adopt a centralized leasing strategy.
