Do you show your pricing on your website?

I absolutely love it when I find apartment-related discussions on non-apartment websites, which means that these are renters that are talking bluntly about their experiences with apartment communities. This particular discussion is about an apartment community that did not list their pricing on their website, but rather listed "Call" for the pricing. Here are some of the comments:

In general it sucks having to call for things. Especially for prices, but since I do my comparisons on my computer anyway, it's a thousand times easier if they just put it on the web and don't play games.

My general rule of thumb is that if I have to call for a price than it is too expensive for me.

My guess is they're avoiding having to do price competitions with their competition. This allows them to artificially keep prices up, as you can't honestly or easily compare costs. Nor can your competition easily see where you're pegging your prices.
Really, it is still assinine.

It's because they are going to charge you more if you don't sound "white".

Here are the rest of the comments , which I highly recommend reading. (You can click the big link at the top of the page to see the original picture submission.

I agree; I started listing the rental rate for units I wanted to lease or per lease on a special page of the website. Everyone really appreciated it. I also told callers to the property to check out that page, too, if they were looking six months in advance and I could not per lease anything at that time. Worked well.

Tried it a few ways. We've shown a range, we've shown the 'starting from' price, we've had an actual check availability tool with actual pricing and terms, and our latest strategy is to use a general value like 'From the $700s'. Guess what? No strategy will make all the customers happy. There's a school of thought out there that your customers can really help figure what's best. I say BS when it comes to price. Sure, these examples you shared, Brent, are smart customers that know what they want, but our goal as marketers and sales people is not to spill all our candy on the floor. That doesn't mean you can't give a snap shot, nor does it mean you should hide everything. Yes, people need to have a general idea how much something costs, and I think a starting from or range of pricing is good enough. Regardless of what customers think, I truly feel the purpose of an apartment website is not to provide all the information, but to influence customers to seek more by contacting the property.

When I worked as a real estate office manager, we tried running a magazine ad and leaving off the prices of homes. Our goal was to get more calls to turn into customers.

One time, we accidently left off a "2" and had tons of calls on the $245,000 home advertised as $45,000. It was a big home and I couldn't get over how many people actually thought it was $45,000!!!

Prospects that drove by homes before brochures were popular, rarely bought the house they called about because their guess as to how much the house was selling for was no where near it.

The real estate agents got tired of taking phone calls from unqualified prospects and begged me to put the prices on the houses. It was hard turning someone from one house they really liked to what they could really afford.

I am a one-person office and don't have time to take calls from people who can't afford my apartments. I put everything in the ad and on my brochures. Rent range, app fee, deposit minimum and pet fees.

I can understand the frustration in regards to the renter searching online and not being able to price search every property. However, it is true that even if the basic (market rate) might not fluctuate frequently, the specials do. The company I work for does not offer pricing on our property website, but all of our other online ads do include pricing. When I post to craigslist, rent.com, etc..I do include pricing for the unit up for lease. It might not be the first thing to pop up on a google search engine..but it's not hard to find in general. It has worked for increasing the volume of phone calls to the property. If I find that we do not have the price point the customer is looking for, I always refer them to a property that will fit their needs better. If anything, they won't feel that their time making the phone call was wasted. Also, finances can change and they might be a future customer of mine after receiving good customer service even when I wasn't going to get a lease out of them.

I can see why some communities do not want to list pricing- they want to create the value they add through their service and amenities. Prospects wont know all of the benefits of living in your community even if you put it all on the web, because they wont read it all.

Five years ago, we didn't list pricing in our ads and had 80-100 prospects per month. Now we list pricing in our ads and get 20-30 per month. Currently I have NO ads and still get a few calls and walk in visitors every week.

One unexpected difference is the huge increase of walk-in, "tire kickers." People who just drop in to shop around when I have nothing to show or rent and they aren't even looking for an apartment.

I've also tried this a few different ways - I find that when not advertising our prices, the on site staffing tends to spend a lot of time talking to people that don't necessarily meet our qualifications - it's frustrating to both them and the person calling in. Furthermore, there are people (like myself) that would rather scour the internet for an hour to get an idea of cost rather than picking up the phone for a 2 minute phone call. So it makes me curious how many calls may be lost by NOT posting any idea of the price; even just a range.

Our prices sometimes fluctuate greatly based on occupancy, so it's crucial that the site managers make me aware of what the rents are day to day; I painstakingly update every speck of online advertising on a daily basis to match what we are renting at. It is important to me that we are consistent in our pricing across all sources so that there is no confusion.

Very good points Kristi!

Since the management company I work for manages hundreds of properties, it's great to be able to refer callers to one of my sister properties when I can't meet their needs.

I maintain a very detailed spreadsheet of approximately 150 of my closest comps, so I can nearly always help a prospect even if they don't qualify or when I have no availability. Hopefully they remember this when they know of someone who needs a place when I have one.

I list my contact information for my community on over a hundred websites, so I don't list pricing except on my community website and craigslist ads.

That definitely makes sense to me. What a task to manage over a hundred!

And I agree; knowing your market and referring whenever possible makes a world of difference.