Has anyone ever done lease up tours during construction?

First Lease Up Help.
I am working on my first lease up in new construction. I am thinking of doing an "open house" but have it be guided tour. A leasing agent or PM would take a group around and show units. We do have studs up so you can defiantly get a fill of layouts. Has anyone ever done this before as an event??

Absolutely! Take full advantage of the 'buzz' that is being built in your community, then nurture those relationships. Congrats.. It's going to be a fun ride!

I just did a hard hat tour of a property here in St. Louis! I loved it! Was such a great idea and perfect way to get people inside before completion! They schedule them for a couple of hours a few days each week!

Were you worried about OSHA? Did you have any creative marketing that you did?

No, however, I will be following this topic because our company will be hosting an information session OFF site at a nearby hotel banquet room...

Unfortunately, due to safety risks and the liability involved, we won't be able to have prospective tenants tour the apartment complex while it's under construction so I'm hoping images and information packages will be enough.

I didn't work there was just touring...but they did have me sign a release and the tour was mapped out. There were obstacles thought, like electric cords and construction debris to watch out for. The property was also nearing completion, only a month away from first occupancy so much further along that studs.

Its a good idea... IF you can get your GC to agree to it. There are certain liabilities that they take on as a company for everyone that comes on-site, and OSHA may have a problem with it (source... am former low-volt construction lead for a multifamily developer). Run it by them first/foremost to get approval. For our builds, we typically couldn't bring non-employed people (either by site, ownership or management group) on-site until a roof was on, and the build was at a certain state, and even then it was typically done after-hours, outside of what would be considered normal OSHA "visiting" hours. They'll have to wear hard hats, and typical construction gear like closed toe shoes with heavy soles, etc. Just a couple things to think about!

I wouldn’t do any showings with just studs up. Reach out to a company who makes 3D floor plans (I used Resident 360) and also have a virtual tour made of the 3D Floor plans. Those can be super helpful!

Hard Hats???

Totally! Hard hats, vests and closed toed shoes

If you're even allowed to do it, I might wait until it's a bit further along. You have people who get excited about seeing things "under construction" but then there are a number of people who won't be able to picture things completed and that can actually hurt.

Have you considered doing an offsite event where you show all of the floor plans (marketing versions, not architect versions) and any other renderings etc that you have? Do it at a local restaurant or store so that you're also introducing people to the neighborhood. We did a "floor plan reveal" party for our VIP list for a lease up a few years back that was highly effective. A number of people pretty much chose the floor plans that they ended up leasing when we started leasing a few months later that night.

We did a leasing party to kick things off and we are about 25% leased and still 9 months out to completion. What I really sell on is the views. Once I get people in the building and show them what there view will be the rent. Pictures just dont due it justice but we have a natural waterfall/river view.

We do hart hat tours all the time.

Have you done like an event or open house? Any creative marketing ideas?

Laura, yes. We do open houses. We try to get one unit done first. Our GC always focuses on that. Are you in a leasing trailer? Get your logo out there - have nice promo items for them to leave with. We had custom logo cookies made at my last one.

Get custom logo hard hats and get a step and repeat. Everyone thinks they’re so cute in hard hats and want to take pictures. Seize the opportunity.

Hard hat is a must , and a fantastic move on your part to help sale the product

Yep with hard hats

Just check with the builders about liability insurance.

Other things you can do around town to build brand awareness are good while your waiting for C of Os. I did “First Friday”, a local evebt held monthly downtown Bentonville for 3 months. Good luck!

Once upon a time, We used baby food jars with construction junk in them with a pretty cloth top cover tied with a ribbon. We tied the hard hat tour invitation to the jar with the ribbon. Personally delivered the jar invitations to businesses and lots of brokers.

Imperative to have a good release. Saturday or Sundays are best so you aren’t in Construction’s way. Walk your tour path prior. So many interesting things left behind by construction! We kept coolers with beverages and bowls of snacks at each planned stop and vision boards at each stop to help them see the expected result.

While they are very effective and we used to do them our GC shut us down on it because their builders risk didnt cover non-employees and the building inspectors almost shut our job down. So definitely get confirmation from your GC before scheduling anything.

Ive heard lots of great ideas here- wish we would have embraced this active construction so much more... so definitely embrace it and make it an event. People get excited !

Ask for a construction materials (mood) board.

Do you have a picture of one?

After approval with contractors, I created a neighborhood crawl event. This gave the prospects an idea of what it would be like to live in the area. They picked up the neighborhood crawl paper at the tour and I gave them a week to complete it. After they were turned in, It registered them for some prizes.

I had a few restaurants on there, a dry cleaner, a car wash, and a grocery store. The deal was they had to go to each location and gave an employee initial off on the visit.

Before some of you start, YES some people probably cheated but it was fun and it ended up giving them an idea of the convenient businesses nearby. It’s all about location location location.

I’ve done it on multiple new devs with branded hard hats. Definitely need to get GC approval first. A lot of time we would have ownership talk to GC to help push it along. We would have pre planned routes every time and work with the GC if we needed to change route due to construction. If it’s early enough in planning, we would get them to build out and finish one home first, but that may not be possible for you if it’s pretty far along.

Congrats! I've done this in the past. Guided tours are always great, but like they wrote above verify with the GC that all is good to go.Also keep in mind that it can be too early to show to some people and they might not get the whole picture. For this I would recommend any marketing material you might have with how it will look like, to present before the tour. Good luck! Post pics of the tour.

You can always place easels with a foamcore sign on them at key locations throughout the tour. Have renderings of room types or show off key amenities that will be in that location. Even have them wear a branded hard hat for fun!!!

Hard hats and a messy construction site hmmmm not sure. Some might be ok with it. Will the project manager allow this? They would not let me walk through the construction site with clients (not safe). So they said. I filled it in six months without showing in the beginning. Leased online with pictures and lots of follow up emails. Congratulations on the new property, but most of all have fun. Your feet are going hurt.