Do you think a slow season really exists in leasing?

Thoughts?

No

Depends on the market. We black out our expirations in Nov., Dec., & Jan. in the Midwest.

Regardless of the product being sold or service provided, every Industry has a "slow season." In retail, we all know the Holiday Season, starting after the infamous "Black Friday" (where retailers finally get out of the "red" negative accounting numbers and into the positive "black" cash flow numbers) starts the day after Thanksgiving and lasts until Christmas Eve.
In Apartment Management, most often the months with the most traffic begin to show a dramatic increase starting in May, peaking in July and August with a downward trend by the end of the year. November, December and January tend to be the "slowest" months seasonally, however, a lot can impact a "slow season" and make it a busy one. A lot has to do with the Property with regards to location, drive-by traffic, marketing efforts, if the Property is in a lease-up mode, etc.
In my personal experience, based on 2010-2011 Traffic Numbers, the percentage of total net traffic is as follows:
March 2010 - 9%
April 2010 - 9%
May 2010 - 13%
June 2010 - 12%
July 2010 - 11%
August 2010 - 11%
September 2010 - 8%
October 2010 - 7%
November 2010 - 9%
December 2010 - 5%
January 2011 - 3%
February 2011 - 3%

While May through August show the highest double-digit percent in total traffic, March, April and November hold strong at 9% each. These months boasted extensive marketing campaigns, new curb appeal signs, locator events and resident retention incentives.

I hope this helps!

Of course, but not enough to change the way you should aggressively market your property to get the few renters that are available. If you have vacancies you should prepare them for immediate rental as usually people in winter want to move in right away. It's cold outside and sometimes the window of opportunity is very limited.

It depends on the location of the community however and type of property. As an example student properties definitely have seasons, just as we see a seasonal nature to leasing in parts of Florida with who we call "snowbirds." Balancing and managing lease expiration's is the key with any community, and after analysis of who your target market is and market specifics such as the two listed above with students and seniors. The key is if we do our job and not just meet our residents expectations but exceed them, our residents don't want to or don't find an excuse to want to leave...therefore seasons are irrelevant.