Is anyone else having the problem of converting guest cards to applications

Hi All!
We're doing a 100 unit lease up of a new construction luxury apartment community just outside of Boston. Here's our stats for conversions in the last 30 days:

Guest Cards 157
Showings 50
Applications 11
Approved Applications 4

We're finding a lot of people who inquire don't respond back to follow up texts, phone calls, and emails and even more of them are unqualified. Another hurdle is we will schedule showings 6 at a time, 2 confirm beforehand and 1 shows up.

Is anyone else having this problem? What can we do to convert more of those guest cards to applications? Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

Edit: 1/2 of the apartments are completed in one building and 1/2 are being built in another building. We’re currently 68% occupied in building one after opening in October.

Is it just you answering the calls/emails? Or do you have a team?

Honestly when someone doesnt show up I call them before close or the next day and inquire as to why. Traffi, work, illness, got lost? It helps touch base in a friendly way and typical leads to a new appointment they keep even if its because they feel bad about last time.

In would also take a look at all your unqualified and see what source they are coming from. Maybe look at your advertising

Jennifer Carter that’s a great idea! We’ve scanned this over and most of them were coming from Zillow. However, most of our leases came from Zillow too. It’s just weeding through the bad to get to the good!

If your property is especially “cool” by comparison to your competition? I have a boutique property that had similar numbers & we just had to get all the “lookie-loos” out of the way. We started doing lots of open house times versus setting appointments, which we blasted out on social media and told every single person who inquired about.

Karla Fliehler Ross we do open houses and make digital flyers, post them on social and send blasts out to our pending prospects. We also have a referral program for current residents. I agree, tons of nosey neighbors pretending to be prospects!

What concerns me is the 50 tours but only 4 leases. What is your team doing for closes? Maybe if you have a lot of lookie loos then you need a hard close to gauge their interest? I would then look at the source. As much as I want a lease up on all marketing channels I also want thoughtful/purposeful follow ups and relationship building to be happening with prospects. Too much unqualified traffic is worse than no traffic.

Destiny McMahon to be honest, at the tours we have a lot of people that come through and realize they aren’t qualified at the showings. For example, there was a person that came by yesterday saying he had no credit and made $2000/mo but didn’t understand why he wouldn’t qualify for an apartment at $1775/mo.
Also, the showings mean showings scheduled/confirmed but don’t mean they actually showed up (this happens way too often).
It’s just me doing the Leasing. I try to weed through the guest cards by reaching out at the beginning of the week and closing them out if they don’t answer/are unqualified no more than two days later.
We’re encouraging our residents to leave candid reviews on review sites to see if that helps built credibility since we’re new construction. Trying all avenues!

ah I see. Have you thought of having an FAQ or your rental criteria posted on your website? Also zillow has an income prequalifier tool (more for affordable) but you could inquire about it. This is always the hard part about lease ups. Last do you have text messaging capabilities? Confirming appts that way may help?

Destiny McMahon the FAQs is a good idea! I’ll come up with a bunch of them and add them to our website, thanks! We don’t do boosted listings with Zillow anymore. A combo of terrible customer service and far too many bots/unqualified leads provided made us make the switch to apartments.com.
We have Appfolio so we text prospects and confirm showings. The worst is when I come in on my day off, the prospect confirms and doesn’t show up. Or doesn’t confirm so I don’t go then they show up and ask why I’m not there.

Lots of people are curious with a new construction. Window shoppers. They just want to see it but may not be really looking right now. However they may come back in the future or even refer someone there after seeing it and experiencing your customer service.

Kimberly Starnes Smith I agree! Even the unqualified people that come for a showing I’m always super polite and tell them if anything changes to let us know. Hopefully they refer someone who’s actually qualified. Customer service is huge and I strive for the best customer service I can provide. I just wish more qualified people would come through.

Don’t discount the lokkie loo window shoppers. They are more likely to share their experience with others. Invite every prospect to like your Facebook so when they leave, the can always have a window into what it would be like to live at your community. To create some urgency I would use target units for immediate move ins and set some units for future move ins. Apartments.com Marcia Bollinger and her team may be able to help with some advertising. Make each tour personal vs. casual with a group. Prospects have to vision themself really living here and sometimes with smaller communities, you will find more private people who stay to them self vs the community event groupies who always want to be social.. just trying to troubleshoot for you! Good luck!

Have you also shopped your competition

Jennifer Carter like going there for a tour? No, I haven’t! We’ve looked online and follow them on social

Bianca Carlson yes go there and see how their tours are, you can go and either tell them where you work or go as a prospect and see how they are touring. Remember everyone has a kitchen, bathroom etc, what are they or you doing to stand out and create a memorable experience

Hey Bianca, a lot of operators are focusing more on their engagement timeline when managing leads. You may want to look at what day/times those qualified and converted leads came in. For instance, take a look at your 4 leases, what day/time did those leads originally contact you? The most qualified prospects for a community of this caliber work M-F, 9-5, and may be inquiring after hours and you're simply missing them.

Chris Stutz good point. That could be the case. So since I’m the only person doing leasing.. how do I catch those leads without workin around the clock and getting burnt out?

Well you nailed it, you simply can't work around the clock, it's not feasible. And even if you follow up on every lead, 80% of people don't even leave voicemails. Based on your comments in this thread, I'd bet that nearly half of your time communicating with prospects is about trying to schedule or re-schedule tours?

Chris Stutz spot on! I spend so much time going in circles asking people for showings and to reschedule showings that weren’t confirmed.

Yep. You're not alone, it happens a lot. I know you're busy, but take 5 minutes check out this case study where millions of leads followed those same trends. There is some good insight on how to handle. blog.anyonehome.com/201807leadmanagement/

Are your qualifying standards too high for the market? 4 approved out of 11 seems low. Obviously, you have to protect your asset. But I had a property where we had to go in and tweak the standards. Once we did that we were able to approve more apps. Why are they failing? Credit or something worse?

Morgan Barfield Hutchison we have an income requirement of 3x monthly rent gross, 650 score minimum but we also have things we look for on a report (delinquencies, bankruptcies, foreclosures, leins, repossessions, etc.). We’re getting so many leads with scores 600 or lower with a slew of delinquencies, bad landlord references, etc. there’s some thing we’re willing to look over, but others that are just too much of a red flag.

Morgan Barfield Hutchison also, you’d be shocked how many of those apps are people that apply and don’t respond! I end up cancelling them after a month of follow up because I don’t want to keep beating a dead horse.

yikes! It’s really a tough one! Hang in there. Like others have said, the window shoppers are out in full force. Is there any sort of trend you can find in an employer? If you could find one or 2 preferred employers and market heavily to them, maybe you’d get nice qualified leads that way. Sometimes you gotta go back to the basics.

Morgan Barfield Hutchison we have 3 apartments employed by JetBlue! We’re doing a raffle for a free lunch for 15 delivered to place of employment if the resident posts a candid review on a review site! The chances of us getting in at Jet Blue are good! I reached out to corporate at all the major airlines so we’ll see where that goes.

Bianca Carlson bingo!!! Get it girl! Be the “go to” apartment community for Jet Blu. We had a huge Panasonic following in my market and there was one community who had the advantage with them. 60% of their residents were Panasonic employees. Be the envy of your competitors. You got this!

Bianca Carlson perhaps with a score of 700 + you lower the income requirement to 2.5x? Perhaps the area the building is in is not a draw for higher income persons? If that's the case then creating higher traffic is the way to go - play the numbers.

Kathleen Silver income is one of the reasons for denial, but honestly it’s because they’re way way far off on income. To qualify more we’d need to drop to 2x the rent which concerns the owners because I feel I’d end up in housing court more often. I appreciate the suggestion and I’ll mention it to ownership!

In my opinion, you have to take a step back and figure out if you have a people, price, product, or promotion issue. Right now closing is at 20% and and conversion is at 30% so you’ll want to find creative ways to improve both.
The biggest opportunity you have to do this are the 39 people who toured and didn’t lease as they can help you figure that out. Ask them what changes would’ve made them choose you (and where the leased instead). It might be a easy solution and you might be able to convert some of that traffic by implementing a change they recommend

Look at the basics. It is usually one of the three P’s. Product, Price or People.

Bianca,

I would love to talk about a couple of solutions we have come up with our clients at Rent Dynamics. Email me [email protected].