Virtual tours mean different things to different people – including apartment operators and prospective residents – so I spoke to Holli Beckman, Vice President of Marketing and Leasing Operations at WC Smith; and Melissa White, CAM, CAPS, Director of Property Management at Perennial Properties; and Kelley Shannon, Senior Vice President of Consumer Marketing, Bozzuto, about traffic, incentives, conversions and technology.

Current Traffic

“People are adjusting to the current normal and are getting more comfortable with moving again,” White says. “Traffic has begun to increase since March. We have not achieved the same number of tours we did prior to COVID from a YoY standpoint, but things are improving. Some companies that I have spoken with are achieving YoY numbers. A lot of Perennial’s communities are in highly walkable areas, and because of precautionary health reasons, we seem to have fewer people touring just because they happen to be in the neighborhood.”

Beckman says traffic is definitely down. She chairs a DC-area property management marketing committee and says two different and highly reliable marketing vice presidents shared data that indicate their traffic is down 50 percent YoY.

White says she’s asking her teams: How many live virtual tours are prospective residents taking before they lease? “I think it’s obvious that not being able to see and feel the amenity spaces and community/neighborhood in person drastically impacts the experience for the prospective resident,” she says.

“Prospects might be adjusting the amount of time they would normally spend looking for a home. They may only ‘look’ at their top three choices when in the past they might have visited five or more places, located in different parts of town. Pre-Covid, they might have visited communities that perhaps were over their budget, but they still wanted to see them just to see them.

“This is important because oftentimes pricing is the driving factor behind online shopping; but when experiencing the community in person, sometimes a prospect realizes (and falls in love with!) the added value of the physical community, and will pay more.

Bozzuto is tracking its Realync virtual tours weekly and comparing them to the first two weeks of March when the tours were all in-person, Kelley Shannon, Senior Vice President of Consumer Marketing, Bozzuto, says.

“At a portfolio level, we haven’t climbed back to the total weekly tour count pre-COVID; however, we have successfully increased our leases beyond the pre-COVID levels – leases for us hit a low around the fourth week of March and have been rebounding since,” she says.

Shannon adds that this is reflective of a few things. “People are becoming more comfortable making decisions based on virtual tours; and people are becoming more comfortable moving during this pandemic,” she says. “Plus, our site teams have been improving at the art of virtual touring.”

Incentives

White says COVID-19 is the latest event on a long list that requires greater incentives to drive traffic.

“There was the Great Recession of 2008 and the huge new development build-up around 2011-12,” White says. “Although COVID-19 is new to all of us, a slow market or downturn is not. Incentives are a tactic we’ve all used before, often during a typical lease-up phase.

“The current need for incentives is telling of the times. For the foreseeable future, things are not going to get any easier for us to capture the lease or even the tour. In the past, we offered a gift card for taking a tour; now we offer an e-gift card for taking a live virtual tour.”

Conversions

Beckman spoke of WC Smith’s Avec on H Street Apartments in Washington, D.C., a 419-unit community that opened in January and is 18 percent occupied. There, virtual tours led to 11 applications two weeks ago and six more last week. Generally speaking, she estimates virtual tours are converting at a 30 percent to 33 percent rate.

White first implemented live virtual tours at Perennial in mid- to late-March. In April, Perennial began offering at four of its communities a $20 gift card to those who took a live virtual tour.

“Since March, our live virtual tours are converting at a ratio of 45 percent compared to our previous conversion ratio of 36 percent,” White says.

She says of the 21 gift cards awarded for live virtual tours, 14 were converted to leases.

Training and Technology

Bozzuto spent the first few weeks of the COVID shelter in place ensuring that, across our portfolio of 260 communities -- our associates had the tools that they could use to be effective at virtual touring.

“We have since spent the past few weeks focusing on training our teams on how to deliver the trust-inspired tour,” Shannon says. “We are seeing this focus starting to pay off, with more efficient conversion from lead to lease and tour to lease.

Beckman uses a Matterport camera to capture stock footage of each apartment home as it becomes vacant. 

"We've been very successful at using video tours of specific units recorded ahead of time," Beckman says. "We send them to the prospects. It's been more effective than live virtual tours. Prospects love that they are seeing the actual apartment they are leasing. They can get a feel for the natural light the apartment gets or can see the exact view from their bedroom window." 

White uses a Matterport camera to shoot virtual tour footage, and smartphone/YouTube for quick, vacant tours. For live video tours, she uses Skype, Messenger, Insta Live and Facetime. Each community has an iPad, pre-COVID purchase.

Paul Bergeron is a freelance reporter who covers the apartment industry. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 703-434-0280.