Have you been much busier than normal this spring? That’s not surprising: in early 2021, we noticed a significant increase in lead and leasing activity, especially as compared to the level of active rental inventory. In fact, while the leasing “busy season” typically starts in May, it actually started in March this year. We decided to dig into our user data to figure out what’s happening -- and what it means for property managers who are already strapped for time.
Fewer Rentals on Market Mean Active Rentals Draw More Leads: An Automated Property Management System Helps You Keep Up
Let’s start by taking a look at the numbers:
Tenant leads per active rental are spiking:
- +84% in March over March 2020 (and +44% over March 2019)
- +66% in April, over April 2020 (and again, +44% over April 2019)
Monthly active rentals per customer have been slowly declining since February 2020.
Market Imbalance Is Driving Leasing Activity
We believe that the unusual increase in leasing activity is being propelled by low inventory. With the occupancy rate running high, rental availability (meaning vacancies from turnover) has not fully recovered since the start of the pandemic in Q1 2020. This is contributing to an overall shortage in rental housing inventory, and the high-demand, low-supply market imbalance in many areas of the U.S. is leaving prospective renters feeling pressure to find a good rental property quickly, before someone else takes it.
We’re seeing this imbalance play out in the global real estate market, with people beginning to panic-buy houses even as residential property prices soar. That is likely contributing to the rental inventory crunch, with landlords selling properties instead of renting to take advantage of inflated values. At the same time, high levels of inflation are preventing other potential landlords from investing in new properties. We also believe that the inventory ratio is off due to a backlog of prospective tenants who had remained in place throughout 2020 and are now ready to move, but their current property can’t be backfilled with a new tenant until they find a place to live.
As a result, calls and texts per active rental are spiking as more potential renters are making inquiries on a steadily-smaller set of rental units. As the sense of urgency increases, so do the lead inquiries. In a “normal” year, we would see prospective renters browse online listings (what we define as page views) first, and then make an inquiry, prior to becoming a lead. For example, they may make an initial call, and then receive automated text messages to nurture them toward a showing. The typical data supports that story: lead growth trails behind growth in texts and page views, and roughly oscillates with call growth.
But this year, where everything is different, we saw lead growth jump above page views, calls and texts -- and stay there. Meaning that prospective renters are becoming leads without needing to be nurtured -- they are ready to rent, right now. And surprisingly, call growth, which typically lags behind text growth, has been outpacing text since February 2021. This is yet another indicator that leads are leap-frogging the nurture stage.
Here are the numbers:
- Total calls: +69% in March and April over 2020
- Calls per active rental: +23% over April 2019
- Texts per active rental: +48% over April 2019
While these rental trends are interesting, the bottom line is that this increase in leasing activity really means one thing for busy property managers: you’re suddenly wading through a lot more rental leads, all while being interrupted more often. Since we’re only now heading into the “typical” rental busy season, we don’t expect to see this activity level to drop off any time soon. So what can you do to keep up with -- and even better, thrive in -- this exciting (if also challenging) rental property market?
How Tenant Turner Can Help
As your listings generate more attention (page views), and those tenant leads become more demanding on your time (due to the urgency of the supply/demand imbalance), you’re going to be more and more pressed for time. Tenant Turner is here to help you address the housing needs of your community, by streamlining your property management processes. The key is using automated rental management to handle all of these tenant leads and automate your leasing process.
- Publish your online listing once and easily syndicate it across popular sites like The Zillow Group and Zumper
- Set up automatic responses to all tenant lead inquiries (phone calls, emails, text messages)
- Consistently pre-screen all potential renters against your minimum requirements to determine immediately if they are qualified or not
- Set up automated text nurture streams to move slower tenant leads towards a showing
- Use an online tenant showing scheduler to let prospective renters book and confirm their own showing appointments
- Automatically send applications after every showing
- Install an electronic lockbox to allow automated showings that don’t require your presence
- Use AI-driven anti-fraud detection to identify and avoid potential scammers
- Easily connect and share data with popular property management software solutions like Buildium
Using Another Rental Software Solution? You may be paying for each tenant lead, meaning that as interest peaks, your cost is also skyrocketing. At Tenant Turner, we don’t charge by the lead -- or by the showing.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Tenant Turner’s leasing automation can help you keep up with this unexpected surge in leasing activity and demand.
What This Means for Current Tenant Turner Customers
We know that your calls may be through the roof right now. If your phone is ringing off the hook, we can help. Just enable our Leasing Line Call Center, powered by VirtuallyIncredible, for your property management business. Our call center can handle 100% of your phone calls, and all calls are recorded for your protection. The call center is run by actual humans, and offers extended hours for night and weekend coverage. You can enable it from the Add-Ons page in Tenant Turner.
You can learn more about the VirtuallyIncredible leasing line call center from our help center article dedicated to the leasing line. And current customers can contact us here via chat on our website if you’d like to discuss our optional call center in more detail.