Our Property Management Insights

Brace yourselves for more listing site shake ups We all felt the splash when Zillow Group began charging for single family listings in 2019, and over the course of a year became a fully monetized platform. It was a tough pill to swallow for property managers who relied on Zillow, Trulia, and Hotpads as their primary source of free leads. Luckily, there was a hero waiting in the wings: Zumper to the rescue! Buttressed by their unique partnership with Facebook Marketplace, leads still flowed without paying for listings.

True confessions moment: how many times have you let a call go to voicemail, because it was a property owner you didn’t want to deal with? You knew why they were calling — they wanted an explanation why their property still hadn’t been filled — but you just didn’t have the energy for that conversation.

Maybe you’ve heard the stats before: if you don’t follow up with a tenant lead within one to two minutes, your chances of connecting with them drops fast — by as much as 40 percent in one day. Even after just 30 minutes, you’re 10 percent less likely to connect. How are you supposed to keep up at that pace?

The typical rental showings and leasing process is riddled with pain points for potential tenants and property managers alike. But it doesn’t have to be. There are solutions to address the usual pitfalls that occur during this stage of the rental process. Let’s start with a look at the top pain points for tenants, as reported by AM Digital, and how they can be addressed to improve the renter experience.

When your rental property business grows, you may be debating the right time to add staff. However, as you grow your staff you also incur costs that can eat into your profits. The best strategy to maximize your rental income profit is to keep your property management team as lean as possible. But that’s easier said than done when everyone is working long hours to keep up with demand (especially these days, as we’ve seen a marked increase in leasing activity). So, is hiring another property manager actually the right solution?

Property managers know that as critical as the rental showing process is, it’s also really time-consuming. Between scheduling and rescheduling appointments, hosting the tour (assuming the prospects show up!) and then following up afterward, it’s not a simple task. We recently dove into data that shows that property managers are busier than ever, due to a high occupancy rate and a low number of rental units available. In a tight market, property managers need to save time, and self-showings might seem like a dream come true. But are they really?

“We used to get 50 phone calls a day at our office. Now we don’t get any. It’s awesome!”