Insight #5: Cut Costs Not Quality: On-Site Teams Go Multi-site

By: Jay Parsons, Tracy Saffos and David Polewchak Every year, for decades, the question is asked at budgeting sessions among apartment property management executives: Can we reduce the staffing-to-unit ratio? And every year, most executives search for creative ways to make it happen…only to eventually hit dead ends. Some tried and still have the battle scars from it. Lead conversion rates dropped—and resident satisfaction scores declined—when teams were stretched too thin. But the unique environment of 2020 propelled the topic to the forefront. The pandemic forced property managers to work with lesser staffing on-site, while also experimenting with work-from-home models and relying more on solutions outsourced to centralized offices. On top of that, some property managers struggled to backfill open leasing agent and community manager roles. Now, leading property managers are actively testing multi-site models where leasing agents cover multiple communities within the same geographic area. How can property management executives determine when it makes sense to go multi-site, and what does an effective model look like? Listen to the podcast on this topic. Revisiting the Old Math Traditionally, the payroll model was 1 per 100 units inside and 1 per 100 units outside. That means a 300-unit asset would have 6 total associates – with 3 in the leasing office and 3 on the service team. Property managers in the past experimented with raising the ratio but were challenged by the demands of residents, prospects and vendors walking through the front doors of the leasing office. That door always HAD to be open because, well, everything happened inside the leasing office. Few properties offered a truly virtual leasing office, and that meant residents, prospects and vendors usually had no choice but to walk inside or make a phone call and hope someone answers. In recent years, more communities took steps toward modernizing – investing in sol...