Self-Guided Tours: The New Frontier of Apartment Property Management?

Imagine a world where a prospective renter finds an apartment online, hops into a car and drives to the community to take a look around. But this home hunter detours the leasing office and walks, unaccompanied, into a vacant apartment to see what’s inside. Nobody is there, just the curious prospect and empty space. After opening closet doors and kitchen cabinets, the visitor imagines how the couch may look here or over there. A short time later, the prospect leaves and closes the door behind, and maybe heads to the leasing office. Then again, maybe not. This future resident may come back two or three more times to see the unit. Each time the leasing agent is nowhere around. Touring the property with the property manager or other staff who paint a rose-y picture of life at the community isn’t the way to go. That’s so, well, 2018.  Welcome to the self-guided tour, the next frontier of apartment leasing.  Some property management companies are offering tours without the assistance of a leasing representative to meet growing consumer interest in viewing a property on your own time and at your own pace. Prospects can sign up for a self-guided tour on a property’s website or app, receive a code for the smart lock on an apartment and check out the wares with little or no in-person engagement with the leasing staff. The concept has been around for a few years but technology is advancing it, and multifamily operators are cautiously wondering if it’s the next greatest thing to self-service package lockers and online payments. “It’s becoming a hot topic,” said Carlisle Properties Chief Marketing Officer Kevin Thompson, but “we need to go in with eyes wide open.” At last fall’s National Multifamily Housing Council OpTech Conference and Exposition, Thompson hosted a brief round-table discussion for what renters are warming to. The 2020 NMHC/Kingsley Associates Apartment Resident Preferences Repor...