How Property Websites Can Help Guide Apartment Shoppers
Deciding on the perfect apartment isn’t always an easy task and not something that most people take lightly. If apartment shoppers do not feel confident that your apartment community will be able to check off all the boxes on their new home wish list, it’s likely they will move on and choose another community that can do so.
With over 70% of apartment shoppers researching apartments online, it’s important that property management websites from apartment property management companies be able to give potential renters all of the information they want to know about your community and through this apartment shopper guide process bring them closer to a lease. You can search “how to create a property management website?” or “how to build a property management website?” but without knowing what renters want and investing in tools that make your property management websites more interactive, your website won’t keep the interest of online prospects. What are renters looking for?
Consider These Decisive Factors for Potential Renters
There are several key factors that potential renters take into consideration when deciding whether or not to lease an apartment. A recent survey administered by national apartment management firm, Village Green, found that the top three criteria potential renters use to evaluate a property are:
- Rent price
- Location
- Community environment
The first two are rather obvious: the monthly rent price must be within budget and the apartment should be close to work, family, or whatever the potential renter deems important. Community environment is a factor that often gets overlooked, but it’s actually extremely important to potential renters. People want to know if the apartment community and surrounding area will have what is needed to fulfill their interests and hobbies.
“Rent was obviously super important,” says Lilly Iffert, a new renter at the Providence of Old Meridian, a Buckingham property in Carmel, Indiana. “We had a strict rent budget that we didn’t want to exceed, so we’d check the floorplan prices online before ever scheduling a tour.” Joining Lilly in her search was Elizabeth Weinewuth.
“It’s important that an apartment property’s website be able to give potential renters all of the information they want to know about your community.”
Guide Apartment Shoppers by Providing all the Necessary Information
Not long into their apartment search, however, Iffert and Weinewuth quickly realized that there were several other expenses that must be factored into their monthly payments. “This is our first apartment,” explained Weinewuth, “so we learned really fast that there are a lot more things to consider than you would think. The other monthly costs you’re going to have in the apartment like utilities, cable, trash – these are all things you’re going to be paying monthly in addition to the rent.”
“[Those other costs] started to be the first thing we’d ask leasing agents about on a tour,” continued Iffert, “we wanted to make sure that the total price we’d be paying monthly wasn’t going to be over our budget.”
Iffert and Weinewuth are not alone in this question. Determining what the monthly expenses will be, in addition to the rent payment, is likely just as important as the actual rent price. This is a question that leasing agents are asked on nearly every tour or initial phone call. Because of this, PERQ’s leasing automation platform powered by AI technology is equipped with a natural language AI chatbot.
The best chatbot is one that gets prospects’ questions answered quickly and able to provide customer service 24/7. There are rule-based and natural language chatbots. Rule-based ones require prospects to go through preselected prompts. This leads to a likelihood of a prospect’s question being unanswered and having to wait for a leasing specialist and business hours to get it answered. The best AI chatbot are the natural language ones. The user experience is smoother and it gathers more insightful data on the prospect since it is restricted to a number of prompts.
PERQ’s platform also personalizes lead nurture with a property’s brand colors and voice. While today’s consumers expect automation that doesn’t mean the automated follow-up needs to read and look like it came from a robot. The personal touch that PERQ can give gives that follow-up more edge. There are also plenty of other tools like a personal budget calculator, the ability to schedule a tour, and more!
We showed our recent renters these new tools for property websites and asked if they would have been helpful during their recent apartment hunt.
“The personal expense calculator is awesome!” says Iffert. “That would’ve saved us a lot of time and effort we spent asking [leasing agents] all of the possible expenses and calculating our potential monthly expenses on our own.”
Weinewuth has quite a bit to say about these tools as well! “I like how it shows the costs of optional amenities too. It lets you see what the property has to offer and how much you’ll have to pay for the extra stuff. That would’ve been huge since all properties have different amenities and different costs.”
Both Weinewuth and Iffert loved the Community Fit feature as well, and agreed that it would have been extremely helpful with their search.
“Moving from Illinois to Indiana, I knew close to nothing about Carmel prior to moving,” says Weinewuth. “I obviously wanted to find a property that was close to work, but there was more that factored into our location search than just that. When we narrowed it down to a few properties we liked, I used the addresses to search what was nearby each property. It would’ve been awesome to have something like that directly on the [property] website.”
These new features provide significant benefits to both the property and prospective residents. They create a better, more meaningful engagement between the two. Today’s world is dominated primarily by online shopping, so it’s essential that property management companies have websites that stand out and can create a guided online experience for consumers.