Picture this you just built a multifamily community in your target market with the most amazing floor plans, all the right colors, hired a well known property management firm, found leasing agents, built a website, listed it on search engines, and started open house property tours but even after all of that it has taken forever to find even 10 prospective residents out of a 250 unit complex.
The issue? No clear multifamily lease up strategy.
For multifamily, marketers and commercial real estate developers, the lease up period can make or break the success and ROI of a property.
Leasing up is when you aim to fill your apartment complex with as many tenants as possible, as fast as you can generate cash flow.
The key to a successful lease up? Be prepared with a quality multifamily lease up plan to understand exactly how you’re going to gain new leases as effectively as you can. Ideally prior to construction being completed.
The goal is to hit the ground running when new units become available to maximize both your profitability and reduce vacancies.
To ensure that your commercial real estate company has a smooth and successful lease up phase you need to develop a proper strategy.
In this article the Cindtoro team will teach you the essential tips and tricks that you need to know about how to create a lease up plan.
Let our team guide you through the multifamily lease up process step by step!
Research Phase
Audience demographics, insights, and other key elements will be crucial to you having a successful lease up process. During this phase, you should conduct in depth market research: take a deep dive into demographics and the potential preferences of your renters. By making this your first step, this will help tailor the rest of your multifamily marketing process to these efforts.
The creation of a Lease Up Plan
Taking the valuable information that you learned during the research phase. Will allow you to create a solid multifamily marketing plan another key process.
The creation of a plan is important because If you don’t plan for something, it will be impossible to make the right decision
Planning helps you understand how to reach your ideal target audience in the most effective way possible.
This also helps you avoid a lengthy trial and error process because you have a well defined plan of the things you would like to use to market and lease up your multifamily complex.
A comprehensive plan should include multiple strategies to attract new renters. Examples of these things could be using marketing tools like: social media, SEO, email marketing, and even local advertising.
You want to ensure that you utilize as many channels as possible so you can reach a wide range of prospects.
Unique selling points
Let’s just say there are a ton of multifamily apartments in the market place and many more being built every day. There is no sign of commercial real developers slowing down likely ever.
With so much competition have you thought about what sets your property apart from the competition?
Is it the location/convenience? Built-in local amenities? Affordability? Comfort?
Whatever it may be, to reach the right audience for the given market make sure that you use clear and concise messages throughout your digital and traditional marketing efforts so that potential renters can see the difference between your property or somebody else’s right up the road.
Create a user-friendly website
People who are looking for an apartment complex will often utilize a website to search for one. If you do not have a well functioning apartment website this will greatly hinder your process of generating new rentals.
Your multifamily website needs to have simple and clear navigation, well defined pricing and even the ability to have virtual tours.
The pricing information and virtual tours are the two most important factors when it comes to having a successful site. Somebody somewhere is looking for an apartment complex and they need to see the pricing and or location information to make a clear determination as to where they want to live.
Build quality relationships
Your leasing team needs to strive to build strong relationships with prospective renters as effectively as they can.
People want to feel comfortable in the place that they are choosing to live so doing things like:
Answering their questions as fast as possible, responding to inquiries and creating a positive first impression will be critical to making people feel at home, which in turn then make them more willing to lease an apartment complex with you vs your competition.
Use the right technology
If you are not tracking who you are engaging with and who your best prospective renters are, then you will fall behind to the competition that is! We encourage you to ask this question to yourself “Do we have the best apartment leasing software for our needs and goals as a company or do we need something different?”
Simply put using the right apartment CRM software can help you: streamline the process to sign a lease, keep track of key documents and communicate with potential tenants.
All these items will be critical to leasing up a new or existing multifamily apartment complex
Pricing strategies
Making sure that your multifamily apartment complex is not overpriced and fits what the rest of the comparable markets’ rental rates. This will be critical to leasing up as quickly as possible. To do this you should look to perform market analysis to determine the most competitive prices.
You should also consider offering incentives and move-in early discounts for early renters is an excellent way to attract more tenants.
Pre-lease
You do not need to wait until the construction of the apartment complex is completed to begin renting. You should consider pre-leasing the complex 4 to 8 months before its completion.
You may be wondering how you can get somebody to lease an apartment if they cannot see it, the answer? Using 3-D rendering within your marketing materials. These would be things like flyers, billboards, social media posts, and even your website. Pre-leasing a property can help you avoid a slow start to the lease up process.
Monitoring and adjusting
All digital and traditional marketing requires that you monitor and adjust as needed. As you track the performance of your lease up strategy, you will likely need to make changes as you go.
You should be ready to pivot in a moments notice if something is not working
The lease of strategy requires careful and intentional planning. A deep dive into your market, the competition. The software needed and a strongly built, multifamily marketing plan.
If you do all of these you will attract the right tenants and reduce vacancies at your complex.
Utilize these tips to create your lease up strategy or have the marketing team at Cindtoro do it for you!
Work with Cindtoro
Cindtoro was founded to help commercial property owners like you reduce their vacancies, attract quality tenants, and overall increase the brand awareness and exposure of their firm. We were founded in 2019 to provide the highest quality, digital and traditional marketing services. We encourage you to use Cindtoro for your lease up marketing needs.
See how digital marketing can generate new potential residents and provide long term growth for your multifamily apartment complex
To get a marketing strategy and proposal fill out our contact form or call us at 407-923-0109 and a member of our friendly team will be in touch with you!
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