11 Ways to Maximize Profit and Efficiency Before and During Leasing Season

Last modified on April 12th, 2022
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In the residential leasing world, May through September are known as leasing season — with July and August typically seeing the most volume. And this year will be unlike any other — with 82% of renters planning to move in the next 12 months, according to a recent Zumper survey. 

To maximize profits, property managers and leasing teams need to be ready for this increase in demand and commit resources to encourage lease renewals. New trends and technologies may change how you operate from year to year, but best practices for a successful leasing season will always remain the same. Read on to discover leasing season strategies that will give your team an edge and boost NOI (net operating income), before and during leasing season. 

Before Leasing Season

1. Prep Your Team

A well-prepared team can make all the difference during the busy months. If you’re short staffed, then invest in hiring or cross-training new team members well before leasing season, so they’ll have plenty of time to get ramped up and ready. One way you can optimize the onboarding process for new hires and ensure consistency is to implement software with built-in training. Guided workflows standardize each step of the process, reducing the associate’s ramping time and ensuring company standards are followed every time.

Leasing season isn’t the time to cut back on your training budget. According to the Center for American Progress, the direct cost associated with replacing an employee is roughly 20% of the employee’s salary. Protect your human assets. Make certain that all team members have access to technology and training before the surge. 

Whether you have on-site maintenance teams or work with third-party vendors, review procedures to ensure tools, supplies, and adequate staff members are available to respond to every situation. Also, consider extending leasing agents’ hours during peak rental season — the extra investment can really pay off in leads.

In addition, if your team is working remotely or distributed across a large region, check out these strategies for improving engagement, boosting productivity, and reducing turnover.

2. Put Your Property’s Best Foot Forward

You’ve heard it a hundred times, “you only get one chance to make a first impression.” After rent price and apartment features, 51% of renters said the overall property appearance would be very important in their future lease decision, according to the 2022 NMHC / Grace Hill Renter Preference Report. Before leasing season, be sure to spruce up your property since traffic from prospective residents should increase significantly. 

Invest in a property-wide deep cleaning, and address any maintenance issues that have been put off. Walk the property from a prospective resident’s point of view. Check for small cosmetic improvements that make a big difference in curb appeal. Right before leasing season might be the time for that overdue paint job. In addition, you should take care of landscaping chores, preventive maintenance, and check your roofing, gutters, and downspouts. If you have a pool or barbeque, make sure they are clean and maintained. Overall, you want to ensure a great overall first impression for your property.

Prior to leasing season is also a good time to consider investing in some new amenities, spaces, or services to add value. For instance, based on the 2022 NMHC / Grace Hill Renter Preferences Report, 73% of renters are interested in having self-service, 24/7 package access, 69% are interested in having a property-wide recycling program, and 58% are interested in having an outdoor communal barbeque space.

3. Prepare Descriptive, Enticing Listings

Great listings lead to more prospects and increase the likelihood that you’ll fill your vacancies as quickly as possible. It’s important to be very thorough with unit descriptions, photos, and videos to achieve success. Consider hiring a professional photographer to capture your spaces and deliver high-quality images. If writing isn’t your strong suit, seek the assistance of a freelancer or marketing agency to ensure your properties’ messages are informative and compelling. 

All of this information should be available to prospective renters on your own professional and modern website, in addition to third-party listing sites. Why? Based on the 2022 NMHC / Grace Hill Renter Preferences Report, 83% of renters visited a property management’s website and 73% of renters visited rental listing sites when searching for their most recent rental home. 

Put technology to work for you to reduce the amount of time (and potential errors) you’d spend if you were to upload all of your images to various third-party sites. AppFolio’s One-Click Vacancy Posting is a tool that allows you to maintain consistency across all listing sites, saving you time and minimizing negative customer experiences on the other side of the screen. 

4. Embrace Virtual Leasing Tools

In today’s era, you need to be prepared to meet prospective renters’ expectations for convenience and self-service. Technology that enables virtual leasing is more than just a nice-to-have — it’s an absolute essential. Virtual leasing options, such as virtual showings and video walkthroughs save renters time and reduce friction, since they can view the unit at their leisure. These kinds of options also benefit your team, in that they speed up the leasing process and free your team to focus on providing great service to more serious leads.

For qualified renters, offering self-guided tours with access to the property via a lockbox is another great option. Check out these tips to make sure that self-guided showings are a win-win for both your and your prospective renters.

5. Check Up On Your Application Process

If you don’t currently offer the ability to apply for your vacancies using an online application, it’s time to seriously consider it; more than half of rental property managers report an expectation by renters that they can fill their applications out online. Most renters expect to be able to apply online and prefer not to drive all the way to your property to turn in a piece of paper.

Besides offering a more convenient application situation for future renters, online leasing solutions streamline the rental process from beginning to end. When you utilize technology, you can access online tenant screening, e-applications, and digital signature options that allow residents to sign the lease immediately after viewing. 

The more upgraded your leasing technology, the better the process will be for everyone involved. You’ll be able to screen residents and attract more qualified leads, and your renters will enjoy a seamless, convenient online experience.

6. Review Your Screening Process

When you’re screening a prospective new resident, it’s important to look at them objectively not subjectively. In order to comply with Fair Housing Laws, it is best to create an objective criteria that defines a new applicant as acceptable or not. This criteria can include credit score or previous rent payment history, but cannot include protected statuses like race, gender, marital or familial status, sexual orientation, or religion.

The turnaround on tenant screening today is faster than ever before, and results come with much more detail than they did previously. For instance with AppFolio’s Tenant Screening offering you can create a preset leasing criteria to quickly and painlessly screen applicants. This add-on service checks an applicant’s credit score, criminal history, eviction history, and verifies their income and rental history, so you have everything you need to make informed decisions about applicants. 

7. Review Your Leasing and Addenda Language

Every year, state and federal regulations for housing change, and these amendments can have a dramatic impact on how you run your business. You might need to adjust your leasing and addenda language to account for new Fair Housing Laws or updates to local or state requirements. Failure to comply with these new changes can result in a possible lawsuit, so it’s important to stay up to date on all rental requirements. Be sure to check federal and state resources online or consult an attorney if you’re unsure about what needs to be updated.

During Leasing Season

8. Stay on Top of Pricing

A smart pricing strategy is one of the best ways you can fill vacancies faster and maximize profits. If your properties are priced too high, you run the risk of losing to the competition. Too low, and your ROI will suffer. 

Many property managers still call around for rental comparisons within their area to find an accurate price. A revenue management system with a sophisticated pricing algorithm can do this for you (and give you more accurate data). By pairing your rental units against comparable units in the area, these tools will tell you if you should raise or lower your rent for your properties.

If you’re comparing your property to others on the market, make sure you only compare your units to those that are similar. Additionally, your pricing should reflect property amenities, nearby attractions, and any updates you’ve made in the past year — and of course, current market conditions.

9. Don’t Forget About Renewals

During leasing season, you should be focusing on your current residents, too. The nationwide average cost to a property owner for every resident that chooses to leave is about $3,900. Check out the Multifamily Insiders Apartment Turnover Cost Calculator to determine your actual resident loss costs. Resident retention should be your number one priority, especially during leasing season since it has a major impact on your cash flow and property asset value.

Resident retention is very dependent on resident satisfaction. Residents who are satisfied with your property management company will be likely to renew their lease and stay with your community, but maintaining resident satisfaction is a year-round effort. Review service requests to determine patterns or areas of constant concern that you can address. Listen to resident feedback, keep the lines of communication open, and work at building a healthy community environment. Staying responsive to issues reported by current residents builds stronger relationships, which will hopefully encourage higher retention rates. In a 2022 study conducted by AppFolio, 30% of renters said that responsiveness, flexibility, and technology were more important now than they were pre-pandemic — all the more reason to ensure you’re communicating regularly and being attentive to their needs.

Effective communication can help you retain your best residents and attract better prospects. Today’s renters want to communicate with their property management company through online and mobile tools. One way you can rise to meet their needs is to offer an online resident portal, where renters can submit maintenance requests, pay rent, and ask questions. In addition, you can send out monthly surveys to gain valuable insights and feedback from your residents on areas where you can improve. By listening to your renters you can decrease resident churn, boost your ROI, and improve your customer experience.

10. Keep an Eye on Your Marketing ROI

Knowing which advertising channels bring in the most renters can set you well ahead of the competition and help you fill vacancies faster. When considering how to spend your marketing budget for each property, be intentional about where you spend your money and track whether or not those marketing channels attract renters. Accurate lead source attribution is absolutely critical for understanding this. 

As a rule of thumb, it’s best to invest more heavily in the marketing channels that have led to more signed leases in the past, and cut down on your spend in channels that haven’t yielded as many conversions. For more tips on how you can better market your business take a look at this article.

11. Respond Quickly to Incoming Leads

Leasing season can leave your team feeling overwhelmed with emails and calls, but if you don’t respond to renters as quickly as they expect, you’re likely to lose them to your competition. This is why it’s important to streamline your workflow to ensure your team is as responsive as possible. According to a study by Zillow, 71% of renters who ask property managers about a listing expect to hear back within 24 hours. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an excellent way to improve response time and free up your team to focus on providing higher levels of service to more serious leads. AppFolio’s AI Leasing Agent, Lisa works around the clock to thoughtfully respond to each and every renter and automatically book showings so you can fill vacancies faster.


With these tips, your rental properties will be prepared for leasing season and your prospective residents will soon be knocking at your door.

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