Centralized Leasing: What’s All the Buzz?

There are different ways of looking at and participating in centralized leasing for the multifamily industry. It can be seen as an internal management program where you can negotiate and execute a lease digitally. A virtual leasing office that allows future residents to tour a property, and community amenities, along with access leasing documents. Other centralized leasing methods and technologies include chatbots to streamline administrative tasks and resident issues or resident-enhancing experiences like a main location to access package deliveries and maintenance requests.

What is Centralized Leasing?

Simply put, centralized leasing is one piece in the chain of managing the entire process of the lifecycle of a resident into your property. It is about inserting innovative technological methods into the way residents, onsite teams, and marketing teams communicate – allowing for simplicity and efficiency.

Centralizing the Renter’s Journey

Centralized leasing is all about deciding on low-hanging fruit within property management – from the marketing team to the onsite team, what processes can be automated? From automating renewal letters, inspections, maintenance/dispatch, and utilizing ChatBots to schedule tours. It’s an opportunity to allow the onsite teams to focus on other priorities, community engagement, and eliminate human error where technology can provide solutions such as automation, simplification, and further support the renter’s journey.

Could student housing be setting an example of centralized leasing? This generation is more likely to make decisions and book everything online before talking to a human or coming into the leasing office.

Challenges with Centralized Leasing

Many folks in property management think centralized leasing is eradicating jobs, however, it’s eradicating mundane tasks so onsite teams and marketing teams can focus on priorities, increase NOI, and overall, create a more efficient workflow.

Centralization is allowing employees to focus on areas where they excel. For some property management companies, the adoption process may yield some barriers.

Here are three steps when considering moving towards centralized leasing:

Combine: Optimize your process, accommodating multi-property workflows to support local teams.
Do your research and define clear goals for centralizing and creating more opportunities for employees to excel in their roles with processes that are more efficient.

Automate: What is working and not working at the property and marketing level?
Is it automating leasing renewals, inspections, google posts, etc. This could include a survey and feedback from team members to clearly understand the wants and needs of the property.

Enhance: Capture and convert high-quality prospective renters from all channels and prioritize added-value activities. Many barriers to centralizing are people fearing the unknown, technology education, and budget. Having a clear understanding of the goal, this removes the fear of the unknown.