It is a truism that you cannot improve that which you cannot measure. It follows that multifamily property owners and operators need to measure the efficiency of their businesses in order to improve. Owners and operators have some unique performance metrics to measure and optimize, including one of the most important metrics of leasing velocity.
Leasing velocity is defined as the length of time that a rentable unit remains unoccupied between leases. For example, a rental unit that is vacant for two weeks while waiting for a new tenant to move in will have a slower leasing velocity than the same unit that is only vacant for a day while the new lease is being finalized. The longer a unit is unoccupied, the more cost it incurs in the form of marketing and maintenance - all while failing to generate income.
Accelerating leasing velocity is a top goal for rental property owners because leasing velocity proves to be one of the main indicators of the overall income quality of a rental building. While perhaps easy to measure, leasing velocity can be hard to improve. Critical to accelerating leasing velocity is leveraging new technology that is purpose built for end-to-end leasing.
When auditing and optimizing your leasing process, here are five ways you can increase your leasing velocity.
Everyone thinks they provide applications that are easy to complete, but it’s rarely as easy as it seems. Try completing your own application and see how many hours it takes you to gather and document all the requested information. The easier you can make the application process the better the chance you have of a prospective renter submitting it.
First and foremost, applications need to move fully online to reduce attrition. Getting a prospective occupant to actually fill out the entirety of a leasing application is one hurdle that can negatively affect leasing velocity. Paper applications slow down leasing velocity because they have to be picked up and dropped off. They can get lost and have to be filled out manually. To improve leasing velocity, use digital applications.
Further, the most advanced online applications can do a lot of the manual work for the applicant. VERO is able to auto-populate applications from direct sources such as banks and employers. Rather than the applicant consuming time finding and inputting their banking information and employment information, they just need to remember their bank account username and password to authenticate the connection. With one simple authentication, applicants can securely connect and enable VERO to auto-populate the application. This saves the prospective resident time and hassle, and ensures a fast turnaround on the submission of the application.
Finally, VERO also facilitates easy communication between the leasing office and the applicant right within the application. Prospective residents don’t have to wait until office hours to submit questions as VERO handles all application inquiries. Easier communication expedites solutions to potential roadblocks in the application process and improves leasing velocity.
A lease application that is auto-populated and easy to fill out is a great start toward increasing leasing velocity, but it’s only half the battle. To really get those applications flowing, potential occupants need the application to be easily accessible. Digital applications, such as those offered by VERO, are not just optimized for mobile, but developed for mobile-first.
Property operators should be sure their leasing application software is minimally mobile friendly so a prospect touring the property can complete the application after the tour concludes or whenever convenient on the go. This functionality is absolutely key to providing potential lessors with the most accessible application process possible. Mobile applications lead to quicker turnaround time on lease application submission and, thus, increase lease velocity.
Fast and efficient identity, employment, and income verifications are essential to reduce the risk of fraud and costly evictions. These critical pieces of information need to be checked every time and it needs to be done right the first time. However, just because it needs to be done right doesn’t mean you need to compromise on the turnaround time of your application process.
Currently, in order for a prospective tenant to verify identity, income, and employment, time is expended with all involved. Applicants need to find, gather, and upload personal documentation such as a government-issued photo ID, bank statements, and pay stubs. It is time-consuming for applicants to gather as well as time-consuming for staff to review. Leasing staff need to play detective to ensure the documents are not marked up. All of this inevitable back-and-forth with leasing processes that do not use software like VERO can be the greatest contributor to lengthy application processes which slows leasing velocity like nothing else.
VERO allows you to verify the identity, employment, and income of applicants securely and efficiently in under 30 seconds. Using advanced, modern data sets and technology, VERO ensures verifications are completed accurately and efficiently through direct connections to information databases. VERO’s platform eliminates the need for staff to expend time chasing down documents, playing phone tag with previous employers, and manually screening for background checks.
With VERO an applicant can upload a driver's license and have their identity independently verified. They can search for their employer’s name and with a few clicks their employment status can be instantly verified. Their income can be verified just as easily by simply providing their bank information in the application process. Thanks to VERO’s revolutionary technology, the painstaking process of verifying identity is simplified. Gone are the days of tracking down and verifying employers via a phone call or email. With VERO you have the ability to verify all of this critical information instantly. You never have to have a leasing application hinge on the employer finding time to call you back ever again. Hundreds of thousands of banks and employers are already connected to VERO so most anyone that has a digital footprint can be verified with VERO.
In addition to identity, employment, and income verifications, leasing teams want to know the prospective tenant’s experience with the previous landlord. Leasing teams expend energy playing phone tag with previous landlords. VERO automates the verification of residency and provides results with a recommendation.
All the best tech in the world is no good if people won’t use it. In today’s world, consumers are more concerned about digital security than ever before as consumer fraud continues to rise. If you want to improve leasing velocity, you need to provide these digital tools, but you also need to provide a safe and secure platform. Make sure your applicants know the application is safe by providing the security credentials of the leasing platform you are using. This will provide peace of mind for the applicants and encourage them to use the time-saving software.
VERO ensures that all applicants can feel comfortable sharing personal information and sensitive documents such as driver's licenses, social security numbers, or passports. VERO lets applicants know that it uses the gold standard technology as top US banks and TurboTax to protect sensitive digital information. Make sure to ask your lease application vendor if they protect applicant information through end-to-end data encryption, logical and physical access controls, and continuous monitoring. Also, look for compliance with nationally-recognized security certifications and organizations such as FISMA, PCI, and Sarbanes-Oxley.
Maintaining the right security credentials can provide comfort for potential occupants who are concerned with providing sensitive information online. The ease with which they can share the pertinent documents, and an added sense of security, all smooth the application process and accelerate leasing velocity.
Lastly, lease creation slows down leasing velocity. The slow and methodical keystrokes of a new lease being built from scratch take hours per lease. While it’s unlikely to use the same lease for every occupant and building, generating a new lease can be optimizing. Automatic lease generation is one of the most significant ways to increase leasing velocity.
Once a prospective renter submits an application with VERO, the responses to questions dynamically inform how to build the lease and auto-populate fields. Leases are created instantly and they are customized to provide the right provisions for all parties. The application information is used to automatically generate a lease that is customized for all the conditions outlined in the application process, so your leasing team saves time by skipping the lengthy process of writing a new lease for each applicant.
Automatic leasing generation quickly and efficiently builds the lease based on the details of the application. For example, if the application includes information about pets, an automatic pet rider will be included as part of the generated lease. Storage, parking, and many other situations can be covered by automatic lease and rider generation. VERO saves hours of turnaround time, which can be key to ensuring applicants are processed efficiently. VERO allows you to create automatically generated fields, makes use of automatic riders, and saves details of the same portfolio, region, and building -- saving precious time by helping you stay organized and efficient while accelerating leasing velocity.
Accelerating leasing velocity may seem like an overwhelming endeavor with all the aspects of the leasing process. Instead of trying to juggle the many facets of leasing velocity, take advantage of a single-point solution with all these built-in benefits. Whether you want to increase your leasing velocity by making the application process as easy as possible by offering mobile applications, take advantage of auto-population and automatic lease generation, or offer your applicants secure and rapid identity and employment verifications, VERO’s platform delivers improved leasing velocity to your leasing team and your bottom line.