As the phrase implies, lead to lease refers to the amount of time it takes to convert a rental lead, coming from a listing, website, referral, et cetera, into submitting a signed lease to the person renting property. This process commonly referred to as lead to lease conversion, should be quick, accurate, and healthy for several reasons. Firstly, it means you don’t have to spend time scrambling to come up with a way to find a new tenant, or tenants when your current tenant gives you a notice that they are leaving or any other sign that they won’t be renewing their lease. You’ll also want to optimize the process so that potential tenants don’t get frustrated or feel it’s taking too long and find housing elsewhere.

While a term like home improvement may seem like it applies more to physical improvements within one’s home, optimizing your lead to lease conversions certainly is improvement and if you’re renting out parts of your home or entire homes then consider this your next home improvement project.

Simply tracking your leads is a great place to start. While you probably do this already, its importance cannot be understated – it gives you a macro view of your current lead to lease cycle so you can better optimize it. Once a lead comes in it should be tracked in your lead tracking system and every important step of your process should be logged. From the first contact, to tour, to lease, everything should be tracked.

Making your lead to lease process automated is one of the best ways to optimize it. An artificial intelligence (AI) based leasing platform can manage all the mundane tasks, reducing the time it takes for leads to convert into tenants and freeing up time for you to focus on other things. The AI platform can respond to leads quickly, pre-qualify them, and even schedule property tours in accordance with the calendar you set. Offering online lease applications can also be a part of this platform. Online leasing applications give prospects the ability to apply from anywhere at any time, meaning you can capture more leads even outside of normal business hours. A good software program will let leads save their application and come back and finish it at their convenience and you’ll be able to see how far along each applicant is in the application.

In addition to implementing an AI-based leasing platform, you can develop a better marketing strategy and offer virtual tours which will help optimize lead to lease conversions.

A hyper-focused marketing strategy that keys in on finding the specific type of clients you want will help you find more qualified leads. The level of customization in your listings and what technology you use to manage them will tell you a lot about how much you’re able to do in this respect. Listing widgets make customizing your listings easy – offering ways to embed videos, 3D virtual tours, and tour scheduling links – and tracking the type of traction they’re getting will help you identify how to best connect your applicant leads to your marketing process.

In today’s digital world, virtual tours are now a must-have and, while expensive, they can reduce the need for in-person tours. That in turn then reduces the time it takes for a potential tenant to become a fully-fledged tenant. These can even be embedded into listing widgets.

As with everything in life, there’s always room for improvement and this is especially true when it comes to something as important as your property management. By following these tips – implementing a comprehensive tracking system, making your lead process as automated as possible, employing focused and customizable marketing, and offering 3D virtual tours – you can optimize your lead to lease process and reduce the amount it takes to fill vacancies at your property.

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