Good Conversion Starts with the Right Price & Easy Showings

Where's the leak in your leasing funnel?

Ask 10 property managers about their top metric for leasing and I'm guessing each one will say Days-on-Market (DOM).

And it's great KPI for looking back at your historic leasing performance.

But it's not a very good predictive metric. It's deeply affected by seasonality, supply/demand trends and owners who insist on pricing high.

Let me propose a different way to measure leasing: Conversion Rates.

Conversion Rates measure how effective your team is at converting new leads into showings, applications, and signed leases. 

It's a leading indicator, meaning that you can predict performance of a given unit's leasing with just a few leads - long before you reach 14 days-on-market and start getting client calls.

And it's a lot cheaper than just tracking lead volume, which can cause you to spend more money on advertising for a leaky bucket.

Check out the full breakdown below, including target conversion rates at each stage of the leasing funnel.

New Leads

Recommendation: put effort into setting the right price on Day 1 and ensure your listings reach all the major websites.

The data consistently shows that pricing is the #1 driver of prospect volume, followed by syndication reach and quality of your photos.

Thus, timing makes pricing even more important. 38% of all prospects arrive in a listing's first 7 days. By the time the owner agrees to a price reduction, the listing has already had its best week.

Per the latest Q2 data, overpriced homes typically start 5% above market, and even one price reduction costs 11 days of vacancy. On an average rental, that's $750 in lost rent, which usually wipes out the premium the owner was holding out for.

Lead to Showing Scheduled

Goal: 50%

Recommendation: make it super easy to schedule a showing, with plenty of availability and fast responses to questions.

Renters search on their own time. 57.8% of prospects inquire outside business hours and 49.5% book their showing while the office is closed.

A lead messages you at 8 p.m. on a Sunday. The median response time is 19 hours, so he hears back Monday afternoon, by which point he's already seen two other homes. Teams using AI answer him in 6 seconds.

Self-scheduling closes most of that gap. Self-guided properties convert 49% of prospects to scheduled showings against 37% for accompanied showings, and AI-enabled accounts convert 16% more prospects into scheduled showings.

Showing Scheduled to Showing Complete

Goal: 60%

Recommendation: don't let prospects schedule too far out and send frequent reminders. Have clear instructions for self-showings.

This is the biggest single leak in the funnel and it comes down to frequent reminders and very clear showing instructions.

Picture a prospect pulling up at 6 p.m. The lockbox isn't on the railing where the instructions said it would be and nobody picks up the phone. He's likely back in the car in four minutes and won't be rescheduling.

And lead time matters as much as the instructions. Showing completion drops below 50% once a showing is booked more than 2 days out, and showings booked more than 4 days out rarely happen at all. Prospects are likely to have found another place or ghosted.

Showing Complete to Application Requested

Goal: 80%

Recommendation: ensure the property looks like the photos and take care of any foul smells.

This is the conversion step that most people skip. It's easy to just send the application automatically after a showing, but that ignores the reasons why people don't want to move forward.

If fewer than 80% of prospects request an application after a showing, check the showing feedback. Per the Q2 data, the most common reasons for not wanting the application are temperature, smell, or cleanliness.

This step of the funnel is the most closely linked to the quality of the actual property. The prospect has already made the effort to do the showing, so if they don't move forward, it's usually because it doesn't match their expectations from the listing.

Application Requested to Application Submitted

Goal: 60%

Recommendation: eliminate as much friction as possible from the application process, so that prospects can submit in less than 10 minutes. 

There's a tradeoff between making it easy for your team or for the prospect. The most successful leasing teams collect the least amount of information during the application. They then follow up to get the rest.

That makes it ridiculously easy for the prospect to submit quickly. Once they've paid, they are "bought-in" and more likely to share the extra documents you need.

If you request too much stuff before they've paid, the prospect is much more likely to get frustrated and move on.

Beyond that, respond quickly to questions (using AI or a 24/7 team member) and have a phone number they can call for technical questions.