Lease-up Ideas to Boost Occupancy Rate and Revenue

A lease-up refers to a pre-leasing period in which you seek to sign leases with tenants before the apartment is move-in ready.  While the process of construction is on, it is possible for prospects to sign a lease and for the property to reach stabilized occupancy by the time it is ready. Staying top-of-mind and building trust are some of the key tasks that apartments owners need to undertake during the lease-up period to improve occupancy rate & revenue. In fact, at this time there are several lease-up goals that you want to achieve. 

The first, of course, is to ensure that you achieve full occupancy, as the apartment is ready or at least attain your occupancy target in the shortest timeframe possible. The second, that you do it at or above market prices, especially since the temptation to achieve the occupancy target at just about any rate may be high. Last, but definitely not the least, you want to make sure that your marketing budget isn’t overspent in the process.

Here are some handy tips to ensure that you meet all these goals.

#1. Set Monthly Lease Targets

It is imperative to set monthly targets so that you are sure that you are on track & that you ensure that you complete the lease-up in a healthy time frame. Additionally, with monthly targets you are able to figure out if you are facing any issues related to pricing, marketing or more & are therefore able to address them timely.

 In setting the targets you will need to take the availability of floor plans into account. It will also be prudent to take seasonality into account in setting the targets.

#2. Find the right price

While it may be easy to meet your occupancy targets if you lower prices, the key is not to go lower than market prices. In fact, when you open a new apartment community there is increased demand. It therefore works well to keep the price slightly higher than the market price to take advantage of this increased demand. Going forward, the key is in being flexible. So if you are comfortably above your monthly lease targets you can raise the rent. However, for some reason if you are way below your planned targets, you may want to bring the rent to market levels.

#3. Optimize your marketing spends

When you open the lease, it is important for you to spend on marketing so as to generate leads. Important lease-up marketing ideas include setting up a website, spending on digital ads, listing the apartment on listing service subscriptions, ensuring social media management & a lot more. 

However, once you begin to achieve your monthly targets, it may not be necessary to spend the same amount of marketing dollars as you were doing before. Not only would you want to reduce the marketing spends as you go along, you also need to keep a close eye on which channels are working for you & eliminate any non-performing channels. A very important aspect to consider is to track your lease-ups to see which marketing source they could be attributed to. That way you would be able to evaluate the conversion rate of each marketing channel & determine its efficacy.

Manage Your Lease-Up With BFPM

As an apartment owner managing the above aspects on your own may seem like an extremely daunting task, especially since you may not have the necessary expertise when it comes to allocating marketing spends as also optimizing them. These are apartment lease-up ideas that a professional property management company will help you achieve. With over 2 decades of property management experience, Beach Front Property Management helps you boost occupancy rates as well as enhance revenue. A large portfolio of satisfied clients stand testimony to our expertise. To know more, check out our new construction lease-up services and get on a quick 15-minute consultation call with us. We will be happy to guide you.