Well, I think it's good for a number of reasons.
1. A 3rd party does your market surveys for you. The less your leasing team knows about their competitor's specials the better.
2. Get rid of the gimmick pricing. No need to give away Free Rent or other gimmicks.
3. Your leasing teams can't quote exact prices without having a conversation with the customer first. Without building some rapport and learning more about the customer needs you can only quote a price range. This forces the leasing consultants to ask questions so they can pinpoint an exact floorplan and unit.
4. Each unit is priced differently, and priced differently based on move-in date and lease term. When you need to use price as a closing tool it's not a gimmick. If a customer wants a better price you ask them what they will do for you, either move in sooner or sign a longer lease term.\
5. Ability to offer any lease term you want. We offer 2-15 month leases.
6. New prices are recommended daily. Get a lease one day and the next the price could go up. Future lease expirations, notices, and historical demand could also recommend a decrease to insure you achieve your desired sustained occupancy. Again, get one lease after a recommended decrease and the system may recommend an increase the next day.
7. Historical move-ins, move-outs, and a seasonal lease matrix help to monitor expirations and help to better maintain consistent occupancies.
8. You still have control over your prices. Just because the system recommends a price does not mean you have to accept them. Also, you set your "Sustained Occupancy" objective. Want to stay full set it at 96% or 97%. Want to push rents set it at 89% or 90%. Or just let the system auto calibrate to maximize revenue and most likely you'll see (as I did) 94% is ideal. I've always thought that if you're occupancy is above 94% your rents are too low anyway.
9. When you do actually quote a price it's only good for a set amount of time. We have ours set to 48 hours. After the 48 hours the customer risks the price going up if they have not applied. We hold hard and strong on this as well from a corporate level to reinforce the importance of follow-up from our leasing teams.
10. Speaking of follow-up, the 48 hours give our leasing teams something to actually call about vs. just leaving a message asking them if they have made a decision. In addition, if a prospect doesn't make the decision in the first 48 hours our teams have great reasons to follow-up to reinforce a price has not changed, a price went up, or even if a price goes down. It just gives a great reason to call and not feel annoying. The leasing teams actually have new information to share.
OK, now I'll just list a couple struggles we have with it.
1. Depending on how you set your renewals, your rents on the renewal side could out pace your new leasing. This can be a resident satisfaction issue, especially if the gap between new and renewals becomes significant.
2. In a down economy you have to make a tough decision on the renewal side to potentially lower rates to be more in line with the new. If you have online availability features this can create issues with current resident's comparing their renewal quote to a new rate.
3. You can't quote an apartment rate unless you have one available or on notice to quote for the requested move-in date. Depending on your required notice to vacate, this could limit who you can give an exact quote to. Waitlisting can be an issue as the system does not guarantee a price. We have developed a system to guarantee a maximum price, but it still can be challenging to pre-lease 60+ days out for us.
I'll end for now. Hope everyone enjoys my lists. If anyone has any other specific questions I'm happy to share what I know.