Pay for local influencers with high, relevant followings to both show up and post about your grand opening. Higher end realtors with 20,000 followers for example.

Maximize your attendance.

Great ideas but if you are in a predominate neighborhood or near properties that you may compete with, announce a grand opening in social media of neighboring websites and the locals will all see and along with that, send out post cards perhaps, a welcome invite to a classy champagne and appitizer opening with ( if possible) a model to show off or at least a welcoming staff that can meet and mingle and work the crowd to gather more information about people in the area that may be interested in moving or sharing information about friends that may need to move soon adding the raffle of a grand vacation which usually can be purchased for merely a couple hundred bucks for the guests to drool and fight for. Ha. Have the staff knowledgeable of the opportunities of the vacation locations offering a package usually offers multiple vacation options this again makes it their choice and more inviting to a diverse group The follow up from the drawings are now new prospects and the community is already talking about you and how friendly and knowledgeable and fighting for a chance to lease their next home with you. Ha or me because you would also need me to make it all happen. Wink wink

This is how you bring prospects, have your residents to bring a posible referral that could b on the market for apartment hunting, have a raffle of cruise or something really attractive, the residents that bring u prospects get a ticket and the prospect does too, but u want them to bring you as many as they can, so for each prospect they get a ticket, that way each prospect will bring you more prospects the more they bring the more chances for them to win it,,, I did this at church, as my grad project, that church reached the highest attendance ever, of guest which that was the goal,,

Take 10,000 of it and raffle off 5 $1000 cash prizes and each comes with a matching $1000 donation to ( and pick 5 local charities that are in need - pet shelter , woman’s shelter , suicide hot line, etc). Get news publicity of it and promote maybe whoever rents from the open house gets 6 months rent on 12 month lease.

Two ideas I wanted to try at my next one are below. Don't forget lights are important, a final small gift is important and remember the real reason for a grand opening. It's not about attracting more residents (unless it is, which I am not a fan of), but more appreciating all the success of everyone who made the community possible. Best of luck and if you use any ideas, let us know.

Save it for later in the lease up