The COVID-19 outbreak has changed life and business all across the world. As more people spend an increased amount of time at home, businesses are changing the way they operate to accommodate the lack of in-person contact. Specifically, within real estate, property managers have had to adapt to a new world which includes virtual operations, off-site virtual tours and many more online activities to ensure the safety of potential renters. Retooling touring strategy is incredibly important for property managers, and if they fail to do so, they may risk falling behind.
One specific piece of the property management puzzle is changing in a major way — scheduling apartment tours.
Since tours must be done remotely given the current state of the market — and likely well into the future — property management software for scheduling has, and will, play a vital role in helping property managers adjust to the COVID-19 outbreak.
This specialized scheduling software — including many third-party integrations, automation opportunities and advanced chatbots — will impact a large group of parties that are a huge part of the multifamily business.
From marketing directors to regional managers to leasing agents, and others (including prospective tenants), implementing leasing automation and scheduling software to help streamline your business can be a huge benefit to all.
Now that we know the importance of property management software for scheduling, let’s get into a comprehensive list of software options — not in any particular ranking order — for the best scheduling software platforms in 2020.
Knock
Knock — the creators of Knockbot, one of the industry’s best scheduling chatbots — is an intelligent front office platform that provides the productivity and business intelligence tools needed to maximize occupancy, rent growth, and customer satisfaction at every community. From driving apartment demand to sales and leasing to retention and service, Knock can do it all. That said, Knock features one of the most advanced self-scheduling platforms in multifamily.
Scheduling tours, especially in the current market climate, can be a huge pain for property managers. But with Knock, prospective renters can schedule tours (likely virtual due to COVID-19) with just one click of a button. Knock also makes it easy to schedule video tours using many different integrations for our new virtual world. Knock will help marketing and managers deliver high-quality leads while reducing manual data entry and communications for leasing agreements and terms — a slam dunk for property managers.
Even better, using Knock, your leads can self-book appointments from anywhere on the web. This is hugely important, as we all know the value in communicating with leads and ensuring nothing gets lost in the shuffle along the way.
Making Leasing More Efficient with Knockbot
Knock works to eliminate the issues caused by communication errors within the property management flow by integrating one of the industry’s best chatbots for scheduling. Called the Knockbot, this offering helps property managers keep leasing pipelines filled with high-quality leads every single month.
More specifically, the company’s website shares that:
“Knockbot answers 96% of prospect questions without needing to bother your leasing team, improving the conversion rates for marketing leads and creating greater efficiency for site teams.”
By integrating self-scheduling platforms with 100% automated responses and dynamic lead forms, Knockbot will also help any property manager create a more streamlined process for their everyday work.
Knock uses “advanced DNI & UTM tracking technology to provide the most accurate attribution in the industry, ensuring marketing teams make decisions based on trustworthy data.” This can be a huge time-saver for many companies that decide to go with Knock.
And hey, they say that 94% of their clients are very satisfied.
Anyone Home
Anyone Home is another company with fantastic tech offerings for property management scheduling software. Anyone Home has specifically built its technology to put the customer at the center, as they work to vastly improve the rental housing experience for current and prospective residents.
By using Anyone Home, property managers have the opportunity to streamline business operations, as all of their lead and resident information are neatly stored in one place. From communication to productivity to next-level chatbot scheduling, Anyone Home is a great offering for any property manager.
Anyone Home Concierge Chatbot
When it comes to scheduling software for property managers, Anyone Home, much like the aforementioned Knock, offers one of the industry’s best communication chatbot tools.
In addition, the company’s website states that:
“Anyone Home combines both automated and human interactions in a single user interface. Creating customizable yet consistent communication experiences, Concierge Chatbot provides the highest level of engagement for both prospects & residents alike.”
With 24/7 contact options, prospective renters can schedule tours, book time to meet with an agent and set up self-guided tours, all with just the click of a few buttons. And the communication options are endless for property managers looking to maintain constant interaction. Anyone Home’s Concierge Chatbot offers an array of communication options.
Whether a prospect needs instant scheduling opportunities or has questions about multiple properties, Anyone Home’s Chatbot can make it happen with 24/7 automated engagement — a slam dunk for streamlining your property management business operations and scheduling.
ShowMojo
ShowMojo is another property management scheduling software platform built specifically to help managers slash costs, reclaim their time and create a great experience for potential renters.
ShowMojo has a series of offerings that allow property managers to decrease showing coordination time up to 80%, drastically reduce no shows by using automated email and text-based appointment confirmation, fit showings into the schedules of all parties and to rapidly respond to every single lead with maximum efficiency.
Multi-User Capabilities
ShowMojo makes things easier for the solo property manager or a large team. ShowMojo showcases three different modes that teams can choose from as they share and distribute leads:
- Shared user: Listings, leads and showings are all shared. Everyone uses the same single schedule. Everyone is notified on everything.
- Lead claim: ShowMojo notifies agents to claim screened and scheduled showings (much more valuable than just leads).
- Multi-user: Showing agents can configure their calendars, showing behavior, and prospect communication to their exact needs. Listings can be split out across agents or shared between agents.
These multiple uses can be extremely impactful on a growing property management business. On top of multi-user capabilities, ShowMojo’s reporting capabilities are excellent.
Their listing activity reports capture page views, email inquiries, incoming calls and scheduled showings, making the life of a property manager as simple as possible. Reports can be emailed to properties and other interested parties each week. Overall, this high-touch service is known for communication capabilities that help property management businesses flourish in the scheduling area.
ILoveLeasing
ILoveLeasing software offers robust integrations with property management accounting software, revenue management software, and other third-party services, making life easy for a first-time manager or an experienced property manager with a massive portfolio. ILoveLeasing provides its users with a large list of management features, some of which include:
- Personalized and branded follow-ups
- Schedule follow up action alerts
- On-demand staff reporting
- Call tracking & recording options
- Outreach campaign tracking
- Marketing automation
- Appointment setting
On top of those necessary features, ILoveLeasing is an extremely thoughtful lead management tool and their scheduling tool truly feels like it was designed by a team of people that understand the leasing process. As a result, the tool is effective for scheduling, it’s easy to use, and has robust reporting. The tool integrates with other systems and software nicely and has been well received by many users across the country.
BetterBot
Much like Knockbot and Anyone Home’s Concierge Chatbot, BetterBot’s real estate chatbot — named Bee Bee — aims to make life easier for humans by eliminating the need to conduct mundane and repetitive tasks. Instead, BetterBot works to connect technology with the real estate scheduling needs of property managers across the globe.
This unmatched appointment generating machine for renters and apartment communities will help your leasing team streamline their efficiency in responding to leads and scheduling upcoming tours. BetterBot’s technology helps staff members limit the time they spend manually responding to prospective renters to free up their time for more critical tasks.
“With BetterBot we gather more information about prospects upfront while prospects receive instant answers, freeing up valuable sales staff time,” states Jonathan Ford, Vice President of Marketing for Gates Hudson in Fairfax, Va. “The conversion rates to tour speak for themselves.”
By the Numbers
According to BetterBot’s website:
“BetterBot has managed more than 260,000 prospective renter conversations to date. The average conversion from renter traffic to BetterBot engagement on a typical property website is 13.5%, nearly 5x the engagement ratio of a typical chat solution. In addition, BetterBot drives an average of 25 incremental renter prospect acquisitions each month, 13 of those in the form of high-value bot conversation leads, and 12 appointment requests.”
BetterBot will truly help streamline the property management leasing business — no question about it.
Rently
While many scheduling platforms are taking things fully digital, Rently offers a safe way to continue with self-guided tours, which is hugely important during these uncertain times. While some scheduling software for property managers will entirely focus on the virtual tour experience, Rently is working to create the perfect self-touring platform for property managers and renters alike.
Self-Touring Options with Rently
With Rently’s real estate scheduling software, prospective tenants can see available properties during off-hours without having to come in contact with anyone.
Rently’s goal is to allow future apartment residents to self-tour a property easily and securely with Rently for Multifamily. Rently will help property managers extend touring options for prospective residents, supplement leasing office hours, and lease faster.
On their website, Rently neatly sums up the main objectives of their platform:
“Our advanced self-touring technology allows a prospective renter to tour a vacant unit without the presence of an agent. They can also navigate the amenities and common areas of your community to further enhance their touring experience.”
With this, they meet the convenience factor as well as the health and wellbeing of renters across the nation.
To ensure security and peace of mind for property managers, Rently has implemented a fantastic security checkpoint feature, including:
- A self-identification check
- Credit card authentication processing
- A.I. fraud detection and screening system
Once a prospective tenant gets beyond the security check, they will sign terms and conditions for acceptable onsite behavior. After this, they will be able to schedule their visit.
The Total Package for Self-Guided Tours
Rently knows that because of the global pandemic, self-guided tours are at a premium. With this, Rently is currently offering a number of great customization options for property management professionals looking to take self-guided touring to the next level.
Rently’s customizations include:
- Lead Tracking: “Every prospective renter that performs a self-guided tour is a hot lead waiting to be closed! Our platform delivers prospect information to your CRM or Property Management Software.”
- Customized Hours: “Customize self-tours to activate when you need them the most. Supplement your existing office hours or automate the touring process so that your team can focus on other priorities.”
- Multifamily: “Residents can instantly tour using our new, multifamily specific experience. No app download required.”
- Mapping: “Have a complex multifamily community that needs more specific instructions for prospects? No problem! Upload images or provide 3rd party maps to prospects and let the prospect drive the tour.”
- Community Rules: “Community rules allow you to set terms and conditions on specific communities that prospective renters have to agree to before conducting a self-tour.”
- Website Customization: “Integrate a variety of Rently generated HTML code to guide prospects on your website to conduct a self-tour.”
When it comes to self-guided tours, Rently is a slam dunk for property managers looking upgrade their current services and offerings.
Lisa
Real estate technology has improved year-after-year. And Lisa, a leasing artificial intelligence company, is taking things to another level within the property management software space.
Lisa, simply put, helps you “book showings like a machine.” This is the goal, right? One of the industry’s best automated chatbots, Lisa helps your property management staff with tasks across the board. From follow-ups on every lead to filling your calendar with showings to predicting future move-ins and conversions, Lisa can truly do it all.
On top of that, Lisa collects market feedback on every single property in your portfolio and supplies property managers with daily reporting on customer interaction, price changes and customer service updates.
Lisa will help property managers across the country raise occupancy to profitable levels, standardize process for leasing automation and help managers improve their understanding of data as it relates to property management. With morning reports, evening feedback and numerous software integrations — you won’t miss a beat.
A Data Machine
According to Lisa’s website:
“Entering data is a machine’s job: leave it to Lisa. She automatically collects prospect’s name, qualifications, and unit preferences so your team doesn’t have to. You never need to wait for humans to enter showing and prospect data again. Your data is cleaned and ready on-demand.”
The company prides itself on gathering the purest forms of data to help property managers streamline business operations and connect with prospective customers in the most authentic and transparent way — a fantastic offering.
Tour24
Tour24 another great option for real estate scheduling software for property managers with either large or small portfolios. Simply put, tour24 aims to make the tour and leasing process extremely simple and easy for property management professionals. Tour24 states that their “cutting-edge technology integrates with the access systems at today’s buildings and creates self-guided tours. It serves as an extension to leasing teams to deliver more tours with maximum simplicity, flexibility, and convenience.”
A Customized Onsite Self-Tour Experience
Tour 24 serves as an extension of your leasing team, with hopes of delivering more tours with extreme flexibility and convenience.
While floorplans and photos are great, and property managers should continue to share those with prospective renters, some potential renters may not be satisfied with those options and this is where Tour24 can be of great help.
It’s quite simple; renters will download the app and start the process:
- Schedule their appointment.
- Verify identification and credit card info.
- Get a one-time door entry code.
- Take a self-guided interactive tour.
- Begin the application and leasing process.
With Tour24, your smartphone becomes the key. The phone will allow access to the building, model unit, amenities and everything else a renter would need to see before applying. The tour is on the renter’s time — what’s better than that?
Realync
Next up on this list of property management scheduling software platforms is Realync, a multifamily video leasing and engagement solution. Realync provides property managers with the tools they need to effectively schedule virtual tours, specifically with fantastic video and virtual options. Realync works to help property managers across the nation speed up the leasing process, convert a higher percentage of leads into leases while providing them with a great option for sight-unseen leasing.
Realync strives to help property managers remove roadblocks from the leasing process. They do a great job of this, specifically through video platforms, which give a property manager the option to:
- Create pre-recorded video tours to maximize efficiency.
- Customize videos to your precise needs, with effortless editing capabilities.
- Schedule and share video tours with cloud-based video technology.
- Schedule live video tours to ensure the full safety of all parties by limiting in-person contact.
- Measure tour engagement to easily stay on top of all leads.
The Live Video Masters
Realync can help property managers schedule tours for prospective renters, but what they’re truly focused on is becoming the best possible option in multifamily for video and live tours.
A live video tour, according to Realnyc, is “… is when a leasing agent uses the Realync video leasing solution to connect in real time both visually and audibly with their prospect to walk through their community. These live tours have the freedom to move around the property and tour through the amenity spaces, and show the exact floor plans and units that the prospective resident is interested in and are relevant to them.”
These live tour options are fantastic for the current state of the market dye to COVID-19. And again, according to their website:
“The benefits go beyond convenience though. Realync live video tours are device-agnostic, which means your prospects can seamlessly connect to the tour from any device. And even though these tours are live, they’re also saved and recorded to the cloud. So should there be a roommate or family member that couldn’t join the tour, it’s easy to instantly share the recording with any key decision maker to bring that personalized tour to them as well.”
Overall, if you’re in need of scheduling and video software for your property management business, this is a winner.
Your Best Option?
At the end of the day, deciding on scheduling software for property management is a difficult decision. Take into account your needs and the needs of renters during this difficult time. We know now that the traditional ways of showing apartments are going to be difficult to utilize as safety and wellness are at the forefront of our society.
Either way, the software companies listed above will all provide property managers with ample tools and resources for scheduling virtual or self-guided apartment tours by increasing online opportunities and digital capabilities. All in all, this will help relieve property managers from day-to-day mundane tasks of scheduling.
