I know I said I would put this up three weeks from the time I first posted "How much are your two bedrooms" but I have to apologize. It took me a lot longer to get through the process and look at the data than I had originally thought.
I called 100 different communities around the Puget Sound area. I took a cross section of all the different property management representation up here and then distributed my calls through them based on their presence by percentage in the Seattle market.
My rules for the experiment were that:
I had to try at least three times to get an actual person before leaving a message,
I had to start my conversation with the Leasing Consultant with the phrase, "How much are your two bedrooms?"
I had to place my calls on Saturdays or Sundays since those are peak leasing days in our industry
The Results:
54% of the leasing consultants that I talked to did not just give me the price.
I thought this was pretty impressive actually. I'm not sure what the national rates are, but that seemed pretty high for what I've experienced out here.
What used to be Metric Properties had the best score, perfect and after that Archstone's properties had the highest success rate on the experiment followed closely by Riverstone. In fact, only one Archstone property that I called just gave me the price.
Archstone and Riverstone also had very good phone answering scripts that were used with astounding consistency. I only had one consultant from each company that did not use the regular scripts.
5 properties replied to my question by telling me they didn't have anything before they got any other information out of me.
Don't tell a prospective resident that you don't have anything! They're not going to give you their info if you don't have anything, and you never know what might open up tomorrow in this market
Of the 54 leasing consultants who did not outright give me the price, only 38 of them remembered to invite me for a tour of the property, the highest percentage of which worked for Essex.
Always ask for that tour, even if you think the person isn't going to take it. Look at it a couple of ways. One, it's polite and two, it's fair housing.
16 leasing consultants gave me a follow up phone call to my phone call asking me if I had found a new home yet and of those 3 were from Archstone properties, 4 were from Riverstone and 3 from Essex.
I was really surprised at how many follow up phone calls I got. Way to go!
So there you have it, folks. My not exactly scientific, but close to scientific survey in the Pacific Northwest of how well we're handling the eternal question of,
"How much are your two bedrooms?"
How do you handle this problem question on your properties?