Top Marketing Strategies for Lease-Up Properties

Today's apartment shopper is more cautious. Deliberate. They are "Browsers" – a recent study noted that more than half of in-market renters are "browsing without a firm move-in date." They are value-hunting. Cost-conscious. The industry has responded by offering a level of concessions that we haven't seen in years. Maybe ever. This "deliberate" mindset is creating a critical bottleneck for those of us trying to lease apartments. Now also consider that >60% of Google searches end in *zero clicks.* (I have lots of previous posts watching this trend.) That means your property website has to work twice as hard to convert the traffic that you get. The question we often hear is: “How do we get more traffic?” But we really need to pair that with the appropriate follow-up: “How do we convert the traffic we already have?” Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things I see consistently lift conversion for apartment websites: ** Decision helpers ** ✅ A property or floor plan comparison tool ✅ A quick quiz or “matchmaker” wizard ✅ Floor plan pages pre-filtered by primary bed types (all 1s, all 2s, etc.) ✅ Full, indexed pages for every floor plan (or even every unit) ✅ Battle card pages that compare your features and services to key comps (This is massive opportunity that very few leverage.) ** Social proof & storytelling ** ✅ Well-lit, staged photos + virtual tours for each floor plan ✅ Thoughtful, benefit-focused copy (time savings, cost savings, convenience, lifestyle upgrade) ✅ Google reviews + resident testimonials on floor plan pages ✅ Anything that reinforces your service guarantee and customer care ✅ Real people — team and residents, on camera and in photos ✅ Regular, useful blog content that actually showcases your value ** Friction killers ** ✅ A self-serve tour scheduler. Bonus points if: a) it auto-adds to the prospect’s calendar, b) there's a real human follow-up, and c) there's a day-of text with a map link to your door ✅ Smart, behavior-based pop-ups that directly capture leads ✅ Softer CTAs: weekly deals, price alerts, saved floor plans, moving checklists ✅ Short, clean forms (5-7 key fields is your sweet spot) ✅ Psychological triggers used responsibly: “128 shoppers viewed this plan this week” or “Last 2 with an attached garage” It’s all about respect for the shopper and where they're at in their shopping process. Renters are doing their homework. Your site *must* help them see you are the correct answer. 🎯 Make it easy for them to compare options. 🎯 Make it easy to trust you. 🎯 Make it easy to take the next step that feels safe right now. When our websites work twice as hard to be helpful, it's that much easier to turn browsers into qualified prospects. So before you dump more money into your ILS listing or your Google Ads, double check this list and make sure your most active leasing agent is doing its job to build trust and bring shoppers through your doors. Anything else you'd add to this list?

How to design a multifamily Lease-Up that creates a 4x return on investment: First, the principles: - Start early. If a shovel is scheduled to hit the ground it's not too early. - Build & execute a holistic Go-To-Market strategy. Tactics without strategy causes excessive marketing costs and stalled lease ups. - Align your marketing & leasing teams. Disconnected silos kill leasing momentum and create a disjointed resident experience. Go-To-Market Strategy is not often a phrase used in multifamily. The result is a waste of money on "spray and pray" marketing tactics that don't drive actual leasing results across absorption, revenue acceleration, and resident experience. Avoid that with real strategy. A Go-to-Market strategy in multifamily is a detailed plan to introduce a project to the market, reach the right target audience, and achieve a competitive advantage. Properly designed, it will ensure a positive ROI with faster leasing (including much more leasing even prior to building completion), quicker revenue realization, earlier positive cash flow, and a better resident experience. GTM should be fully documented and include: 1. Target resident psychographics, behaviors, wants, and needs persona analysis. Who and why will residents choose your property? 2. Unique value proposition and competitive advantages. How is your project going to be differentiated from the competition? 3. Brand positioning and core messaging, tailored by audience. How will your project look and feel and talk to it's audience such that it creates a powerful attraction? 4. Activation and Awareness Playbook. How are you activating your site, offline/locally AND online to start building awareness. 5. Demand Playbook. There are literally 100s of ways to waste money attempting to attract leads. How are you cost effectively driving demand - inquiries, leads, tour requests - from your target audience? 6. Nurturing Playbook. Resident journeys & apartment searches are more convoluted than ever. How are you nurturing and building trust with prospective residents such that the only inevitable choice is your property? 7. Organic Playbook. Content plays a bigger role than ever, but attention is more scattered than ever. How will you make appropriate investments in the right type of organic content that actually works? 8. Leasing Enablement Playbook. Disconnected Marketing and leasing teams is THE biggest breakdown in Lease Ups. Marketing doesn't end at a "lead", and leasing doesn't begin at an "appointment". The two need to be inextricably linked to maximize absorption. Processes, feedback, & content must be shared to analyze, adapt, and amplify what is working. Within each component and playbook there is a LOT more detail to build and execute the GTM plan. I will dive into each with real world examples in future posts. ➡️ Follow Michael DiMella to see all the follow up posts. #multifamily #leaseup #marketing #propertymanagement

My 3-Tiered Marketing Plan 𝑬𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐍𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐬. A marketing strategy should adapt to each property’s occupancy needs as they change. A flexible, 3-tiered plan allows you to shift gears as needed. Here’s how it works: 𝐓𝐢𝐞𝐫 1: 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐅𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬: Marketing for consistent traffic and occ. 𝐆𝐨𝐚𝐥: Keep occ above 94% with steady efforts. 𝐓𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬: Digital & Social marketing, small budget. 𝐓𝐢𝐞𝐫 2: 𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐅𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬: Occ trending below 92%. Increase traffic and leasing activity. 𝐆𝐨𝐚𝐥: Ensure stabilization. 𝐓𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬: Launch digital ad & social campaigns with high-impact strategies. 𝐓𝐢𝐞𝐫 3: 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞-𝐔𝐩𝐬 𝐨𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬: Drive traffic at a rate that correlates with the speed needed to move volume. 𝐆𝐨𝐚𝐥: Hit occ goals for new or repositioned properties. 𝐓𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬: All-in strategy: heavy digital advertising, robust social media campaigns, and creative digital and site-level marketing activations to drive maximum exposure, 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐈𝐭 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 👉Adjusts to real-time performance. 👉Doesn't rely solely on fixed ILS traffic. 👉Maximizes NOI with smarter, scalable marketing. 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐄𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐓𝐢𝐞𝐫: 𝐓𝐢𝐞𝐫 1: Occupancy is stable (94%+). 𝐓𝐢𝐞𝐫 2: Projections show occupancy dipping below 92%. 𝐓𝐢𝐞𝐫 3: New property, repositioning, or aggressive lease-up goals. By building clear parameters for when to shift between tiers, you’re not reacting, you’re staying ahead. This kind of proactive, data-driven marketing ensures you maximize NOI while keeping your marketing dollars working how you need them to. Have you set parameters of when to change your marketing strategy? If so, are you able to shift your strategy in a day? If not, let's talk. I will help you put in place a marketing strategy that will always put you ahead of the curve.

A Brooklyn developer just leased 25% faster than 7 competing projects in a 3-block radius. Rents 10-20% above market. With 18 more lease-ups in the pipeline, many backed by institutional developers with bigger budgets and stronger brands. The edge wasn't location or capital, but a design-oriented focus on the drivers of real rent premiums. Fve lessons from Charney Companies' development at Union Channel in Brooklyn, New York: 1/ Unit mix. Pulled architectural plans for every competing project in the market. 3-bedrooms were 3% of supply but demand pointed to 14%. Union Channel tripled the market average. They were the first unit type to fully lease. 2/ Studios. Market average was 500 sqft at $3,500/month. Too much space, too much rent. Union Channel built 400 sqft studios — 20% smaller, 10% cheaper. Leased 50% faster than the rest of the building. 3/ Living rooms. Of every layout variable tested across hundreds of units, living room width was the single strongest predictor of rent per sqft. Every other layout decision was calibrated to protect it. 4/ Amenities. Conventional wisdom says more amenities = more value. The data says the opposite. Quality of select amenities beats breadth. Fitness center quality had the strongest correlation with rent per sqft. They hired a gym consultant instead of designing in-house. 5/ Marketing. 20% of leases came directly from social media — 4x the rate on prior projects. Strategy built around the neighborhood, not the building. Murals on construction fencing. 3,000 organic Instagram followers before opening. These five decisions account for 73% of the value created at Union Channel. All made before the building opened. The data exists in every market. Most developers just aren't looking. Full case study from Andrew Steiker-Epstein in this week's Thesis Driven newsletter. Link in comments.