Recent OPTECH Session Highlights the Benefits of Self-Guided Tours

The apartment industry has just begun to embrace self-guided tours.
As an NMHC OPTECH session in November demonstrated, these tours work. They result in high conversion rates and offer benefits to onsite associates.
The panelists at the session included Phil Rogers, director of operational planning and analytics at Invitation Homes; Khushbu Sikaria, vice president of innovation and product development at The Bozzuto Group; and Mia Wentworth, director of digital marketing at CWS Apartments. 
The Demand Is There – and So Are the Benefits
Consumers have grown accustomed to self-service in so many facets of their lives, and they will want the same option when it comes to touring apartment communities. The experience of the single-family-rental industry demonstrates this.
According to an Anyone Home analysis of the 2018 leasing activity of all of its single-family clients, 24.4 percent of all prospects booked a tour. Of those that booked a tour, 61.3 percent chose only a self-guided one, while 30.1 percent chose only a tour with an agent; 8.6 percent of prospects booked both tour types.
Additionally, according to Anyone Home, single-family-rental prospects who take self-guided tours convert to lease at a noticeably higher rate – 9.3 percent vs. 5 percent – than those who don’t.
And to demonstrate the convenience that self-guided tours offer: 20 percent of single-family-rental prospects who lease take a self-guided tour outside of regular business hours.
The message is clear: prospects like self-guided tours and these tours play an important role in lease conversions.
The OPTECH session also touched……