Multifamily Technology Myths and Realities

At Indianapolis-based J.C. Hart Co., which owns 3,200 units in Indiana and Ohio, vice president of marketing Mark Juleen estimates that the firm has saved $100,000 over two years using social media by eliminating most of its print advertising. Not only has the firm maintained occupancies in a down market, it has boosted its ranking in Google search results for the term “Indianapolis apartments” from 40th to as high as 12th. “We did that organically, without buying Google search terms,” Juleen says. “Plus, when I build a Facebook fan page, unlike a print ad, it’s there forever.”

Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Mark-Taylor Residential, which manages 11,622 units primarily in the Southwest, grew its Web traffic by 55 percent from August 2008 to August 2009 after launching a social media campaign. “We increased the size of our digital footprint,” says director of marketing Kim Atkinson. “It means we’re creating more roads that ultimately lead to Mark-Taylor.com.”

Indeed, increasing one’s “Google juice” is a primary motivator for using social media. “It helps you get found more quickly,” says industry consultant Lisa Trosien of ApartmentExpert.com. “The real benefit is a higher ranking in the search engine results.”

If you’re leveraging mobile mania …

When it comes to turning online avenues into rental leases, John Helm says a smart phone in the hand will soon be worth two PCs at home. The founder and CEO of San Francisco-based ILS MyNewPlace.com says mobile apartment hunters have twice the conversion rate of traditional Internet prospects.

Helm first noticed the trend in May 2009 when MyNewPlace launched its proprietary iPhone application, and a small percentage of the site’s 2.5 million to 3 million monthly visitors started using it. “We drove up our lead volumes appreciably,” says Helm, who estimates it took three months and $30,000 to develop the app. “Basically, the thing paid for itself within 30 days.”

That makes sense, given the way people use their phones today. “The mobile platform naturally lends itself to contacting a community,” Helm adds. “They’re already on a phone.”

While mobile users account for just 5 percent of MyNewPlace.com’s total traffic today, mobile use in the United States is growing at a blistering pace. According to wireless trade group CTIA, cell phones now have higher penetration rates than Internet or cable TV, and 70 million Americans regularly use mobile Web browsers. Add to that the explosion of iPhone apps—more than 2 billion have been downloaded worldwide—plus the appearance of Google’s Android in late 2009, and mobile search has clearly arrived.

The numbers are notable even within multifamily. At UDR, mobile search accounted for 9 percent of all apartment searches at its Web site in 2009, and visitors racked up 427,000 mobile page views there. The company generated 97 mobile leases last year. “We feel that mobile offers a far better experience than PCs or laptops,” says UDR’s Taraborelli. The firm has developed its own proprietary applications for the iPhone and Android and is working on a Blackberry offering. “We get a greater depth of audience demographics, and we can conduct marketing campaigns based on location targeting,” he adds.

In late 2009, UDR launched multifamily’s first augmented reality application, a technology that uses location awareness to send information along with images captured in real-time by a phone’s camera. Imagine pointing your phone at a UDR property and seeing pricing and availability data superimposed over the live image. “We launched augmented reality in September of 2009 and by year’s end, we had more than 125,000 downloads,” Taraborelli says. “It just tells us that even within the apartment industry, demand is outstanding.”

At Norfolk, Va.-based ILS ForRent.com, mobile and augmented reality have also become, well, a reality. The firm has apps for both the iPhone and the Android; it also launched its own augmented reality functionality in December 2009. Mobile searching now accounts for 10 percent of all traffic.

“For us, mobile search and augmented reality are a natural extension of the way consumers interact with our brand,” says Brock MacLean, ForRent’s senior vice president. “Ultimately, it’s becoming the way they’re finding their new apartment home.”

While neither UDR nor ForRent would disclose the cost of developing their augmented reality applications, both firms characterized it as minimal. They were also able to launch them quickly. UDR said it only took three weeks to overlay its augmented reality app onto its existing technology, while ForRent’s rollout took less than four months. “If you’ve got the technological expertise, building it isn’t a quantum leap,” MacLean says.

Both say the key for using mobile and augmented reality is to make sure your data ducks are in a row. For a mobile-friendly Web site, that means paring down graphical elements, while presenting listings with simple, easy-to-read text. For example, UDR has a link to an “iPhone site” from its home page—click on it in a PC browser, and you see just four lines of simple text on the screen. In the augmented reality area, a good strategy is to feed continually-updated data from a back-end property management system into the app. UDR uses Scottsdale, Ariz.-based VaultWare’s availability software. “You’ve got to have the electronic information set up correctly in the first place,” says UDR’s Andrew Cantor, vice president of investor relations. “If you don’t, it’s going to take a lot longer.”

Other firms are waiting to see where these technologies head, especially augmented reality. “I don’t think augmented reality is a fad, but I also don’t think people are going to drive around, point their camera at a random building and say, ‘I wonder what’s available there,’” says Archstone’s Davidoff. “Remember, an apartment rental is usually the biggest check an individual writes. Believe it or not, they actually do a lot of research before they get in the car.” More likely, Davidoff says, is that prospects will use mobile search and augmented reality once they’ve narrowed their search. “What this will be good for is delivering information to them after they’ve done that initial research and have a plan for what they want to see.”

If you’re crossing the portal …