Even after moving in, Campus Apartments’ core demographic of college-age, Gen Y residents know exactly what they want to see, as well as exactly how they want to communicate with the company. And it’s almost never face-to-face. “Our residents expect to be able to get service fulfillment 24/7 using their laptop, PC, smart phone, whatever,” Marshall says. “Other than that, they don’t really want to talk to us.”
In fact, the “Don’t-call-me, I’ll-text-you” attitude of America’s future leaders pushed Campus Apartments to develop its own proprietary resident portal in 2006. Today, more than 75 percent of its 24,000 residents regularly use CASHPort, which is accessible via the Web, integrated with multiple social media sites, and tailored for easy viewing in a smart phone browser. Through CASHPort, Campus Apartments’ residents can pay rent, submit a service request, check their payment history, and even get updates for community and school events that are simultaneously blasted to their smart phone via Facebook and Twitter.
“We’ve integrated the Web site, social media, and our resident portal into one proprietary solution,” says Marshall, who puts its development cost in the high six figures. “It’s set up for any device that can be used on the Internet.” And while no one’s ordering a pizza via the system, Campus Apartments has had some success in cross promotions. Residents paying their rent online can get a discount to Bed, Bath & Beyond, for instance, when using the portal. Campus Apartments collects approximately 17 percent of its rent payments online, a number that’s grown 50 percent year-over-year, tracking close to industry averages. Likewise, at Carrollton, Texas-based RealPage, whose software supports more than 30,000 apartment communities nationally, customers on its OneSite portal saw electronic payments nearly double last year, from 16 percent in 2008 to 28 percent in 2009. “Clients are really pushing portals because they save so much time in the leasing office,” says Ashley Glover, executive vice president at RealPage. The firm estimates manual rent processing consumes two days a month at a typical community. “Just moving a portion of your payments online is huge because you have that many fewer people walking in the door to pay rent.”
The trick, operators say, is to get residents to buy into the process. One firm that’s been able to do so is UDR, which rolled out electronic payments using RealPage’s portal in February 2009 and had 63 percent penetration for electronic payments by year’s end. It did so (at least in one instance) by no longer accepting rent checks in its drop box. Posts on the Facebook fan page for UDR’s Gayton Pointe Townhomes community in Richmond, Va., give residents a friendly reminder that any check left in the drop box will be returned. “It’s reduced the administrative time of our on-site staff,” says UDR’s Jerry Davis, senior vice president of property operations, who notes that35 percent of the firm’s service requests are now submitted online via the resident portal as well.
While payments and work orders represent the largest segment of portal activity today, other uses are emerging. RealPage says clients are beginning to harness portals for lease renewals, too. “Renewals are the next area we’re seeing significant interest,” says Leslie Turner, president of RealPage’s OneSite division. “They’ll notify residents via e-mail that there’s a time-sensitive renewal offer waiting for them. Not only does it incentivize the resident to act quickly, but it frees up more time in the office.”
And while Campus Apartments spent well into the six figures developing its proprietary portal, Glover says most firms can get started with an off-the-shelf system for as little as $1,000 to $2,000 per property. “The ROI is fairly significant,” Glover says.
Now, if the portal could just deliver that pizza.
Joe Bousquin is a freelance writer based in Sacramento, Calif.
