Setting up your leasing office for success

Today I would like to review the use of 7 techniques that will create a pleasant working environment for your staff and have a huge impact on the success of your tenancy. These 7 techniques are meant to help you give the prospective renter that great first impression that means a lot in $$$.

1. Curb Appeal: When a prospective resident walks by your property, they have to say WOW! Some of the cheapest ways to make this happen are: keeping the property clean, frequent landscape maintenance, and every 1-3 years (as needed) power washing the exterior of your apartment and leasing office. This will not only attract potential residents, but it will help with resident retention and make it a more pleasant place to work for your staff.
2. Lighting – The type of light and the placement of light fixtures are important both within your leasing office and throughout your property.
   1. First, let’s tackle the topic of outdoor lighting. Lighting throughout your property is important for a number of reasons, but the two most important are safety and careful lighting of your apartment’s curbside sign (if you don’t have one, you should) will add aesthetic value to your apartment at night.
   2. The lighting fixture should be placed higher than eye level, because low lamp type fixtures can cast direct light into people’s eyes. There are several types of light, but the best and most relaxing is natural light (which is why skylights are great). The human body’s natural physiological response to light is general awareness, and the general psychological response is happiness. Physiological arousal causes a psychological response of happiness. The best way to explain this is: What is a good day? Sunny and warm or dark and gloomy? When it’s a nice day outside, people tend to be more active and generally have more fun.
3. Color – Colors are a second important component of the environment. Dark colors and red colors (similar to fire) are the worst option. You will want light pastel colors that promote feelings of calm and security. Thoughtful color selections can make prospective residents happy right when they walk in the door and will keep your staff happy for a longer period of time. Read more about the psychological response to colors.
4. Smell – This should be self explanatory, but I’ve been in dozens of apartment offices that have humidity! If your office doesn’t smell good, there’s a big problem. The physiological response to musty odors is to leave the area! When you smell something old, moldy, bad, etc., the sensory nerves in your brain trigger a “get out of here” or “don’t eat this” response. So please find a happy and relaxing fragrance, it will do wonders for your prospective resident’s first impression, not to mention your staff will enjoy it too.
5. Sound: Soothing sounds, such as running water, have evolutionarily become a source of happy thoughts for humans. When I was a college student, I took part in a study (as a test subject) where we were asked to sit in a waiting room for 30 minutes before being asked random questions about our week and day. There were two test groups. One was placed in a “waiting” room with sounds, such as flowing water (as from a fountain) and light music. The second test group sat in the same empty “waiting” room without the soothing sounds. Six hundred students and teachers participated in this study (300 in each scenario). As you may have guessed, people waiting in the room with soothing sounds answered the questions positively 80% of the time, while people sitting in the room without the sound answered the questions positively only 48% of the time. times. So hopefully if you follow this logic your staff and potential tenants will respond positively 80% of the time.
6. Comfy seating – ok, this is a big deal, especially when you want a prospective resident to fill out an application or lease. Sitting comfortably causes a response from the parasympathetic system (or in other words, a calming effect). It’s also smart to have snacks nearby, because when the parasympathetic system is stimulated, a secondary response is a slight hunger (so a bowl of different types of sweets works quite well).
7. A mirror: This advice came from one of my neighbors. For more than 25 years, he has been a customer service consultant for various companies, including Ford and GMC. Having a wall-sized mirror behind your front desk in your leasing office will do a lot of good. First, it will make your office look much larger than it actually is (this is great for properties with small leasing offices), this also positively affects your prospective resident’s first impression of the property because they won’t feel as cramped in a small office as they would. normally i would. Second, having a wall-sized mirror will help you deal with angry residents. Putting a large (full wall) mirror behind the customer service desk will drastically reduce angry outbursts from residents. The reason it works: People don’t like to look angry (just like you don’t like to see them angry), it’s a subconscious psychological reflex of seeing your anger looking back at you. Simple and effective goal.

I hope you enjoyed it,

Sergio Navarrete