I am a personal locator in Houston, Texas. I did not know that mynewplace had abandoned the “pay for lease” model. That is extremely interesting. Here is what I do know about both models as I have tried both. The problem with the “Pay per lease” model is as follows.
a) People can enter bogus information. In fact most people don’t want to deal with emails from corporations. Rent.com and Mynewplace have automated emailers in place. But if renters don’t include proper info the emails will never get their.
b) Mynewplace has a $100 incentive in place if renters remember to report their lease. However, most people don’t know or don’t care about this. By the time they lease they have forgotten where they found the property.
c)The last and most important factor is that these websites cannot talk to the customer. Like Eric says, walk-ins have a much higher closing ratio. I will also tell you for a fact talking with a customer over the phone is a million times better than emailing without a phone number.
Now by securing the clients personal phone number and email address you can increase your chances of increasing your sales. Customers respond to real people with a unique voice. Locators will surely have incredible odds when they are competing directly against an automated mailer form a big company like rent.com. Locators can make other recommendation and they usually know what apartment specials are being offered at comparable properties. Apartment leasing agents normally don’t even know what their rates are. Apartments use sophisticated pricing mechanisms that alter the price on a regular basis. Camden properties prices change daily. Now here is where the $100 gift check may come into play. All your customer needs to do is include your company name on the application. Let them know that if they make sure to include your info on all the forms you will send them a gift check after they move in. This normally does the trick.
