The Company
NALS Apartment Homes is a fully-integrated real estate investment firm engaged in the acquisition, ownership and management of multifamily apartment communities. Headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, NALS owns and manages over 15,000 apartment homes throughout the United States, in markets such as Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix, Tucson, Portland and Seattle.
The Challenge
Busy Work
Processing applications, taking work orders and entering payments required significant data entry by staff at NALS’ properties. The hours spent on these tasks detracted from time that could be spent on more positive customer interactions. Additionally, NALS residents didn’t have a central resource for communication and services, so paying bills and making maintenance requests took time out of their day as well.
The Solution
RentCafe
RentCafe is a powerful multifamily marketing, leasing and resident services platform that includes corporate and property websites, multichannel marketing tools and SEO and SEM capabilities. It makes online leasing, rent payments and maintenance requests easier for prospects, residents and staff. Fully mobile and integrated with Yardi Voyager, RentCafe helps marketing and onsite team members turn more leads into leases – faster than ever.
The Story
Quantifiable Time Savings
Using RentCafe to manage online marketing, leasing and resident services saves NALS hours of time across its portfolio each month. NALS leverages RentCafe to offer electronic application, work order and payment processing, eliminating the data entry that comes with manual processing.
Mallory Monsma, marketing leader at NALS, estimates that online applications save its leasing agents 15 minutes each. In August of 2016, the team processed 347 applications, resulting in a time savings of 87 hours.
NALS also processed 11,000 online transactions that month, entered automatically. Online payments have reduced manual keying as well as trips to the bank. Work orders are going more smoothly now too, and onsite agents aren’t losing productivity to frequent unplanned interruptions.
“My team did the calculations, and in one month alone we saved 1,070 hours just by using online payments, work orders and applications,” said Monsma.
Better Resident Interactions
The time NALS saves with RentCafe benefits its residents as well. “Now we have a lot more time to walk the properties, place follow up calls and add other meaningful touchpoints for applicants and renters,” shared Monsma.
Residents can use the RentCafe resident portal to access their account information, resident services and property communications in one easy place. Renters like the online convenience; they don’t have to take time out of their day to visit the office to pay bills or make maintenance requests. In fact, 94% of NALS residents are signed up, and 83% of rent is paid electronically.
The resident portals also help renters stay up to date with what’s happening in their communities. “RentCafe makes it really easy to send an email blast to everyone at the same time,” said Monsma. “We’re able to get the word out about new events and services quickly.”
