May 11 2012

Great QR Code Placement from Forward Management

Apartments in Madison, WI QR Code

I was in a bit of a rush when I snapped this picture at La Ville Apartments so I didn’t have time to actually scan the QR code to see where it directed to (perhaps a bad sign for QR codes in general?).

Either way, this is a great case study in effective QR code placement from Jean Duchrow, who manages the building for Forward Management.

The QR code is large, very noticeable, intriguing, and perfect for renters browsing buildings on foot (or friends of current renters interested in potentially moving into the building).

Assuming this directs to a mobile-optimized site, it’s a case study in best practices for QR Code use.

 

By Alec S • Landlords • 0 • Tags: ,

Feb 7 2012

3 Madison Resources to Help Resolve a Dispute with Your Landlord

It happens all the time. Renter isn’t happy with landlord, landlord begins ignoring renter, renter responds by cursing the landlord’s name in online forums. Nothing productive occurs.

If your relationship with your landlord is headed in that direction, and you’d prefer to have your dispute settled in a more productive way (online forums are a dirty place, after all!), you’re in luck.

Madison has great resources for renters that need help handling a dispute with a landlord. Here are the top three:

1. Your Landlord

Say what? Yep, that’s right. The first person you should talk to before you lawyer up is the person who can actually solve the problem.

Make sure you explain your problem to your landlord, and don’t be a jerk about it.

Compromises and solutions are built on trust and communication, not doing your best impression of Horatio from CSI.

2. The Tenant Resource Center

Assuming diplomacy has failed, the Tenant Resource Center can probably help.

The Tenant Resource Center is a small Madison non-profit that focuses on housing counseling and mediation services for Madison renters and landlords.

In other words, if you and your landlord are in a dispute, they’ve got your back.

They’ve been in Madison for years and have helped thousands of renters get out of tight spots. Giving them a shout can’t hurt (phone number and office address on their website).

3. STEM (Student Tenant Education and Mediation)

STEM is a newer initiative, and one we’re less familiar with. But, the basic premise is the same as that of the Tenant Resource Center.

They help mediate (see: first scene of the Wedding Crashers) disputes between renters and landlords.

They differ in that they are more campus and downtown focused than the Tenant Resource Center, and tend to be  more well-liked by Madison landlords (which means your landlord will be more likely to accept a compromise from mediation organized by them).

Their contact info is on their website as well.

 

By Alec S • Renters • 0

Jan 26 2012

25% of Renters Use More Than 10 Different Rental Sites!

 

25% of renters search more than 10 (that’s right 10!) rental websites when looking for a new apartment.

At least, that’s according to a survey of more than 1,000 renters done by Rentbits in 2009.

 

The Stats:

Some of the findings from the Renbits survey:

  • 94% of all renters use more than one rental search website when looking for a new place
  • 60% of renters use more than 5 of said rental sites
  • And, as mentioned above, 25% of all renters search across more than 10 rental sites!

Table: How Renters Search

 

The Takeaway(s):

1. The rental market is very, very fragmented, and is only getting worse.

From a landlord’s perspective, that means that a website and one other form of advertising just won’t cut it anymore. Renters have become increasingly web-savvy and conscientious, and as a result landlords need to be in multiple places online to truly maximize their properties’ exposure.

Syndication-type services such as Vflyer and Postlets are great (and for the most part, free) options to help you save time by syndicating your listings to many of the most popular sites online. We highly recommend them to all of our customers (rumor is the team at MoveinMadison may be developing a similar syndication service for landlords. More on that later).

2. Renters simply don’t have very good options.

Renters are forced to use multiple rental search websites because the sites available just don’t cut it. But, it doesn’t have to be that way.

When’s the last time you heard someone say they used multiple search engines to look something up? Or 10 flight-search websites to book a flight?

Never, right?

That’s why we started MoveinMadison. To finally give Madison renters what googlers and travelers have come to expect, a website that actually consolidates all the information they’re looking for in one place and on one easy-to-use interface.

 

 

By Alec S • Landlords • 0

Jan 25 2012

Death, Taxes and…Rental Search?

 

They might be the only three things in the world that are certain.

Let us explain.

For those not familiar, Google has a tool called Google Insights for Search that allows you to see how much certain terms or groups of terms are searched for throughout the year on Google.

Obviously, as a startup focused on apartment search we were curious to find out when people start looking for a new place over the course of a year.

So, we checked out Google’s Rental Index, which combines search terms like ‘apartments for rent, rent, houses for rent’ to measure when people start looking for rental properties throughout the year.

We hypothesized there would be a pretty strong trend within each year and, well, we were right.

Trends in Google Rental Search, 2004 – 2012

  • Every year the lowest amount of searches for apartments happen the week prior to Christmas (that’s those big troughs in the graph).
  • Every year the most searching for apartments on google happens in late July between the 14th and 28th.
  • And every year people start searching for a new place in earnest starting the first or second week of January.

              Trends in Google Rental Searches, 2011

Trends in Rental Searches 2011

It’s important to point out that Madison’s rental season is very unique to say the least.

If we were able to just get stats on searches for Madison apartments, the peak between January and August would probably be smaller and there would undoubtedly be a second spike in late October through Early December when most of the campus renting gets underway.

So, while that does put a bit of a wrench in these numbers, knowing when exactly non-students and out-of-town renters typically are on google searching for a new apartment can help you better target an adwords or facebook campaign, make headway in new market niches, and know when to aggressively advertise different properties to maximize your ad spend.

What do you think? How else can landlords use these trends to more effectively market their properties?

By Alec S • Landlords • 0

Jan 25 2012

And You Thought Apartments in Downtown Madison were Expensive to Rent…

 

Well they are, but not compared to the average rent in the likes of New York ($3,099/month), San Francisco ($2,502/month) and Washington D.C. ($1,420).

Wait, what’s that?  You’re wondering how much the average rent in Madison is? Yeah, we were too. So we checked it out.

The most reliable info we could get was from Hotpads, a national apartment search engine. They put the average rent of Madison at $1,0008/month, with a typical 1 bedroom coming in at $790/month, which we thought was about right (you can see all the detailed info here).

Check out the infographic below for a bunch of other cool info on who rents (2 out of every 5 people), how much they pay (at least in large cities), and whether they have renters insurance (most don’t…surprise!).

We know, the infographic was originally created to help you decide between renting or buying a home, but there is just too much cool info here not to share.

 

via

 

By Alec S • Renters • 0 • Tags: ,

Jan 25 2012

A Cool Infographic: Why Mobile Matters

 

There is no shortage of talk about the growing importance of mobile in any marketing medium, but apartment marketing has a particular way to benefit from increasing smart phone use.

Apps launched by some national rental listing sites like Padmapper and Apartments.com, which allow renters to view mobile listings, search for places based on their current location, and store their favorites to take with them on the go, have become exceedingly popular with renters.

And, with smart phone use already pretty substantial and only growing (especially amongst younger cohorts), mobile is undoubtedly an integral part of the future of apartment marketing.

So, what mobile strategies have you implemented? And what features would you like to see us develop to make MoveinMadison more mobile-friendly? Let us know in the comments.

 

Smartphone Users Statistics and Facts
Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com Web Design Company

By Alec S • Landlords • 0 • Tags: , ,

Dec 29 2011

The Most Important Thing to Know About Responding to Online Leads

You just received an email from a renter who is interested in one of your properties and wants more info.

Do you know the one thing you can do to increase your chances of getting their business by 250%?

According to a study done at MIT on the topic of Lead Response Management, and which is now making the rounds on hundreds of the largest blogs and online publications, the answer is simple.

Just respond to the email within 5 minutes.

 

 

According to the MIT study, if you call a lead five minutes after they attempt to contact you rather than waiting thirty you are 100 times more likely to make contact with them, 21 times more likely to qualify them as a lead, and almost two and a half times as likely to actually get their business.

In fact, the study showed that waiting too long to respond to a lead and continuing to push for contact after waiting for an extended period will seriously hurt your chances of contacting and qualifying a lead.

The takeaway here is pretty clear.

Fire off an email, phone call or text right away, or be prepared to lose a lot of cash.

By Alec S • Landlords • 0

Dec 29 2011

4 Ways We Plan to Improve the Online Advertising Process for Landlords

We have to be honest.

The original focus of MoveinMadison was not how to make advertising properties online a better process for landlords. Rather, our mission was to simplify and streamline the search process for renters.

But, as we began to research and develop the site, learning more about the market we were planning to launch into, we realized the obvious point that you can’t have one without the other. That, if we were really going to do this well, we needed to make the site as valuable for landlords as we were hoping it would be for renters.

That’s when we started realizing just how much room for improvement and innovation there was on the landlord side of the spectrum.

So, here are the features we’ve built into MoveinMadison with those goals of innovation and improvement in mind.

1. Make Listing Free!

Old school pricing models that charge per listing are outdated and counter-productive. So, we made it free to list any property with less than 20 units on MoveinMadison.com.

So, a property management company with a portfolio that includes 250 properties, all with less than 20 units, would be able to list all of their properties on MoveinMadison completely for free, forever!

2. Include Massively Detailed Analytics

There’s a famous saying in marketing that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” At MoveinMadison it’s our goal to make sure we never contribute to that dilemma. Every landlord that lists a property on MoveinMadison will have full access to detailed analytics showing the number of previews and views their listings on MoveinMadison have received.
Better yet, those analytics will also include detailed data on the number of email leads and click-throughs to their company website.
3. Offer Unlimited Photos and Dirt-Cheap New Media

Placing a limit on the number of photos you can upload per listing is stupid. It hurts landlords and it hurts renters alike. So, we put an end to it.

Allowing renters to get a better idea of what a unit looks like online through extensive photos (and eventually panoramic imagery and video walkthrough tours as well) means those renters contacting you will be more qualified, resulting in less time wasted answering phone calls about the same questions and giving tours of properties a renter may not have any interest in.

4. Focus on Design and Ease of Use

At MoveinMadison we loathe bad web design. We spent weeks designing, building, and testing the landlord section of the site to make it incredibly simple and easy to use.

No craigslist inconveniences, online listing sites that look and feel like they’re from the 90’s, or agony trying to market your properties.

We’re here to make the process frictionless.

 

If you’re a property owner or manager interested in helping us make our product better please don’t hesitate to email our CEO, Alec, at alec@moveinmadison.com with any questions or suggestions you might have.

We’d love the feedback.

By Alec S • About Us, Landlords • 0

Dec 29 2011

4 Reasons Apartment Hunting Sucks and How We Plan to Change it

Let’s be honest, finding a new apartment sucks.

We at MoveinMadison.com aren’t pretending to have a solution to all of the inconveniences of finding a new place, but we do think we can make the process a lot easier and more enjoyable for you. And when we say a lot more, we mean it. Like we mentioned before, our mantra is to make local apartment search not just a little better, but 10x better. So how do we plan to do this? Here are the four biggest reasons apartment hunting sucks and how we plan to address them.

Reason #1: These Pictures are BS

Let’s face it, landlords suck at taking pictures. Those two pictures showing just the outside of the building and half of the living room are great and everything, but they don’t address the need renters have, to figure out if an apartment is worth living in.

Our solution: Video Walkthrough and 360 degree interactive panoramic tours.

Video walkthrough and panoramic tours are the future of apartment search and for good reason, they’re awesome. Be ready walk through any number of Madison apartments without leaving your house; because we plan to saturate the site with them.

 

Reason #2: Endless Lists (hint, hint…Craigslist)

As if you needed another reason not to use Craigslist. But seriously, do these people really expect us to keep sifting through one giant list of apartments? Talk about a time sink.

Our solution: Map-based search.

For those of you with some experience with map-based search, you know just how simple and intuitive it is. We think so too, which is why we made it the default way to search on MoveinMadison.com .

 

Reason #3: Feels like a big scam

The more we learn about the apartment search market the more convinced we are that it is a market in which businessmen had stumbled upon a great idea, and then killed it. Almost every apartment listing site generates revenue by charging landlords a fee to list their properties, and as a result the focus of the business tends to move away from renters and toward the landlords paying the bills. Specifically, toward those landlords who are willing to fork out the big dough to advertise. When that happens, apartment listing sites become nothing more than a glorified group of large-scale landlord advertisements. Which is nice, unless you are actually looking for a place, in which case it kind of sucks.

Our solution: A better pricing model.

Only those properties with more than 20 units (see: bigger apartment buildings) are charged to list on MoveinMadison.com. We’re hoping this will allow us to combine the small-scale property owners (who list for free on craigslist) with the large-scale property owners who you only tend to find in the apartment listing “yellow pages.” The result: a comprehensive database of Madison apartments, and a much better experience for renters searching for their next place.

 

Reason #4: Out of date listings

“Oh, this apartment was listed last December? Well, its only July, what could have changed in the meantime?”

Our solution: Up-to-date listings.

We will place an expiration date on every listing that is placed on MoveinMadison.com, clearly display when each listing was created, and create serious incentives for landlords to keep those listings up to date. It’s not rocket science, but it makes a big difference.

 

Have any other reasons apartment hunting sucks? We would love to hear them in the comments below. Or you can email us at info@moveinmadison.com, tweet at us (@moveinmadison), or write on our facebook wall.

By Alec S • About Us, Renters • 0