Self-Touring Technology ‘Has Become a Necessity’

Self-touring started to become popular last year as big institutional owners have implemented self-touring technology, like smart locks and informative apps. While the trend was still getting off the ground, it has now become crucial for owners to carry out apartment leasing with social distancing measures.

“There was a ground swell last year of this concept of self-touring. Residents were showing up at apartment buildings and wanted to look at unit by themselves. A lot of properties have been embracing self-touring technology,” John Helm, a partner of RET Ventures, tells GlobeSt.com. “With social distancing, this has become a necessity. One of the ways now that people can tour a unit without being in violation of social distancing measures, is through self-touring.”

Owners are quickly adopting this technology, which includes smart locks and mapping programs. “Today, we are seeing a lot of properties that are deploying smart lock and an iPad with a pre-programed app for mapping and information, so the person knows where to go and what to look at,” says Helm. “The resident, when they show up, can tour the building on their own without the leasing agent following them around.”

The technology makes sense, not only for life in quarantine but also for typical renters today, who generally like to operate with autonomy and from their phones. “A lot of people don’t want to look at apartments during office hours, and it was getting hard to find leasing staff that would work on the weekends,” says Helm. “Owners were also pursuing this technology as a way to tour units off hours and when they didn’t have enough people on the weekend to do multiple tours.”

The trend started in the single-family market years ago, when owners had trouble showing multiple homes in a single day. “This started in the single-family rental market, and we have been told that the close rate is higher when an agent is not present,” says Helm. “For investors that are managing 500 homes all over Phoenix, you can’t afford to send and agent out to tour, and so the single-family investors pioneered this technology.”

This technology is of particular interest to RET Ventures’ partners, which have also been the primary adopters of the technology. “We have a lot of the big private owners, like Starwood, and in total, they own and operate 1.1 million units,” says Helm. “We work closely with them to identify technologies that we can back and they can deploy to make their businesses run more effectively and efficiently. We watch a lot of the trends, and we are in constant communication with our owners about what would help make their properties run better.”