Pricing transparency and hidden fees are a hot topic across both the apartment industry and the broader economy.
Charleston, South Carolina-based Greystar made a decision to lean into transparency by developing a website that includes the Total Monthly Leasing Price Calculator — a proprietary tool that helps users estimate the total cost of living in any home managed by the firm.
The calculator goes beyond the industry’s typical base-rent listing to factor in rent and other recurring costs, providing a more comprehensive picture of affordability, according to a company news release.
The website, optimized for mobile viewing, also introduces enhanced community pages that help prospective renters explore building features, layouts and amenities. Its new search tools allow users to filter communities by commute time using various modes of transportation. The firm will add self-guided tour booking following the initial rollout.
The site was developed long before Greystar settled with the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division to resolve antitrust claims related to the firm’s use of RealPage’s revenue management software. As part of the agreement, the U.S.’s largest owner and operator of apartments was barred from using nonpublic competitor data in rent-setting software.
Here, Jordan Kobert, senior managing director for digital technologies at Greystar, talks with Multifamily Dive about the goals behind the TMLP Calculator, the conditions that led to the development of the tool and the response from users.
MULTIFAMILY DIVE: What were Greystar’s goals behind the development of this tool? How will this benefit both users and the company?
JORDAN KOBERT: Our main goal was to improve the user experience, particularly around prospects and the apartment discovery/lease process. Historically, our website has been about our businesses: property management, investment and development. With this evolution, we wanted to highlight our network of one million global apartments and enable a world-class search and discovery path to drive more leases for our clients.
Which industry conditions influenced the development of this tool?
Our timing and decisions were driven by a few factors. First, the continued evolution of how prospects are searching and discovering apartments for rent has evolved and we want to lead, not just keep up in this changing landscape.
Second, we now have the scale to truly offer a solution across regions, and our previous site didn’t allow for that. Finally, we are looking ahead at an AI-enhanced world, and this new platform gives us a lot of options as that technology evolves.
How have renters and users responded?
Overall, the response has been positive both in anecdotal feedback and in the data we’re seeing. We’re driving thousands of weekly lead actions at the property level, and while it’s still early, we see a huge confirmation in the data that we can drive lower-cost leases for our network of clients.
What were some of your biggest challenges in this tool’s development?
Any development has its challenges. In this case, the scale and complexity of Greystar’s data was the most significant. Making things complex is easy, making complex things simple is difficult. Behind the simple and elegant experience in the new Greystar.com is a complex architecture spanning multiple systems, with industry-leading Fee Transparency, all designed to improve the business of our clients.
How do you plan to change and improve this tool and your website in the future?
We’ve said that this is the start, not the finish line. We’ve already made over a dozen small improvements since launch. We have a roadmap of improvements to make leasing easier for prospects and residents, and over time will continue to make it as seamless as possible to search, apply, rent and renew.
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