Scaling Profitably Through Whatever Comes Next
by Vanessa Anderson and Kori Covrigaru
Every property manager feels it: The leads aren’t flowing like they used to. Vacancies linger longer, rent growth has stalled, and owners are asking tougher questions about time-to-lease and marketing spend. The instinct is to push harder — more listings, more advertising, and more manual follow-up. But what if the market is telling us something different?
Our analysis found two operational levers that consistently separate high-performing portfolios from the rest: listing quality and leasing automation. Used together, they create a measurable advantage that can help property managers survive a tough market and position them to thrive when things turn around.
Professional Photography Boosts Listing Quality
In a tight leasing market, average listings disappear and strong ones dominate the search results. Strong listings start with high-quality photos. Scroll through most rental listings and the problem becomes obvious: dim photos, awkward angles, cluttered rooms. Prospects scroll right past listings with poor photography.
Professional photography catches prospects’ attention. To quantify this impact, the PlanOmatic team analyzed the data from 2,500 listings over a 21-month period. Leads per listing increase by 80% with professional photography, from an average of 19.1 to 34.4 leads per listing.
We saw these increases across all rent ranges, though they were most dramatic among listings with rents above $2,000, which saw increases as high as 63% when property managers used professional photography listing (Figure 1). Prospects in higher price ranges expect higher-quality listings. Professional photography also improves conversion rates by 11.3% and even days on market decrease by 14%.
As Peter Lohmann, CEO of RL Property Management and a PlanOmatic customer, said, “Our homes are leasing faster, and that makes me look awesome to our property owners. It makes my leasing people happy, and it makes my operations people happy because their metrics look better.”
It’s not just professional photography that helps move the needle — video and 3D tours do too.
ShowMojo customer data shows that listings with videos receive nearly 14% more leads than those without. Listings with 3D tours receive nearly 17% more leads, making these smart tactics for boosting hard-to-lease properties (Figure 2).
In a tough rental market, mediocre listing photos quietly kill leasing velocity. But professional media services are just half of the equation.
Leasing Automation Increases Efficiency — And Conversions
Over the last six months, we’ve seen an interesting trend in our customer data. While leads are down throughout the industry, our customers are seeing their conversion rates hold steady, and their units are experiencing fewer days on market compared with their competitors.
Their secret: leasing automation. When lead volume drops, speed and consistency matter even more. Leasing automation removes friction from the leasing process so prospects can sign leases sooner.
Here are five leasing automation tools that can help property managers convert a larger share of leads:
Seamless Transition from Vacancy to Active Listing
When a property becomes vacant, it can take property managers weeks to get to the property, take photos, get them uploaded, and list the unit. This is especially true for PMs who manage units over a wide geographic area. And those vacant days are expensive. Automating and outsourcing the work necessary to move from vacant unit to active listing can help.
For example, the PlanOmatic platform offers a service that automatically grabs property details when units become vacant in the property management system. From there, property managers can order photographs with one click, get uploaded images (from a real photographer) within 2.5 days, and then immediately list the unit. This greatly reduces the time units sit vacant while also eliminating the need to dispatch your sales team to take pictures.
Automated Communication Ensures Instant Responses
One of the simplest ways you can increase your conversion rate once your unit is listed is by quickly responding to prospects’ inquiries. It’s the first step in keeping prospects moving through your leasing process. If they don’t receive a prompt response, they’ll probably reach out to your competition instead.
Automated communication tools not only respond to initial inquiries quickly, but they can also help nurture leads. Look for tools that can automatically respond to every inquiry and invite prospects to schedule a showing, alert prospects if a unit they are interested in experiences a price reduction, and messages leads when additional listings that are similar to the inquired-about unit are posted.
Automatic emails and text messages make sure that every inquiry moves immediately into the leasing funnel.
Live Answer Services Extend Your Team’s Reach
We often hear from property managers that their teams just don’t have enough time to respond to every prospect’s question. They’re short-staffed, but they know that each missed call is one less opportunity to get a lease signed. That’s where live answer support can help. Live answer teams function as an extension of your leasing team by answering prospects’ commonly asked questions using responses that you provide. So, your prospects get personal service from a human, and they continue moving through the leasing process regardless of your team’s availability to answer their calls.
Self-Scheduling Lets Prospects Move Forward on Their Own Time
Most rental searches happen after business hours. If you don’t have self-scheduling, your prospects must wait until the next business day to schedule a showing. During that time, competitors swoop in. Self-scheduling removes the biggest bottleneck in leasing: waiting for a human to coordinate a showing.
Self-scheduling removes friction from the leasing process, making sure prospects get the service they need when they need it. Plus, it saves your leasing team valuable time; one team in Minnesota saved 10 hours per week using self-scheduling.
Self-Showings Deliver Convenience
With leasing automation, prospects can also complete showings when it works for them through self-showings.
Implementing security measures such as Smart Entry, Location Services, and Phone Call Verification minimize risks and make self-showings an easy, secure option for prospects eager to move through the leasing process.
Our customers have found success with self-showings because of the flexibility they offer for prospects. Since they reduce the amount of time your agents need to spend at showings, they can even enable you to grow your portfolio.
Leasing Automation Enables Prospect-Driven Leasing
Leasing automation contributes to higher conversion rates because it removes the friction that slows leasing down: missed calls, delayed responses, back-and-forth scheduling, and limited access to showings. Instead, prospects are in the driver’s seat, moving forward on their own terms.
Emily Kraft, property manager with Go Gopher Rentals and a ShowMojo customer, said this of leasing automation, “It’s easy to book showings, ask questions, make changes, etc. We like that leads get a follow-up if we miss their call. And 99% of the people who leave a voicemail have already booked a showing before we call them back.”
This is what prospect-driven leasing looks like. And it’s why property managers who use leasing automation are converting more leads, completing more showings, and signing leases faster.
The Bottom Line
Cotality reports that overall rent growth remains near 15-year lows. Vacancy rates haven’t dipped below 6% since 2022.
The leasing market has shifted, and signals point toward this being a new normal.
Today, property managers have better tools than ever to capture leads and convert the demand that exists. Property managers investing in professional media services and leasing automation — and improving the quality of their listings and efficiency of their operations — will be the ones scaling profitably through whatever comes next.
