The Death of the Staged Tour: Why Prospects Crave Unit-Level Authenticity

Hello. Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's session. We are incredibly excited to dive into the death of the stage tour and look at why modern prospects crave real unit level authenticity. To see just how sharp your eyes are, we will also be kicking things off early with a live interactive game called Is It Real? You will be challenged to look at a series of property management images and determine whether they are one hundred percent real or if the room was actually generated using AI. We will reveal the truth by pulling back the curtain and showing you the original unaltered photos side by side so you can see just how difficult it has become for our prospects to tell them apart. Before we dive in, let's go over a few housekeeping items. First, we are recording this session, and we will send you the replay in your inbox tomorrow. Next, we wanna hear from you. Please drop your questions you have throughout the session in the Q and A box at any time throughout, and our panelists will answer them toward the end. Lastly, stick around. We have a special attendee offer where you can receive ten professionally produced videos, a nine hundred dollar value, to jump start your spring momentum. To get us started, I'll hand things over to Joe Davis, Director of Strategic Growth at Grace Hill. Joe helps multifamily leaders transform leasing through video and leasing virtual solutions. With over sixteen years in the industry, he advises clients, shares best practices, and helps to drive adoption of innovative strategies. Welcome, Joe. Thank you so much, Kayla, and hello, and welcome to all of you that are on the webinar right now and those that are watching the recording as well. As Kayla said, I'm Joe, and I'm privileged to be on the strategic growth team here at Grace Hill. I get to spend my days obsessing over how leasing teams can show up more authentically online. Video, visual content, all of it. It is a good gig, and I'm really excited about today's conversation and the guests that we have with us. And before we get into it, quick preview. So we're going to challenge ourselves, like Kayla said, with an AI image game. That's going to be fantastic, and we're gonna dig into a practical framework for building real digital trust, see how one of the best operators in the business actually does it at scale, and then we're gonna close it out with some rapid fire that you're not gonna wanna miss. So we're gonna be under an hour. Enjoy your coffee or your lunch, and let's get going. Our guest today, her bio that was submitted from a lot of her colleagues in the industry reads, if Multifamily had a Hype Squad, Innovation Lab, and customer experience think tank all rolled into one person, you'd find Carol Van Hook somewhere in the middle of it. She's the senior director of leasing at JVM Realty where she connects people, technology, marketing, and a healthy dose of creative chaos to help communities thrive. Nearly three decades in customer service, more than sixteen years in Multifamily, fourteen new construction launches, and a career that has taken her from hospitality to student housing to national industry stages. Her unofficial superpower, connecting dots nobody realized were related. Carol, welcome. Hi, Joe. Thanks for having me. That was so much fun. I can't believe some peers wrote that. That was a fun way to make a bio. So hey, everybody. Welcome. We have so much awesome stuff today. I know there's gonna be some great takeaways, but please leave some comments in the chats, questions. We wanna leave time, to address those. So welcome. I see some San Diego in the house, Texas. Oh, that song is, like, stuck in my head. She's in Texas. Oh, cannot get out of my head. Alright. Texas is a house. I love it. Love Alright. Atlanta representing. I love it too. Alright. So we are producing more leasing media than ever, but prospects trust less of what they see online. Every property has beautiful photos. AI can create perfect interiors, but the question is not whether the content looks good. The question is whether it feels believable. So, Carol, when did you first realize the issue was not just creating more content but helping prospects believe what they were seeing? Sure. You know, I I kinda have to go back a little bit because I've really started using video in sales. I wanna say, I mean, back in twenty twelve when I really got into the lease up world and traveling around doing lease ups, having to run up to the buildings and get quick videos, and then I had to upload it to a Gmail, share a link, and then I had no data on if they clicked it or how many times. So it really goes back to the beginning of that short form video that we want that, like, Snapchat days. Right? And so it really goes back to that and not having professional stabilizers and really just trying to get the video content to our our prospects that were requesting it. But then in around twenty fifteen, I found a technology that allowed for the face to face follow-up, then you could get the data of how many times they watched it. Still didn't have an awesome stabilizer, so I'm still running around trying to get the videos uploaded. Fast forward to around twenty twenty, twenty twenty one when I found Realync, which has been a game changer for me. I'm an unofficial ambassador for Realync. I get paid no money to do this, but I absolutely love the product. And so now we have all these data. We have a cloud library that will always be there. So no matter if, you know, TikTok gets eliminated, Instagram goes away, I have a cloud where I can live all my videos. So, you know, it's not really about making more content. I think it became apparent to me that I wanted to make the human experience and out of the gate. So when we were making our video content of, you know, here's a walk through through for a floor plan, but we didn't put the the human behind it. So I really wanted to pull back on just continuing to make more content, but make sure my teams, myself, anybody in sales was making that human connection out of the gate and saying, hey. I'm Carol. I'm gonna be walking you through this. I'm gonna here's a video of the floor plan we liked. Make sure you click here to pick one. And so for me, it's about making that human experience out of the gate versus a ton of more videos. I love that. And the human experience is so important nowadays as I'm sure a lot of people on this webinar understand. And you've done lease ups. You've done brand launches, the connect brand at Cara now at JVM of roughly five thousand units. What is the one thing those experiences taught you about how media actually moves a prospect? Well, media media moves a prospect because media does the talking for us. So going back to being in markets where the brand didn't exist, we had to make something out of nothing that wasn't even built yet. It's super competitive. So I really had to use to use media and video to do all the talking for me. I think sometimes we can get lost in all the conversation of this is everything we have at our property. We wanna show everything. You know, we have the coolest pool. We have the best gym. We have three dog parks. We have stainless steel appliances. And over time, if you're just constantly talking all day, people will just tune you out. My personality bird's a parrot. So what happens when parrots talk too much? You turn them off. You don't take them seriously, and I'm very conscious about that. So that's why I really like to use videos because, you know, I can stay on track. I can stay on what the prospect wants, and I'm keeping it focused on them. So I'd let the video and the media do the talking. And I also find that with agents, it also reduces the burnout of them talking all day long, giving the spiel over and over. So once you find out what's important to your prospect, you just base it around that, and you can make your playlists in Realync, which if I really don't see us using these across the board as much as we should. So make those playlists. Once you have your library, you can make all these little stitched playlists. And let's just say somebody really wants a dog park, a gym, and a couple one bedrooms. Well, boom. You can just make your playlist to that. And so you're creating it just for your prospect, and you're letting the media do the work for you. I hope that answers your question. Oh, it does more than just that. That is so wonderful. And if you would like to see a playlist in action, stay tuned because Carol's actually gonna walk us through a few of her favorite examples. Yeah. So with that, we are going to start off with a really fun game on the next slide. So what you're really describing is authenticity. And I think the industry is entering a strange moment where people do not always know what authentic looks like anymore. So we are going to test ourselves and we're gonna see if we can identify what's real and what's AI. So we're gonna go through a few slides here and this is where we would love audience participation. So right there in the chat, drop your guess. Is this gonna be a real picture or is this an AI picture? We'll play along and then we'll discuss. Our first image is up. So what do you think, Carol? Oh, definitely AI. I see the chat going crazy. Yeah. I mean, I think we can see because the there's an ex there's, you know, dimensions. The furniture looks a little three d. I think the artwork looks a little too perfect with the white borders. It just seems really AI to me. And and the carpet doesn't look you know, it just the proportions don't look totally real. So I'm gonna go with AI, and I think that's what the audience is saying too. I think you have a lot of people that agree with you. Let's find out if you're right on the next slide. We had that in the bag. We know. Alright. And, hey, look in the comment section. They even said the fan might be real. I think that was a good call out. Good job, Mike. So, Carol, any other comments on that now that you see the real photo next to it? Well, now that I see the side by side, I mean, they added a whole window. So, therefore, the prospect's going to be very disappointed with the lack of extra natural light. It looks like the dimensions are a little bit longer for the room versus, you know, showing the actual space, which I know we always try to make the room look bigger. But, yeah, I think that fan is real. Now that I see that. That looks kinda the same, maybe different light fixtures. So yeah. Yep. It's good to still use the virtual staging. Right? But we wanna show if it's my prior brand was micro units. We had our studios were three hundred and sixty nine square feet. I can only do so much. So we we wanted to show that space because of how you could actually live and how functional it was versus trying to make it look like a big angle. So I don't know. Does anybody see anything else? It's kind of, like, match the picture. Those are those are what stand out to me. Yeah. No. I think you covered it all. I love the the proportions comment and definitely the the staging of the furniture in there too. Something that you do want people to feel like, This is I could see myself in here for sure. So then we got the plants are really fake too. Yes. Very, very fake. Good fig tree. Right? Alright. So let's go to the next one. Let's see. Is it real or is it AI? So drop your guess in the chat. Carol, what do you think? This picture looks familiar. I think this is one of my properties, but I I think this is real. I mean, we we love virtual staging by all means, but I can tell by the shiny off the cabinets. The fridge doesn't look perfect or matte finish. You can tell that it's a stainless appliance. You know, the lighting, the flooring looks legit. So I'm gonna go with real. I don't think this is one of our staged ones. I will. Well, let's find out. Real. Nice. Alright. Yes. So you're correct. This is actually from one of your beautiful communities, and you guys did a fantastic job with this. It is actually stage furniture. It's a great, amazing shot that you guys did and tells a really great story too. So good job with that. And they did a good job with that. And good job with everybody in the chat. I think we didn't fool anyone on that. It was definitely real. Okay. So let's move on to the third and final one of this segment. Is it real or is it AI? I mean, this is so AI. Right? Let's see. What are you noticing in here? The, you know, the angle of the chair, I think it looks a little proportioned. It looks a little. They certainly didn't put more art on the wall. I don't know if that fireplace needs to be there, and that that corner looks like a catty corner fireplace. Yeah. It just looks a little proportionally off to me. I totally agree with you. And the fireplace, it's it's funny even the way that it's categoric. It looks off centered. And so if you are gonna stage fireplace there, you know, come on. And, yes, the light fixture is definitely off centered too, said in the chat. So let's figure out if this is real or is it AI on the next slide. AI. Okay. I don't think we fooled too many people in here too. Think someone put real AI in their picture. AI. So what stands out now that you see the real picture, Carol, and everybody here in the audience too? What stands out to you of some of the differences? I mean, there's a staircase back there versus that lush greenery forest space that you'd be backing up to. But this could also show that it's a first floor walkout, and that could be convenient for a certain type of person. There is a fireplace, so they had me wrong there. But, see, I think the angle changed with the AI. I don't know where the heck the doors went, but now oh, I guess that's the real picture. So the doors are off. So I guess you just open up the space. That kinda that's kinda cool. If you were a single person, you don't really need that door. But, yeah, I I would I would show this picture side by side, but I would definitely stage it a little bit better to be more authentic to to show the right dimensions. Because it's a great natural light first floor walkout. You do have two points of light there. Yeah. Absolutely. And speaking of lighting, we had in the chat even some people that identified that the threshold of the floor right in front of the door out there is kinda hidden in the AI picture. So you may not even know that you have a tile floor, you know, right there before you go out. And so great pickup by the audience. Oh, yeah. That's a great detail. Yep. I didn't even notice that one. That's a good detail. So transitioning away from this, if people start feeling tricked before, you know, they even tour, I mean, you've already lost trust. So beyond legal and disclosure concerns, prospects who feel misled, they don't just simply bounce nowadays. They tell people, they leave reviews, they choose another property, or, god forbid, they get on social media and start making video content about your community, and you don't want that. So think about this. Seventy four percent of renters say they lose trust the moment they find out AI was involved in their leasing experience and no one told them. So that's not a small number, and California did notice this. So AB seven twenty three, which went into effect January first of this year, now requires disclosure of any time a listening photo has been AI altered or virtually staged. So if you're operating in California, this is already on you. If you're not, we know how California laws are. They start to become the footsteps towards a national law. So be ready on that, and that's why this really, matters what you've built, Carol. The answer is it's not just a policy. It's a system for creating and activating authentic unit level media by the people who actually know the property. So on this next slide, Carol, let's talk about how JVM actually does that at scale. Sure. So coming over to JBM now, just really in the past six months, I came over in December. I'm so excited to be on this team. They're really doing some great things. But using Realync, I think it's great to build things so people know their boundaries. And what I'm finding now that I'm back on a bigger scale is that you really don't have time to be with every single individual team member, unfortunately. But you wanna build content where they know their boundaries, you can let them have their creative freedom, and, ultimately, they know that they can use this for leasing. You know, that's my biggest goal is resources for quicker leasing, less burnout, less talking, less interruptions, so they can do all the other work that they have to do every day. So when building my SOP, I really kind of went with four buckets of your dos and don'ts when you're making videos. And we also developed an approval process. This is one great thing that Realync has that you can turn on for either your property managers or your higher higher up regionals that when any vote any video gets uploaded, you can quickly review it and approve or reject. So when I'm rejecting a video, I don't want the teams to think, oh my gosh. Why is why isn't my video getting approved? So we made some SOPs of what would get a video rejected or what really what we need on a video to get approved. So the stop and scroll cover, looking at all the hundreds and hundreds of videos that we have, I noticed, gosh, every every front pictures of a of a front door or some stairs or, you know, just half of a kitchen. And, you know, we're all used to the scrolling aspect now. If we see a really cool cover photo on an Instagram Reel that has some lettering or something, you know, we're gonna wanna we're gonna wanna watch that. So same thing, same concept with Realync is having, it's called edit attributes. So if you wanna jot that down, once you log in to your media, there's the three little dots. You'll see edit attributes. That's where you can put in your logo. So it shows your nice logo before you even watch the video. You could do a gorgeous picture of a kitchen. We see that, kitchens have a really high click through rate in our Realync platform, or a cool picture of, like, the outside of the property. Just a beautiful nighttime or beautiful pool picture. It's going into summertime, so why not show up your cool pool? So go in there. I bet if you get in there and look at all your media, it's just pictures of front doors and and weird angles. So would you wanna click on that? Right? Yeah. So next thing for me is is the GIF, or is it GIF? Oh, yeah. I don't know. I'm an elder millennial. Sometimes I call it GIF, but okay. We're gonna call it GIF to be cool. But, you know, what if and this goes back to when I started using video with a prior platform where you can make the movement, you know, in your email and, hey. What if you made a little video that says, hey, Joe, and, like, this is the GIF in your email? Well, if somebody made a video for me, I'm definitely gonna click on that. It's like getting a hotel at a good or a goodie bag at a hotel. It's like, oh my gosh. Somebody took the time to put my name on something? So, anyway, I love the gift feature. And if you're sending this in an email, this is so much fun, and it's gonna be a really great eye catching visual for your email that you're gonna send out. So, going on, I think the other bucket is your your action banner setting. So Yeah. Once you've made the video, you have somebody that watches it, now what? Not everything I think needs to go to apply now, and that's kind of also what I'm seeing. And this will increase our click through rates if that button in the top right corner goes to something else. Right? Maybe we're just getting to know the prospect. We want them to apply, but maybe we want them to read our Google reviews. Maybe we want them to go to the floor plan page. So be intentional with that action banner setting. And but if you go in and check as well, you'll just see everything goes to apply now, and that's not always the case. I mean, sometimes I want people to go watch more videos on our Instagram and and then get more follows because they're already gonna do that anyway. So if you lead with that, I think it's an awesome great thing to do. And then finally, not to be on the on the horse here, but, the the photo gallery. So about when was it, Joe? A year and a half that Realync launched this? Yeah. So it's it's the technology. Any video that you upload can now become a photo gallery. So, oh my gosh, we don't have to keep going up there to take pictures of the view from the balcony or the bathroom. Any video that you upload can now be sliced and diced instantly with their technology to become a photo gallery. And then you can download a couple images, send it to your prospect. They can put it into their own chat GPT engine to furnish how they want. But now you're building not only a video library, but photos. And we all know much photoshoots take a lot of time, lot of energy. So, those are my four buckets of, like, the essentials that you know, if you're gonna start making videos today, if you're interested in this product, like, that's how I would build out my SOP for training. I love all this, and I hope everybody was taking notes. Are they watching recording and get all of that again? Those were such great practical tips. One of favorite things that you said was the action button setting. Meeting people where they are is such a common theme that we hear in marketing today and how we're engaging our prospects. And if you're not doing that, if you're failing to do that or failing to see that the prospect goes on a journey and then discovering that you're a community, then you may need to rethink it. We've heard that it takes about eight touch points, from some of our friends in the industry for people to actually close. And so how are you creating unique touch points through that journey? And, Carol, you just gave a great rundown of all of that. So with that, since all of you on the webinar are what we consider premium subscribers, there is no commercial break. What there is is a little bit more fun with AI versus real slides. So we are going to the next slide. We're gonna do three more here. And let's see if you can get back in the chat section and help us identify, is it real or is it AI? So we have the first photo here. Carol, what do you think? Is this real or is this AI? Well, I loved how you, looked at our properties and used this for this exercise. I see the chat, but, I mean, the the sky looks a little too perfect with the clouds. And then but here's my thing. The landscaping is not super perfect. I think the grass looks, you know, not as perfect either. It's reflecting off the pool accurately. I'm gonna go with real. K. Think it would if this AI would be more saturated. K. Yeah. I think we're we're getting real a lot in the chat. So good. And we had a lot of people that say AI enhanced on that. What do you think about that? There were a few hybrid comments in there too. Well, that's where I think our eye can be tricked a little bit of using, you know, your your colors, which I think is so important, you know, especially if you're putting something into print. Of course, you wanna brighten it up. But oversaturation, contrasting, you just wanna be careful so it looks authentic. But, you know, AI enhanced too, there's nothing wrong with that. If you have, you know, a a pole or or, like, a electric box that's really gonna deter from a picture, I think that's important to take out. But, you wanna keep your landscape and your aesthetic as real as possible. Absolutely. I love that too. And one of my favorite parts of this picture, ironically, is the water tower in the back. To me, that just, like it screams, like, where I'm gonna be. You know? The it makes me feel more connected to it. You know? And, yes, it's not like a big concrete pole or anything like that, but it gives a character to me. So, yes, this is real. Absolutely. But, yeah, your eyes can be tricked. So let's go to the next one. Is it AI or is it real? Carol, what do you think? I'm AI for sure. I think the proportions, the carpet looks a little three d ish. The TV looks not like a normal, length of a TV. Looks like they enhanced the lighting to make it feel warmer at certain parts, you know, coming through the light. So I'm gonna say three d or AI. Alright. Let's go to the next slide and figure out. Is it AR? Is it real? Yeah. It is AI. So as we look on the next slide, the side by side comparison of these, what stands out to you in the audience or to you, Carol? Looks like Andrew said no shadow of the decor on the TV stand. Oh, yeah. See? The shadows really help too. Absolutely. And and and, you know, the lighting. So, what is it the next slide that shows the the reel or the Yeah. So the Reel is right there. Yeah. Right next to it, right there. So you can see, like, there wasn't a great deal altered here, but brand actually could the room. You know? Yeah. Yes. Yep. Exactly. And even you can see, like, you you see, like, there's a little bit maybe five or six feet added to this and the perspective shot that you have there in the AI image. So if I'm a prospect, I'm getting there and I'm doing a real tour. I'm kinda like, this is a lot smaller than what I thought. And you cannot irk me more than getting in there and realizing I'm in a much smaller space than what was presented to you. So yeah. Right. I think we've all been there of where we wanna get in the corner and try to get the whole room. I'm certainly guilty of it. But now the more that we're learning, if you show that transparency, especially the prior brand was micro units, you know, we really wanna be authentic with that so we don't get any unqualified leads or waste anyone's time, when they get there. And especially with our angles these days on our cameras, you just wanna, you know, choose that I like the point six, kind of angle as well where it can get the whole room but still show the right capacities. That's right. That's exactly right. And so good pickup from a lot of other people in there, the fireplace, the reflections Yeah. In there a lot. So great job, everyone. I think everybody's a pro at figuring out if this is AI We are. Real. So AI imagery can be tricky to figure out, but what isn't tricky is building an amazing library of media content that you can share with your prospects with Realync. So, Carol, you have some experience with this, I hear. Absolutely. So once you're so these are some examples that I think is relevant for anybody that is trying to use this or how you would use Realync. So this video shows examples of a playlist that we made. So this property had to do renovations. They had to sell renovations. They had classic units that they needed to promote. They had higher level penthouse units that, you know, were much more expensive with different finishes. So constantly getting, well, what does this look like? What does that look like? Well, let's make videos of each, then we can put it together as a playlist, then you can share that with your prospect to see which one works best for them. What I like is that you can make the individual customized playlist with their name on it. It would have their name at the top Yeah. With that call to action to the floor plans or maybe to the unit that they're interested in to apply right then. So here, this gives them the opportunity to not only toggle from the videos to the photos, which I love. They can stop. They can watch it, And then you're gonna see how many times that they watch it. And that's a buying signal, which and I could do a whole talk about all the data points in Realync, where you get that you get the data. So that shows you in the background, like, oh, they just watched that video five times. Maybe they're interested in the renovated unit, and then all of a sudden you're following up, and you you read their mind, and you're gonna close the deal. So the next slide is going into our our partnerships. And across the country, we love our corporate partnerships. We always wanna communicate with our major employers. They're the ones that are bringing humans to our markets, and they need housing. So we you know, people have preferred employer perks, but now you can make videos for each of your preferred employers. I did this in Arizona. This is one of my go tos when I do a lease up because I have to get in front of those people with all the humans first. That's my plan of attack. So, you make these videos, and you can use these over and over and over. So Honeywell, your universities, Amazon, you know, all of your chamber directory, your chamber, members. You can go through that if you're members. But you can make these. And how I like to make these preferred employer playlists is, you know, I don't really show all the fluff because I'm gonna be sending this to the HR departments, to the people that really care about where their employee is going to be living, what is the community like, and how productive they're going to be. And, you know, the coffee bar, the pet park, that's all extra, which is great for the resident experience. But when you're really trying to work with an employer, I think the sales process needs to be focused on the the location, the inside of the unit, and maybe your health and wellness to keep your employee health and healthy and active. So that's kind of my go to with when creating some playlists. I think it's really important as you go to your preferred employers, which we all do. And then finally, just, I'm not gonna give away all the secret sauce. You know? But, and finally, I like to make videos and have my teams send videos to their prospects that don't sell anything. So think about it like that. We're gonna sell without selling. This is called soft sales. I know you guys know this, but maybe you're working with a prospect that's moving to the area. They don't know anybody. They're starting a new job. So you could put together a playlist of, you know, hey, mister Jones. I know that you're moving here. Here's all the events that we do. I think you would really love these and meet people, and they can see, like, your seasonal activity. And then that also has a call to action to go pick a floor plan. So, therefore, you're keeping their attention, but they're you're also send sending them somewhere else to go live with you, and you and you haven't sold anything. You know? This doesn't even have an apartment tour on it. So getting outside the box, I think, is it's fun to sell without selling anything. I love that phrasing. That's great. I love to sell without selling anything. That is fantastic. And, yeah, I it's important for, I think, prospects or residents, future residents to be able to see where they're gonna be, to be able to see themselves living there. And I've known a lot of residents that have seen events like you're talking about, resident lifestyle events, and been drawn to a community because of that and want to engage in that type that style of community, and it really resonated with them. So I love that you create a playlist like this, and it's so exciting to see all these and how you're utilizing them to engage with your prospects. And one of the points that a lot of prospective partners raise with me is how they can scale media that their teams are working on within the branding guidelines of their organization. Now JVM has a fantastic SOP. We talked about it a little bit earlier, but let's go a little bit more in-depth with it. So when it comes to media, I would love for you to review that SOP with us. Yeah. So, you know, the teams, when I came on, they have our marketing department has done an incredible job of already using this platform. I have to give them a shout out. We are not starting from scratch, which I've had to do with with other, properties and other markets. And it's it is a little bit of a of a lift. But once you're rocking and rolling with your videos and the teams are uploading their own videos, you know, then it's really important to kind of scale from there and put in your dos and don't. We all work on boundaries. We all work on deadlines. You know, this is something else that we need to put in place as leaders so people know what to do and what not to do, or else everybody uploading videos, it it will become a little hodgepodgy. So as I was going through, I worked with our marketing team, and we put together some, some thresholds. So there is an approval process that you can turn on with Realync. So any video that gets uploaded, it will go to an alert too. I would keep it to one or two people so there's less hands in the cookie jar, right, of reviewing a video and approving it or rejecting it. So we made up some rejection, SOPs of why a video would get rejected. Never wanna hurt anyone's feelings or, demotivate their creativity. But if we are going to be uploading videos and letting teams have this creative freedom, let's put together some training. So there's a few things on here that we put together of why a video would get rejected, and, you know, none of these are groundbreaking. But, obviously, having a muffled audio, if you're in an apartment, let's say it's noisy in the background, you don't have furniture there, and you're doing a tour, you know, you may wanna invest in those Bluetooth, wireless microphones. You can also use your phone as one as well now. And so having that and because you're gonna lose people. If the audio is echoey or bad, like, I can't even I'm not even gonna watch it. Dirty apartments. I mean, let's put the toilet seats down. You know? That's I I don't know why every some videos I see have, like, the toilet seat up. That is a huge for me in any model. Any picture. Let's let's all work together in this industry to keep the toilet seats down, because, you know, you just don't that doesn't need to be a focal point of your video. And make sure that the apartment's clean. The dirty windows, you can see that from the outside. So walking through as a critic before you make any video is huge because it's going to deter your, your prospect. Over filming of food. I see this often as well, like, as I'm scoping out competition or looking at other properties' Instagram pages. And I'm like, why do we have food all over our pages in our videos? I think it's great that we're excited, that we're feeding people, and, you know, we're doing all these little parties, but we the food shouldn't be the focal point of a video because we're selling homes. So we wanna show the kitchen. We wanna show the finishes. We wanna show the cool lighting and backsplashes. And, yes, there's an event going on with food. But, it seems a little student housing to me even though I come from student housing and I love it. But I think we need to get away from adding these into our Realync libraries because we're not selling food. Not having background music, that's one reason I would reject a video because we wanna have that elevated feel. Music makes us feel emotion. So always just and I love that Realync has all those, royalty free music options you can plug right behind your audio. Another thing is getting in with Canva. Of course, you can edit your video in Canva, get it into Realync. If you need any Canva tips, let me know. And then overacting, I've seen some of the you know, some teams maybe make out a scene or try to re overact. Just keep it real and cool, especially with your how tos. We don't need to overact or anything. So, and then finally, you know, just making sure things aren't offensive. You have to be aware of the climate, and and off also stay within fair housing too. So keeping those in mind is a reason I would reject a video or send it back to the team for more edits. I love all of this, and I feel like we could just take an hour just on these and talk about our experiences with these over the years on Multifamily because, oh my gosh, yeah, people aren't gonna be there in your, you know, common area with all the pizza boxes there or the food that you have laid out. I mean, good grief and, yeah, the overacting. I I would actually love to see someone do a Shakespearean impersonation of showing a model unit overacting without I'm adding that to my left. Here we go. Refrigerator. You know? But, yeah, I mean, all of these things. But the number one thing for me is that toilet seat. I I we please put down the toilet seat and turn on some lights when we take a video? Cannot agree with you enough. We can do this. We can do this, Multifamily. Yes. So with all that being said, oh my gosh. This is this is also good. But if everyone watching today did one thing differently before their next video goes out, what would you want that to be, Carol? Oh, if you're gonna start making a video today, the one thing I would say is that action banner setting. Because you're you're putting in the work to make a video. The apartment looks great. It's ready to go. You have your Giphy. You have everything ready, but then you don't you put the wrong action banner because you want to give them the next step. So just like anything when we're touring a prospect, we're always trying to lead them to the next step. What's your timeline? Did you wanna go ahead and start your application today to get this off the market? That call to action button, I don't think people realize how important it is to get them to the next step. And don't think that it's just going to be apply now. We're seeing our click through rates. Right now, we're at around a three percent, and my goal is to get up to, like, a six to eight percent click through rate because I'm going back in and auditing where all the action banner settings are going to. And this just goes to show, like, no one's perfect. No one's an expert, but these are little tweaks I think we can all do to get your prospect to the next step, and that's gonna help your leasing conversion. So action banner settings. Check those out. I love it. I love it. And that is such a great takeaway, especially, again, when we're hearing so many people that are saying we're not meeting prospects where they are or understanding the journey that they're going through. Fantastic advice. So if Carol's one thing is the action, operators should take, Realync can make that easier to do at scale. So on the next slide here, you'll see that I wanna take just a second and talk about how Realync actually fits into everything we've been discussing today. It's not a long sales pitch. I promise. Because it's not just a video tool. It's really built around the idea of showing the truth. And the starting point is to capture the truth. Your on-site team, they film the actual available units, not the model. It's not a stock walk through from two years ago. It's the real thing. And that one shift filming what's actually available is where trust can begin to start. And then the platform does the heavy lifting. Carol mentioned the photo gallery. The Real Essentials engine takes that footage and automatically spins it into GIFs or GIFs, playlist, branded galleries, and content that's ready to go to nurture in your funnels without your teams having to build it from scratch every single time. And for anyone that's trying to manage multiple properties, which I think we can get a lot of hands raised for that, the scale with control piece is huge. Approval workflows, automated SOPs, consistent brand standards across every unit at every community. You get quality and consistency without having to choose between them. So you have a QR code here. If you scan that QR code, you'll actually be taken to our website where you can schedule a demo with us if you want to or request for more information. But, let's go over to the next slide, and we've spent the last hour talking about what it looks to show up authentically with great visual content, and we wanna help you actually do that. So new properties on Realync get ten professionally produced videos. That's a nine hundred dollar value just for signing up before June thirtieth. Before June thirtieth, that's all you have to do. And you get all the ten professionally produced videos. All you have to do is scan the same QR code on the screen. It'll take you there, and you can request more information on demo. Fill out that fill form and consider it your homework from today's session. And this is your most impactful first step. Right, Carol? I I'm scanning that right now because I have a new property I'm onboarding. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna take advantage of that. Absolutely. Ten videos, that's like half of a library right there. And then that'll get that'll get me going. So that's awesome. Whoo. I love it. I love it. And I love what's coming up next. For those of you that are still here, you get to enjoy one of my favorite times on this webinar, and that is the fire round. We have got seven questions to give Carol. She's only got twenty to thirty seconds to answer each question with what comes up at the top of mind first. This is going to be great, and you are going to do fantastic. Carol, are you ready to go through the seven question gauntlet? I guess. Let's go. You're gonna do great. Here we go. First question, What is the most underused leasing trend right now? Okay. Not having your fee calculators on your website to show transparency. Because I work I've been doing a lot of housing for millennials, gen z's, and, like, they wanna have everything broken down because they're so frugal. So I think it's a trend coming up, but everybody needs to pay attention to putting those pricing calculators on their website. I love it. I love it. What is the most underrated media channel operators may be sleeping on right now? YouTube Shorts. And I get it. Coming from a smaller brand, I, you know, I could use YouTube Shorts as I as I wanted. I understand if it's a bigger company, they're gonna understand if it's a bigger company, they're gonna have some stipulations of uploading. But You any video that you make should get out there in the universe, because YouTube is owned by Google, and you can get a lot more international attention, and that's where everyone's getting, information as well. You can use hashtags. You can use titling to get it to, you know, the right property or location. But I think YouTube Shorts is if you have a video, it needs to be on the YouTube Shorts for sure. And it's great. It's part of it. You know? Yep. Yep. And they'll be sending the royalty check pretty here soon. So hold on on that. Yeah. I absolutely agree. So next question. Number three, one thing every leasing team should stop doing this quarter. Stop sending long boring emails. Keep the content short, and then let your let your videos do all the work for you. I think I mean, prospects have done so much work to even contact you. They've read your reviews. They've seen your website, location. Send them awesome videos and pictures and keep the content short and make it just personalized that you wanna help them figure out what the what it is that they have to have. And then You know, it doesn't have to be this long drawn out email every prospect. Nobody has time to read all that. So Yeah. Absolutely. A video, have them watch it, and then call them on the phone, see what the see what they mean. So Yeah. Millie Millie is aiming in you in the chat saying, stop doing it without the personalization. So let's talk about one thing every property should start doing immediately. Stop selling and become the solution. So, again, I really like to sell without selling. You know, I I'll never be the lease a floor plan. Get your two bedroom today. I'll that's just not my vibe. I like to see what the what is it that they want? How can I be a solution because moving is so stressful? We all know that. Starting a new job is stressful. And most of these times, these people are doing both. Right? They're moving to a new city and a new apartment. So I don't sell anything. I am there to help and get them all the answers they need accurately and get them a home. So if you start selling without selling, you know, you're you're gonna be more confident to close the application because I find that a lot of agents are like, do you wanna go ahead and put your money down, or do you wanna do you wanna start be like, I don't want you to be homeless. Let's get your apartment today. All you have to do is start your application. There's a couple fees. Let's get this going. And then all of a sudden, you're the solution, and you're not just selling them to lease another apartment like everybody else is doing. So I like to sell without selling. Easier said than done. It's an art. Yeah. It'll take you time and experience, but, know, kinda start there with that mindset. Absolutely. I still hear the mic echoing around from that mic drop on the stage back there. So the next question is the piece of content that surprised you most with how well it performed. Well, one of my Phoenix properties, they hit this is the only one that's really done, like, viral viral. It it hit thirty one million views, and I had brought in I know. And I talked about it at NAA. I think it drew a lot of attention of how easy this was, but how viral it went. And this is just, you know, to go to show what social media can do, but this was a new lease up in downtown Phoenix. I was trying to build our Instagram page. We had some influencers and all kinds of stuff. But I really sat down with some, like, Gen Zs, and I was like, what is what is something cool that you would wanna see in an apartment? Well, they all talked about these apartment hacks and, you know, how to clean your shower, how to clean a flat stove, just little basic things. So we made, like, a twenty six second little reel of how to clean a shower, and it just went absolutely crazy. Many different countries. Of course, you have the banter going on back and forth. So we really went all in with that because it seemed like that was working. So, pieces of content, you gotta just find what works for your demographic and see what doesn't work and not be afraid to just, like, keep experimenting. And I think everybody knows that that's in this, you know, leasing or marketing field because you do videos that may not always work, but you just have to keep trying and be silly and quirky and see what works. I love that. And maybe we can twist Carol's arm to repost that on LinkedIn, that video that went viral there. So the next question I think it's still on YouTube, but we they sold the property. And I'll have to find it, but will try to re I'll put that on my LinkedIn because I think I have it on my phone, and I'm gonna, like I'll repost it. I love it. I love it. So check out Carol's LinkedIn to see that video. I'll see I'll look for it today. Alright. Man, this just got even better. Okay. So you only got two left. You're doing fantastic here, Carol. You're just killing it. So what did hospitality teach you about leasing that Multifamily has not figured out yet? Hospitality teaching about leasing that Multifamily well, I mean, what I see across coming from student and coming over to Multifamily in the past six years, I'm starting to see a lot of hospitality focus. And going into hotels, and that's what that's what my passion was and what I wanted to do, was really work at big resorts. So, anyway, when you're working in hotels, they train you on active listening. So this is what I train my teams on as well is that you don't wanna repeat yourself. You don't wanna ask anybody to repeat. You want to learn their name. And I if anybody I really talk to at any of my properties, they know everyone's names. They know everyone's dog's names, so we're getting there. But I think active listening so we can take that and make it into an experience. So for instance, if you're with a prospect and they're moving, they just adopted a dog, their dog's name is Fluffy, It only has three legs. You know, like, something, like, detailed. You can make a note of that and make sure that you have something cute for Fluffy, on move in day, and that's called active listening to make experiences. Or if a resident, you know, has lost a family member or something that's just traumatic happening in their life, sending them a bowl of soup or a link to go get something that's active listening that you hear about. So you can just make those experiences, and that's what hospitality is all about is making unexpected experiences, and that's what I'm really passionate about. So I would say we could always get better at active listening and being intent with each prospect that we talk to. I love that. And that just takes a little bit of investment and intentionality with your teams to do that and such a great perspective. I didn't know we gave you two mics to drop, but you did it. If you could only send a prospect one thing before a tour, what would it be, Carol? Well, wanted to piggyback on the last one really quick before I forget. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Please do. I love it. Empowering your teams. So I find sometimes that we'll be we're not allowed to do this or we don't have a budget to do that. You know, making sure that as a leader at your properties that you do have your different gift baskets of pet stuff or, bad day, sad day stuff and that your teams are empowered. I remember being a front desk agent, and we were empowered to send a champagne bottle or send a bottle of wine, you know, not every hour, but I I I was they wouldn't have let me do that. But you were empowered. So my goal in the last one is empower your teams to make sure they know that they can send a card and make that experience. But so moving on to the last one. What was the question? So if you could only send a prospect one thing before a tour, what would it be? Of course. Not to plug or be cheesy, but, I mean, just giving them that information in a video form, not only would I call them to to introduce myself, but I would send them a video of of who I am, the human person, and then, you know, introduce myself so they can see who's really behind the scenes helping them. And then you can that's when you can explain, hey. We have some virtually staged apartments. You can explain how you use AI as part of your process, but then they know that there's a human behind that that you can build that trust. So using that resource to do the work for me for sure. Well, we love hearing that. We're kind of fans of video around here, aren't we, Kayla? That's right. Love to hear it. I love Joe's videos too. If y'all watch him on LinkedIn, he has the funniest, the best videos. So I love your content. I watch it. I'm a fan. Joe is very good. If you're not following Joe, you're gonna wanna note his LinkedIn here in a couple slides. So, well, that wraps it up for our, fire round, but it's time to open it up to you. So our audience, has been submitting questions via the q and a box. If you have not done so already, there's still time to submit those questions to Joe and Carol. We did have one or two come in, I saw come in during the presentation, so let's dive in. The first is, and I think Carol you might have already answered this one, What is your favorite Realync integration? Oh. Oh, I love oh, how it integrates with real or in Grain. So we have interactive in Grain maps, and I can take certain Realync videos of, like, a general floor plan. Maybe it has the same view out of the the the window, and you can put it on that stack. So they can hover over a floor plan on the ingrained map, which is also embedded on Apartments dot com, one of our big ILSs, and that keeps them watching videos. They can actually get information up inside the video or inside the unit before they lease. And I love the Ingrain integration. Yeah. They do some great stuff over there. Shout out to Ingrain. That's right. Shout out to Ingrain. Very powerful integration and definitely marries some of those things that our prospects are looking for online. How long does it take to implement Realync? You know, that's a good question. If you're starting from scratch, like, you don't have any videos, I'm getting ready to do a project for a new property we we onboarded, and, we signed up for thirteen videos. And we're filming for a whole day, but we got the inventory secured. So it just really depends if you're if you're in lease up and you don't have occupants. Obviously, you can get it going quickly because you have free range of the apartments. If you're occupied doing this retroactively, you know, I do encourage you to do it during the summer when it's when you have more turns or the fall. Because during wintertime, it's dreary outside. Your landscaping probably isn't the best unless you're, you know, down in Texas or Miami. But, for us Midwesterners, most of everybody you know, we wanna film it when it's nice. So look at those seasonalities. Gut instinct if you're just getting started. I mean, you're gonna need probably two weeks to get the just the units together, but they film it really quickly, and that takes no time at all. So, it just really depends. Sorry. That was a vague answer. But No. That was great. You know, I think it's just You're right. Really just depends. Yeah. It does depend on your property, how much you want to do to get started, and kind of the bandwidth your team has also. Like Joe said earlier, you know, we can get you started. We like to promote that anyone on your on-site could make a video and get it ready for production, but we also have services that can help you do that as well. All right. The third question and final that we'll take from our audience today is from Ms. Have you found that authenticity changes how a property should be positioned and branded, particularly for those older assets competing against newer construction? Absolutely. And I can't believe Deb Hayes is on this call. I'm a huge fan of hers too. Oh, yeah. Shout Shout out. Hey, Deb. Okay. Let me see if I can phrase this right. Yeah. You know, using when you're starting with a brand and you're building that from scratch, definitely using those staged and virtual renderings from your architects are is so important. I think having the three d and two d model, options, when you're developing your floor plans is crucial as well. Some people just still want the the black and white, two d looking floor plans, but and then being able to toggle over to your three d, also really helps enhance the brand, especially if it's a brand new build out or brand that you're developing. And then once you go into your opening phases, that photo shoot is so crucial to show the actual product. I think I've been so used to selling renderings for almost a decade because the product didn't exist yet that, as soon as we get open, we wanna get that product shot and then start using all that content. I still see some properties that are, like, four years old, and they're using renderings from their lease up. And that creates distrust for sure because anybody can look up how old the property is, and you can see that that was, like, a three d person by the pool. Like, where's your pool pictures? Where's your activities? So that can create distress too. Good point. Very good point. Alright. Thank you so much, Carol. Thank you, Joe. And we will do a little about, apartmentalized if you're going. Joe, I know you and I will be there. Yes. I can't wait for NAA apartmentalized coming up. And, hey, if you're going to NAA, go ahead and drop that in the chat right now. Because if you wanna con continue this conversation in person, we're going to be there in New Orleans, June seventeenth through the nineteenth, booth twenty two zero one. And, guys, we're even gonna have a mini apartment in our booth so you can experience how Realync gets filmed in the first place, and you can even try it out yourself. So come by, talk video, talk authenticity, talk all of it, and see all the other amazing solutions that Grace Hill has to offer. New Orleans is a great place to get jazzed about leasing strategy. So going on to the next slide and closing it up here, we want you to connect with us. Just like we said, we're both on LinkedIn. These are LinkedIn profiles that you can scan the QR codes for right now. We're always updating new things that we're seeing in the industry. Carol has an amazing follow as well. So scan the codes, connect on LinkedIn, shoot us a message even. And so, again, we're very active on there, and we'd be happy to engage with you more. You also have my email on there. Feel free to send me all the templates you want, but please make it personalized and reach out. We do appreciate that a little bit more. And so, Carol, I just wanna say, genuinely, thank you so much. The way you walked us through everything and how you actually think about visual content at the property level, that's the kind of thing you can't get from a blog post that was real. And I think everyone on this call felt it, so thank you for bringing that today with us. Of course. I just want people to have takeaways. You know, I'm in the trenches. You know, I'm not just sitting at a at a desktop making up stuff to do. This is real everyday stuff, and it's such a great product, guys. So I'm I'm a huge fan, and go use it. It's all about the video. Absolutely. For having me. I appreciate it. Oh, it was our pleasure. Our pleasure. And for everyone who joined us today, the replay again will be hitting your inbox tomorrow, June fifth. If you had to drop early, don't worry about that. You can rewatch Carol's walk through or you can pass this along to someone on your team. It'll be there. So we will see you next time and hopefully in New Orleans. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone. Bye. Bye, everyone. Hi.