How Essential Property Management Improved Leasing Performance Without Adding Staff

Across many multifamily portfolios, expectations remain high while onsite resources remain tight. Regional leaders are being asked to protect occupancy, justify marketing spend to ownership, and maintain leasing momentum, often with one or two team members running a 100–150 unit community.

Renter engagement no longer fits neatly within office hours. Tour requests and texts arrive late at night or early in the morning. For lean teams, staying responsive without stretching staff has become a daily operational constraint. At the same time, marketing investments face closer scrutiny. Performance must be measurable, defensible, and clearly tied to signed leases.

For Essential Property Management, the objective was clear: support lean teams, keep leads moving at all hours, and align spend directly with results. By partnering with Apartment List, Essential refined its leasing approach without increasing headcount and achieved more than 30× total ROI, while maintaining consistent performance across asset classes.

About Essential Property Management

Essential Property Management is a Detroit-based operator managing a mix of asset classes, with many communities in the 100–150 unit range. With lean staffing models across the portfolio, leadership continually evaluates tools that can improve efficiency without adding labor costs.

In this environment, performance gains must be practical, measurable, and scalable across different property types.

The Operational Challenge: Lean Teams, Rising Expectations

With limited onsite staffing, Essential needed a platform that could:

• Support small teams by handling repetitive leasing tasks
• Improve lead engagement after business hours
• Provide flexible, performance-based pricing
• Simplify tour scheduling for onsite staff
• Deliver consistent results across the portfolio

Traditional advertising required significant upfront spending with no guaranteed outcomes. Meanwhile, staff struggled to keep pace with leads, especially when prospects reached out after business hours.

The Approach: Performance-Based Marketing and After-Hours Engagement

Pay-Per-Lease Pricing for Clear ROI

A-List Market’s pay-per-lease pricing provided predictable value and simplified conversations with investors and third-party ownership groups.

“It’s a pretty simple product — easy to explain to investors and third-party operators,” Lewis said. “No one really complains about pay-per-lease because you’re getting something out of it.”

Instead of committing to large upfront marketing costs, Essential tied spend directly to signed leases. The model performed consistently across markets and asset classes.

“It’s been working in all the markets and all the different classes of apartments.”

After-Hours Lead Engagement with A-List Nurture

With most communities staffed by one or two people, operational efficiency was critical. Apartment List helped shift repetitive tasks off onsite teams’ plates so staff could focus on more relational, high-impact interactions.

“Apartment List really helped us simplify some of their tasks and gave them time to do the more relational things on-site.”

The most immediate impact came from A-List Nurture, which extends lead engagement beyond business hours.

“It’s the after hours, the evenings, the people texting at 3 in the morning because they work second shift or they’re on their break at the hospital,” Lewis explained. “It’s nice to have somebody who can keep those conversations alive.”

A-List Nurture ensures leads remain engaged while onsite teams are offline.

“We can pick up with our human piece the next day. It fills that void and works with people in their own time.”

Automated Tour Scheduling Through Yardi Integration

A-List Nurture integrates directly with Yardi, allowing prospects to schedule tours against real-time calendar availability without requiring manual coordination.

“It’s almost like giving our teams a personal assistant,” Lewis said. “People that are ready for a tour can just go in and schedule, and our team is ready to roll.”

Teams can block out unavailable times, keeping calendars accurate and tour-ready. Lewis noted that the integration “keeps things clean and finite,” reducing unnecessary back-and-forth while helping prospects move forward when they are ready.

The Results: Efficiency Gains, Faster Progression, Measurable ROI

Operational Efficiency Gains

• Onsite teams gained time for higher-value, relational work
• Repetitive leasing tasks shifted off their plates
• Lean one- and two-person sites operated more efficiently

“It gave us the opportunity to take some weight off the teams and focus on the things we want them to focus on — spending time with people.”

Leasing Performance Improvements

• More engaged prospects across building classes
• Better lead-to-tour progression through automated scheduling
• Stronger lead flow at all hours
• 36% tour conversation rate with A-List Nurture
• 3.3 average days lead to tour

“We’re getting a lot of good leads across our portfolio, not just our A product or B product or C product. It’s been working in all the markets.”

Cost Control and Budget Clarity

• Higher productivity without increasing headcount
• Faster lease-up contributing to quicker rent generation
• Greater confidence in planning future budgets
• Over 30× total ROI

“We’ve been able to fill leads a lot quicker and fill the homes and get rent, which is the name of the game.”

What’s Next: Sustaining Performance with Lean Teams

As Essential Property Management continues to operate with lean onsite teams across a diverse portfolio, its partnership with Apartment List remains focused on consistency, efficiency, and measurable performance. Together, the teams are refining how marketing dollars are deployed, ensuring pay-per-lease pricing stays aligned with results while maintaining steady lead flow across asset classes.

With A-List Nurture supporting after-hours engagement and automated scheduling reducing friction, Essential continues to operate a leasing process that reflects the realities of one- and two-person sites. Clear performance reporting and predictable ROI support conversations with ownership groups and reinforce disciplined budget planning.

“With that pay-per-lease mentality, you have nothing to lose other than vacancy,” said Aaron Lewis, COO and Partner at Essential Property Management. “It’s a huge tool, a huge resource, and it continues to be ahead of the market on a lot of the technology.”

See how Apartment List helps operators support lean teams, engage renters at any hour, and maintain predictable leasing performance. Schedule a demo today.