VaultWare Online Marketing Index

Vaultware (Realty DataTrust Corporation) offers online leasing solutions for the multifamily housing industry that allow consumers to easily rent an apartment online.

Each month, VaultWare releases online apartment marketing trends and reports. There is a lot of great information in these reports as it relates to the apartment industry.

Below are some graphs from VaultWare for the month of February, 2008:

This graph shows the cyclical nature of the apartment industry. The single family home rental market as well as for sale properties see the same type of consumer behavior.

The below graph is interesting. It shows the average number of reservations per property (apartment community) per month for each ILS (Individual Listing Service).

To view what a conversion rate of users who saw an ad and converted into a reservation, we must first view the total unique visitors, page views or sessions for each of the ILS’s. Below is a graph of the average sessions per property per ILS.

Looking at this data, we can see that total users who see an apartment ad on each of these sites and then requests a reservation is:

ForRent.com Conversions = 2.5%
Apartment Guide Conversions = 2.4%
Apartments.com Conversions = 2.4%
Move.com Conversions =  2.2%

Great data and I look forward to seeing more of this type of information.