Leasing is on Life Support. Here’s How to Revive It!

Everywhere I go, I’m hearing the same thing.
“We need more traffic.”
“Our occupancy is dropping.”
“We’re offering two months free and still nothing’s moving.”
“We’ve added automation, a chatbot, boosted our ILS spend—why aren’t we leasing?”

Then comes the question:
“Ronald, can you wave your magic wand and fix it?”

Spoiler alert: there’s no magic wand. But there is something better: a strategy.

Let me tell you a story.

I recently mystery shopped a community that was screaming from the rooftops about their amazing offer: two months free! I thought, “Great. Let me check it out.”
I went to the website ready to book—but there was no online scheduler. Instead, I had to fill out a guest card and wait. A templated email showed up 20 minutes later. Points for speed. But to book the tour, I had to reply and go back and forth. In total, it took four hours to confirm the appointment. Most prospects? They’d have moved on after the first email.

And it doesn’t stop there.

I show up for the tour—waited five minutes—no one greeted me. No “hello,” no “we’ll be right with you,” just... silence. So I left.

Two days later, I got a follow-up email saying, “Hope I answered all your questions during the tour!”

What tour?

There’s a serious disconnect.

Here’s what I’m seeing out there in the wild:

1.     The higher you go, the less you see.

On paper, everything looks fine.

You’ve increased your ILS spend. The leads are coming in. Tours are being logged. Your reports show activity, and the dashboards look promising. But here’s the kicker, your occupancy still isn’t moving.

Why? Because what’s on the page and what’s happening on the ground are two very different stories.

I’ve visited communities where the numbers said “we’re in great shape,” but the experience told a whole different tale. Half the tours are no-shows. Guest cards sit unanswered. The phones ring and ring. The model isn’t ready. The team is scrambling. And somewhere, a frustrated prospect is walking out after waiting too long to be greeted.

The report might tell you you had 87 leads last week, but it doesn’t show you that most of them never got a call back. It doesn’t capture the long delay in scheduling. It doesn’t show you that the AI response was generic, or that the first human interaction was rushed and impersonal.

Yes, data matters. But if you’re only looking at the numbers, you’re only seeing the surface. The real story lives in the customer experience, and that part doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet.

2. AI isn’t the villain. Boring AI is.

I am a fan of AI. I use it every day and it makes my job easier. I used it to help craft this blog, however I still gave it the Ronald touch. But let’s be honest. Most AI on property websites today is like a robot that’s seen one too many training videos and forgot how to be interesting.

You click that little chat bubble hoping for help and instead get the same cookie-cutter responses you’ve seen on ten other sites that day. It’s polite. It’s technically accurate. But it’s also forgettable.

If your AI sounds like a tired call center script from 2006, it’s not connecting with anyone. Renters don’t want to feel like they’re being filtered through a machine. They want to feel seen. The problem isn’t that AI is involved. The problem is that we’ve let it do all the talking and stopped checking if it’s saying anything worth listening to.

3. We hired bodies. But we forgot to build salespeople.

Leasing is sales. Let me say that again. Leasing. Is. Sales.

But somewhere along the way, we started treating leasing like it was just entry-level admin work. We bring people in, sit them in a chair, show them how to open the CRM, give them a script or two, and then hope they “figure it out.”

Meanwhile, we’re asking them to wear twenty different hats. One minute they’re a therapist. Then next, they’re resolving complaints. Then they’re cleaning the coffee bar. Then they’re expected to close the lease like a seasoned sales pro.

This is not a plug-and-play role. It takes confidence, empathy, consistency, and skill. If you haven’t trained your team to sell, you’ve handed them the car keys without ever teaching them to drive.

4. When leasing isn’t a priority, everyone feels it.

You can walk onto a property and tell in five minutes if leasing is the focus. The phones are ringing. The team is energized. Everyone knows who’s coming in today and what stage they’re in. They’ve followed up. They’ve called back. They’re prepared.

Now flip that. Walk onto a property where leasing is an afterthought. It’s quiet. The guest cards are untouched. There’s no urgency, no energy, and no connection with the prospects who are coming through the door.

Leasing isn’t just a task to squeeze in between packages and maintenance requests. It’s the heartbeat of your business. And when the heartbeat slows, occupancy flatlines.

And then we wonder why they crash.

So what do you do?

Here’s how we fix it, together.

This isn't a mystery that needs solving. It's a series of clear steps that need executing. If your occupancy needle isn’t moving, it’s time to stop guessing and start taking action. Here’s what to do, and how I can help you do it:

1. Shop your own community like a prospect.
Click through your website like it’s your first time. Try to schedule a tour. Call the number. Submit a guest card. Then ask yourself: Would you lease here based on that experience?
Don’t have time? That’s where I come in. I do this for a living. I know where to look, what to test, and what to flag. I’ll find the leaks in your leasing funnel so we can patch them fast.

2. Use AI as a tool, not a crutch.
AI should be your leasing team’s assistant, not the one running the show. If a human has made contact with a lead, that human should own that lead. That’s how trust is built.
I train teams on how to balance automation with personalization so renters don’t just get fast responses, they get the right ones.

3. Train your people like they’re your revenue drivers, because they are.
Leasing is a skill. It needs training, coaching, and reinforcement. You wouldn’t hand someone the keys to a jet and say “figure it out.” So why are we doing that with the people responsible for generating your income?
I don’t just train. I partner with your teams on-site to build confidence, boost performance, and turn talk tracks into signed leases.

4. Make leasing the priority it’s supposed to be.
If leasing isn’t the focus, occupancy won’t move. I help communities shift into action mode with real accountability. Follow-ups get done. Phones get answered. Tours get booked, and leases get signed.
Need energy? I bring it. Need structure? I’ll build it. Need results? Let’s talk.

Want to turn these pain points into performance? Let’s talk.
📩 roomswithronald@gmail.com
🌐 www.roomswithronald.com

Whether you need training, strategy, or a leasing revival, I’m ready to help you bring it back to life.

Let’s fix this. Together.