Indianapolis Property Management: Outdated Showings Can Increase Vacancy
A rental property can be priced correctly, located in a good neighborhood, and still sit vacant if the showing process creates too much friction.
That is the lesson in this segment. If a prospect has to call an office, wait for a leasing agent, coordinate schedules, and then wait three days just to see the home, many renters will simply move on to the next available property.
In today’s rental market, speed matters. The easier it is for qualified prospects to tour a home, the faster owners can generate showings, applications, and leasing momentum.
Watch the Property Management Bonehead Segment
The Bonehead Mistake: Making Renters Wait Three Days to See the Home
The example in this segment is simple but expensive. An investor hires a property management company to lease a good rental property. The home is in a good neighborhood, it is priced correctly, and it should be competitive.
But the showing process is outdated.
A prospect has to call the office. The office has to contact a leasing agent. The leasing agent’s schedule has to be checked. A showing time has to be coordinated. Then the prospect is called back and typically offered a time several days later.
That may sound like a small inconvenience, but in leasing, friction kills momentum. Renters are often comparing multiple homes at once. If one home can be toured today and another requires a three-day wait, the easier home usually wins.
The property did not sit vacant because the home was bad. It sat vacant because the access process was bad.
Why Showing Speed Matters So Much
Rental leads are time-sensitive. When someone is actively searching, they are usually trying to schedule tours, compare options, and make a decision quickly. If your property cannot be shown when demand is highest, you lose qualified prospects before they ever walk through the door.
The transcript points out that the first few days of a listing are often the most important. That is when the property receives the most attention, the most clicks, and the most immediate interest. If the home is not ready to show during that window, the owner is wasting the best part of the marketing cycle.
This is why a strong rental leasing process should not only focus on advertising. It should also focus on immediate access, qualified tours, and fast application conversion.
Self-Guided Showings Reduce Friction
Modern property management companies use self-showing technology because renters expect convenience. With the right verification process, a prospect can schedule online, verify identity, access the property safely, and view the home on their own schedule.
That does not mean handing out access with no controls. A professional process should include identity verification, access controls, lockbox or smart-lock tracking, and systems that confirm who entered and when.
Done correctly, self-guided showings can increase tour volume, generate applications faster, and reduce vacancy time. The point is not just technology for the sake of technology. The point is removing unnecessary barriers between a qualified renter and a rent-ready home.
If another comparable property nearby allows same-day self-guided tours, and your property requires a three-day delay, your property is at a leasing disadvantage.
Tenant-Occupied Showings Can Create the Same Problem
Mike also connects this issue to tenant-occupied showings. When a property is still occupied, showing coordination often becomes harder. Schedules have to be aligned, notice may be required, the tenant may not keep the home in ideal showing condition, and prospects may face delays.
That friction can push days on market higher. Once a home has been listed for 30 or 45 days, prospects may begin to wonder what is wrong with it. The longer a listing sits, the harder it can become to preserve momentum.
This is why property readiness matters. A home should be rent-ready, clean, accessible, and prepared to show before the marketing push begins. If it is not ready to show, owners should question whether it should be actively marketed yet.
A market readiness assessment before leasing can help owners identify the issues that slow showings, weaken applications, or create preventable vacancy.
The Real Cost Is Vacancy
Vacancy is not just an empty calendar. It is lost income, delayed distributions, higher carrying costs, and reduced annual return. A showing process that adds days or weeks to leasing can quietly cost owners more than they realize.
The segment contrasts two properties: one with a slow showing process that sits vacant for more than 30 days, and another nearby home with self-guided showings that rents in six days. That difference is not minor. It can determine whether an owner has a clean leasing cycle or loses an entire month of rent.
The lesson is direct: rental owners should not only ask how much rent a property can get. They should also ask how quickly qualified prospects can see it.
Pricing, condition, marketing, access, screening, and communication all work together. When one part of the process is outdated, the whole leasing timeline can suffer.
What Owners Should Ask Their Property Manager
If you are interviewing a property management company, ask detailed questions about the showing process before the property hits the market.
Can prospects schedule tours online?
Do you offer self-guided showings?
How do you verify identity before access is granted?
Can prospects tour the property the same day?
Do you show tenant-occupied homes?
What happens during the first seven days of listing activity?
How do you convert showing interest into applications?
These questions reveal whether the company has a modern leasing system or an outdated, office-dependent process that may cost the owner time and rent.
This connects directly to the broader property management principle RDPM emphasizes often: process matters. The same way owners should evaluate how a manager prevents bad tenants before rent is late, they should also evaluate how quickly that manager can move qualified prospects from interest to showing to application.
Final Takeaway
An outdated showing process can turn a good rental property into a vacancy problem.
If renters cannot see the home quickly, many will keep looking. If another property is easier to tour, that property may win the application. And if your home sits too long, the listing can lose momentum even when the price and location are strong.
In modern property management, access is part of marketing. A rental home should be ready to show, easy to schedule, properly secured, and available when qualified prospects are actively looking.
The bonehead mistake is making it harder to see your property than it is to rent the one down the street.
FAQ: Outdated Showing Processes and Rental Vacancy
Why can an outdated showing process increase vacancy?
If prospects have to wait several days to see a property, many will move on to other homes that are easier to tour. That reduces showings, application volume, and leasing speed.Why are the first seven days of a rental listing important?
The transcript explains that a large share of interest comes early in the listing cycle. If the property is not ready to show during that period, owners may miss the strongest wave of demand.Are self-guided showings safe for rental properties?
They can be when handled properly. A professional process should include identity verification, access controls, and systems that track who enters the property and when.Why do renters prefer self-guided showings?
Renters want convenience and speed. They are often comparing multiple properties at once, so the ability to schedule and tour quickly can influence which homes they seriously consider.Should a property be marketed before it is ready to show?
Generally, no. If the property cannot be shown during the highest-interest period, marketing may generate leads that cannot be converted into tours or applications.What should owners ask property managers about showings?
Owners should ask whether prospects can schedule online, whether self-guided tours are available, how identity is verified, how quickly showings can happen, and how the company converts tours into applications.Transcript Here
Mike Taylor: So if your home is not ready to show during those first seven days, you are just shooting yourself in the foot. Why are you even marketing it if you can't show it? That's going to have the most amount of interest, and that's where you need to capitalize on every single prospect that you can.
Chris Knight: Modern property management companies are going to use self-showing technology that allows prospects to view the home on their own schedule. With proper identity verification and qualification, tenants can safely access the property through online systems and do self-guided showings. That dramatically is going to increase the number of tours, the application volume, and the speed of the leasing process.
Okay guys, we're going to jump into another Property Management Bonehead, where we like to accent a real-life situation that we were either firsthand involved in, or one of our new owners kind of shared stories. I love hearing these stories about why investors are jumping from property management company to property management company and how we can stop them from having to transfer to another property management company.
So it's just personal education on where other property management companies are falling short and how we can be sure not to make that same mistake.
As we jump into this bonehead, this is a real-life scenario that happened. So let's jump in and then we're going to get some of Mike's thoughts here on what went wrong and what could have gone better.
This one we're going to call the showing process that required a three-day notice. Okay? We've done a lot of talking about our showing process, and this is going to kind of speak to some of that as well.
Here we go. Another situation we've seen happen with many property management companies where an investor hires them to lease their property. It's a nice house. It's a good neighborhood. It's priced correctly, but their leasing process looks something a little bit more like this.
If someone wanted to see the property, they had to call the office. The office then had to contact a leasing agent, check the leasing agent's schedule, confirm a time with the tenant, then call the prospect back, then typically schedule a showing time about three days out.
That seems completely absurd to me. What happens next? The listing starts to get some interest. Prospective tenants call asking to see the property, but when they hear the earliest showing time is three days away, many of them start saying, “It's no problem. We'll just keep looking.”
Because renters today are touring multiple homes in a single weekend. They're making decisions much more quickly, as they are with every other aspect of their lives. If they can't see your property soon, they will 100% move on.
The result over the first few weeks: lots of listing views, several phone inquiries, but very few actual showings. And the showings are absolutely what's going to result in applications being submitted.
Meanwhile, another property nearby allows self-guided showings. Prospects can schedule online tours and walk the property the same day. That home rents in six days. The first property sits vacant for over 30 days.
Modern property management companies are going to use self-showing technology that allows prospects to view the home on their own schedule. With proper identity verification and qualification, tenants can safely access the property through online systems and do self-guided showings.
That dramatically is going to increase the number of tours, the application volume, and the speed of the leasing process. The lesson here is the property didn't sit vacant because it was overpriced. It sat vacant because the showing process was extremely outdated.
In property management, one of the biggest bonehead mistakes a company can make is making it harder to see the property than it is to rent one down the street. Plain and simple.
Listen, the showing process is extremely important, and you can't delay anything in today's environment because everything is super competitive. You've got to be able to get the tenant, the prospect rather, in the property as soon as possible so that you can get an application that you can evaluate as soon as possible.
Mike, what do you think?
Mike Taylor: Wow, where do I start on this? You are 100% right. That showing process is from like 1990. If I had to go through that, I wouldn't even look at the house because it's so frustrating.
That's the reality of renters nowadays. Everybody wants everything now. They want self-service. Look at somebody who goes to Taco Bell. They go to Taco Bell, they don't order from the person who's actually there who could take your order. They would rather go to the kiosk. I've watched it a hundred times. I think it's fascinating.
The vast majority of people don't go to the counter anymore. Even if there's a person at the counter, they want the self-service option. That's absolutely what they want. And if they don't get it, they're not going to do it, especially in a showing with a clunky situation like that.
Your home is just going to sit and sit and sit. That's why we don't show tenant-occupied homes, because of that exact same reason. It just creates such friction in the showing process, which leads to higher days on the market, which then is like, well, why has this home been on the market for 30 days or 45 days? Something must be wrong with it.
And then it's like a self-perpetuating thing. Absolutely. I feel so passionate about this that you've got to update your showing process. Something like that is just not even realistic in this day and age.
The self-showing software that we use does a market report every single quarter. And they show that the vast majority of your leads are going to come in the first, I think it's three days. Definitely seven days, maybe the first three. And then your leads just literally drop off a cliff.
So if your home is not ready to show during those first seven days, you are just shooting yourself in the foot. Why are you even marketing it if you can't show it? That's going to have the most amount of interest, and that's where you need to capitalize on every single prospect that you can.
It's got to be rent-ready. It's got to be able to be shown. Somebody drives by the house, they take a look at it, they need to be able to call, text, do something and get in right then and there. That's the reality of the market these days.
Chris Knight: You stole all my follow-up comments, as I knew you probably would. Exactly. You get the overwhelming majority of interest in a property in the first seven days, and we have all the data to back this up. In fact, we've even evolved our process because of this data becoming available.
So our processes are updated that quickly. As this data becomes available, we make adjustments within the system process so that we can market your property as effectively as possible. And that includes self-guided showings.
When I was evaluating this bonehead, the biggest point that I wanted to get across to people watching this is how this process relates to other industries that they might use themselves. I love the example that you used because it's my favorite restaurant, my favorite high-class restaurant, which is Taco Bell.
Mike Taylor: I knew you would get it. I knew you would get it.
Chris Knight: You're never going to get anyone who's walking up to the person who needs to be assisted, right? You're not going to hand them cash anymore.
In fact, as I'm sitting there eating, I'll watch somebody walk up to that and they will sit there for 15 minutes. They will sit there for 20 minutes waiting for someone because the employee doesn't want to walk over there and have to help you.
Listen, it's no different in the rental industry. You have to give them the ability to pull up an app on their phone and schedule a viewing time and get immediate access to your property.
I understand if you're new to this and that might be a little bit intimidating. Just know that there are checks in place to verify this person's identity. I don't want to go into every detail. This isn't a sales process for RentEngine, but there are a tremendous amount of verification processes that go into place and verify someone's identity.
There are a lot of things in place to verify someone is who they say they are, and they are locking the property up, and your property is going to be in safe condition. But I understand why it's intimidating at first.
But this is the reality of it. In order to place a tenant in your property much sooner than Billy down the street, you need to have the ability to have these self-guided showings.
Mike Taylor: No brainer.
Chris Knight: All right, that's going to wrap up this month's Bonehead. So don't be a bonehead. Hire Red Door Property Management to manage your property, and you can avoid being a bonehead just like this one.
