Essex Property Trust
Modernizing Rental Property Operations
What if... we could reduce the time to calculate, optimize, and approve rental offers by 85%?
Essex Property Trust is a publicly traded real estate investment trust that invests in apartments, primarily on the West Coast. Founded in 1971, Essex acquires, develops, redevelops, and manages multifamily apartment communities located in supply-constrained markets.
Calculating Renewal Offers Was a Cumbersome Process
Managing a large portfolio of rental properties means that leases for a subset of properties come up for renewal every month. Many variables go into calculating optimal renewal offers, including third-party market data, past performance metrics, and experience.
Essex was managing this renewal process in a time-consuming and cumbersome way – by manipulating large amounts of data in Excel, distributing that data across analysts, tracking reviews and feedback, and then finalizing offers. The company needed a better way.
We spent time with Essex to learn the intricacies of this part of its business, understanding what went into calculating renewal offers, and then designed a much-needed automation solution to modernize the process.
Optimizing and Automating Rental Renewal Offers With a Modern Web Application
It took Essex managers up to three weeks to analyze and review information and complete offers. The company needed an experienced partner to quickly build a solution that would streamline these manual processes and further optimize revenue by reducing the time needed to calculate renewal offers and thus give more time to find tenants, if required.
We built a cloud-native modern web application utilizing Microsoft Azure, React, and .NET Core that uses market data and proprietary algorithms to automatically generate optimal offers, pending review for local markets where necessary.
The app uses automated data integration from third-party systems, provides role-based visibility, and employs outlier detection to improve the approval workflow. Not to mention, automating the process also greatly reduces the risk for human error.
The easy-to-use solution streamlined lease-renewal processes and task-driven workflows from weeks to just days while maximizing profitability by giving greater time to find replacement tenants and greater access to important data for decision making with regard to pricing.
Using our cloud-first application starter kit, our Agile development process, and a laser-focus on delivery quality, we helped Essex quickly realize value from its investment.
Results
Modernizing and Automating Streamlines Renewals
Reducing the renewal process from weeks to days means that the business can easily process the increased workload without increasing headcount or suffering slower turnaround times as Essex’s property portfolio continues to grow.
Since the modern automation process means renewals will be processed more frequently, tenants will be sent a renewal offer further in advance of their lease expiration. This provides more time for Essex and its tenants to negotiate a contract before the lease expires, or for Essex to look for new tenants earlier in the process, if necessary.
Using our cloud-first application starter kit, our Agile development process, and a laser-focus on delivery quality, we helped Essex quickly realize value from its investment.
