How to Fix Your Leasing Funnel: Leads, Fraud & Fees with Vanessa Anderson | Peter Lohmann’s Podcast

So we're seeing flat rents, we're seeing high days on market. So I think, you know, that shows you where we're at, right? Those two, those two metrics really show that the leasing market is soft. I think, you know, owners will look to either change their PM or bring units back to DIY. And so that's where as a PM, you really need to be selling yourself, selling your operation, selling your knowledge as this, you know, true asset manager in order to, to keep and win more business in a tough environment. Right. That's going to be— it'll be the big winners and big losers. I think any time you see a down market, you see that.

Welcome back to Peter Lohmann's podcast. I'm here today with Vanessa Anderson, CEO of ShowMojo and Tenant Turner. Welcome, Vanessa.

Hi, Peter. Thank you so much for having me.

It's great to have you on the show. We have a lot to talk about today. I want to jump right in, and I know folks may not be as familiar with you, so I definitely want to give you a chance right at the top here to give a little bit of background on kind of who you are and how you came up through the ranks and just kind of— I know you have some really interesting experience directly in property management as well, so I'm excited to hear about that.

Yeah. I mean, so I, I really started my career in real estate working for my dad. So he's a small business owner. He owns a family law firm and then a small real estate brokerage, and he used that primarily for his personal investment. And he did some home flipping and then had a, a rental portfolio. And so ironically, my sister became an attorney and then I started my career in real estate. So we kind of divided and conquered his, uh, yeah. His family businesses, but he put us to work really early on. So starting at probably age 11, I would help him at the office, and I think that's where I really learned how to, you know, to be entrepreneurial and run a small business, and that you can think really big and think the strate— on all the strategic issues, but also you have to take care of all the mundane and all the administrative tasks of running a business.

What did he have you doing at age 11? Because my oldest daughter is now 8, and I'm anxious to get her in. Yeah, I want to get her— I want to get— I want some ideas of what she can get into.

Yeah, so, well, this is the '90s, right? So he started with— he would have us stuff mailers.

Nice.

So he would send out, you know, hard mail advertisements for both his companies. And so we would stuff those, address them, and find target markets. So, I think at the time I didn't really know what type of marketing I was doing, but yeah, really learning about targeting your initial customer base and really figuring out where they are and how you, and how you contact them. So that was like the first thing, and that evolved into me running his books. So I was you know, running his QuickBooks and his accounting, which—

Like as a teenager?

As a teenager. Yeah.

Oh, that's amazing. That's great.

So, and so, but that led me into going into business school and having a finance degree, a finance and real estate degree. So that's really what kind of piqued my interest in the industry and kind of working with that tactile asset, right? So it's, it's one thing to work in finance and have everything on paper. It's another to then be able to take that investment and walk over to the property, understand what you need to do in terms of rehab and renovation, what you need to do to prepare for your next renter, how to find that next renter. And I really liked that kind of tactile component of investing, and that's what drew me to real estate ultimately.

Sure. Yeah. And then how, what led you to the path of your current role?

So post-college, I started my career in institutional ownership. So I was at two real estate private equity funds, really splitting my time between acquisitions and asset management. So in the asset management role, really hiring and working with our property managers to optimize the ultimate performance of those assets. And so, and we invested in all asset classes, so office, retail, industrial. We did multifamily in the downturn. We did distressed single-family portfolios where you're buying the notes and then servicing them. So really in that 2008 mortgage bust.

Yep.

Buying this, the RMBS securitization. So really interesting times to be working in institutional ownership, but I was most— like, I, I, I've always been really focused on efficiency and finding repeatable ways to do things. And I was shocked even at that time by the lack of technology available to the real estate industry and the lack of adoption. And so, I used business school specifically to switch into a career in tech and was really drawn to bringing technology to pretty old school industries, which I, you know, I think real estate has come an incredibly long way in the last 15 years, but at the time was, you know, a more of a laggard in adopt— in adopting technology. And so that was kind of what fueled me to switch career paths and go into tech. And so then I, I was at two early stage venture-backed companies, one that was doing online office leasing, which was Well-timed going into COVID. So, if we, we were doing, we were doing quite well until everybody stopped going to the office.

Oh, that's terrible.

So, and then I spent 4 years during the pandemic and after at Guaranteed Rate, the mortgage lender, and there I overhauled their title and escrow division. So, that was, you know, a very paper-oriented, in-person business, and COVID completely turned that on its head. So we moved to over 70% e-close in under 6 months during the pandemic. And also just the volume exploded with interest rates being at 2%. So we had really never closed more than 5,000 transactions in a year, and we did 28,000 in 2020.

Wow.

So it was an incredible exercise in taking what I learned in early-stage tech companies in terms of scaling in applying it to a traditional real estate function and bringing technology in in order to achieve those goals. So it, it was a pretty wild time. And then of course interest rates went from, you know, the mid-2s to 7% also in a really short timeframe, in under 100 days. And then we had to ensure that we were set up for that kind of contraction as well.

Yeah.

So I did that until 2024 and then joined PropertyTech as the COO.

Fantastic. And so for those who may just may not be familiar, would you mind just explaining the relationship between PropertyTech and Shamojo and Tenant Turner?

Yeah. So, so PropertyTech is essentially the holding company that owns both Tenant Turner and Shamojo. So I was brought in to run day-to-day operations and then this fall took over as CEO. Really right now we're laser focused on the leasing experience, listing leasing experience, and modernizing and optimizing those workflows for property managers to make, to really make it so that they can scale their leasing operations, take on more units, and do that all without adding headcount.

Fantastic. And we're going to dive into quite a bit of that. And we're also going to talk about the latest leasing trends that you're seeing. I know that you have a data talk coming up, which I'm pretty excited about, kind of get the latest on what property managers are experiencing and seeing across the country. I want to start, though, by hearing about your— how you think about ShowMojo and Tenant Turner as distinct products and sort of the ideal customers for those. And then anything you can share on product direction for those two products?

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, in terms of the differences between ShowMojo and Tenant Turner, you know, they both serve the same part of the leasing workflow. So really From the time you have an availability until the time a lease is signed, that's where we filter in. So that includes managing your syndication via a deep integration with your PMS and then deep integration—

Over to our friends at Zillow who we absolutely love. Yeah, over to your friends at Zillow.

So deep integrations with all our ILS partners and then managing those inquiries. Thereafter. So as soon as a prospect reaches out, we're managing that push into a prequalification and into a scheduled showing. We enable the both self-showings and accompanied showings, the scheduling and the coordination and the access control at site. And then from there, that lead nurturing and follow-up in order to get them from a scheduled, from a conducted showing through to an application. So that's really the area that both play in. I would say, you know, the major differences really have to do with your company's kind of, I guess, personality and flavor and preference, as well as their IT capabilities. And so, or your desire to tinker. So ShowMojo does lend itself to be more customizable. So you can really alter a lot of your messages. You can white label, include your logo, really kind of make it look, you know, like, like your own customized lead nurturing tool. And you can definitely tinker. It can, you know, you can spend a lot of time changing things, testing things, et cetera. And it's this customizability. And then versus Tenant Turner has a little bit more guardrails on, but it is very very simple. I had a customer recently tell me that Tenant Turner, they said in a good way, Tenant Turner is so easy a baby could use it. So it really is that ease of use. If you are less technical or don't have technical resources, Tenant Turner is a great option to really configure your leasing automation system very simply, very quickly, and then let it run in the background. So, I would say those are the kind of two personalities of the two brands and the differences there.

Makes total sense. Almost like a, maybe there's like an Apple Android comparison there with Apple being Tana Turner.

I use that comparison often with the two.

Nice.

Right? It's like a make your own adventure versus that more controlled environment.

Yep, totally. Okay, great. And yeah, I mean, customers, I'm sure, are curious to hear anything that you can share on, you know, upcoming product releases or product direction.

Yep. So I think there's really two buckets. There's the things that we have released recently, and then there's our roadmap for 2026 and kind of where we see the direction of the company going. So in terms of recent developments, I think there's a few things to call out that are really exciting that we recently released. So first and foremost is fee disclosures. So if you've read the 2026 Buildium report on market trends, they said that owners are now selecting PMs for compliance and regulation help more so than just, you know, managing your rental stream. They're really looking at PMs as their asset manager and the expert in this space.

And so keep 'em outta trouble.

Keep them out of trouble. So fee disclosures is something that helps PMs achieve that. So, you know, that the regulatory environment around consumer fees and protections is changing rapidly. States are instituting fee disclosures at a rapid rate. And so now we have the capabilities to help PMs manage that.

And this is talking about like any required programs or fees that go along with a rental unit, whether that's a resident benefit package or an application fee or a pet fee or anything like that, some states are now, and this is all relatively new, but some states are requiring that the to— like the rent price displayed on the listing has to include all of those fees. Like the most prominent price has to show the total with all fees included. And so your products are taking care of that for property managers so we don't have to like back out into that number somehow, like we just enter all the data and then it, it makes sure that, makes sure that we're staying compliant in the relevant states. Is that right?

Absolutely. And so it's, and it's handling that straight from your PMS and into the ILSs. So ensuring that essentially there's no hidden fees, right? It's the, I think the regulatory environment is protecting against this like bait and switch. You see rent at $1,100, but when you go to sign your lease, there's all these add-on fees. It's really $1,400. Right? So marketing that at the full $14 or whatever, you know, whatever those dollar amounts are so that the consumer knows exactly what they're getting into when they—

It seems fair. I mean, if you put yourself in the customer's shoes, like when you shop for airline tickets, you want to know like what's the final price so that you can, so that you can compare apples to apples when you're trying to compare Southwest to Delta or whatever. Something interesting, I can't remember—

That's where Spirit gets you, right?

Oh, Spirit. Yeah, I don't know.

They lock you in with those $80 and then all of a sudden it's $300.

They're like, yeah, if you don't want to breathe when you're on the plane, this is the price. If you want air, that's extra. Today's episode is brought to you by ShowMojo. ShowMojo spends a lot of time looking at leasing data so property managers don't have to guess what's working across the rental market. Days on market has been rising nationally. You're not alone. Making leasing more competitive in many areas. In that kind of environment, what matters most is how well teams convert the interest they do get, and that's where ShowMojo stands out. Even as market conditions have shifted, ShowMojo customers continue to convert leads at a higher rate than other platforms. In fact, on average, 54% of ShowMojo leads turn into scheduled showings, compared to lower conversion rates on competing tools. That means that more than half of people who reach out actually take the next step. And when showings get scheduled, more of them happen, which helps listings move faster. ShowMojo focuses on simple things that make a difference: responding quickly, making it easy to book a showing, and keeping prospects from falling through the cracks. Those improvements come directly from how property managers are leasing in the real world. The goal is straightforward: help teams lease faster without adding more work. To see how ShowMojo helps property managers convert more leads into showings, visit hello.showmojo.com and schedule a demo today. Thanks again to ShowMojo for sponsoring this episode. Something someone pointed out to me, something interesting recently, which is like, what's going to happen now when property owners are looking at the rental listing and they see the— they see a different rent price than what you've told them. So for example, you agree with an owner We're going to rent your home for $1,500. Now they go on the site and they see it for $1,650. They're like, hey, I thought we were renting it for $1,500. And now you're going to have to explain, well, you will be getting $1,500, but I'm going to be keeping $150 due to X, Y, and Z fees. I think that's going to prompt some, shall we say, interesting discussions between property owners and property managers.

Yeah, I think definitely. And that's where, you know, proactively communicating with your owners on expectations and on what you're being charged and even including that in your contracts with them upfront is where you can manage those expectations from the get-go and not, and avoid those difficult conversations, right? Is I think owners want communication and transparency from their PMs just like the consumers want that same transparency. Totally. So, I think, you know, the more you level set on expectations from the get-go, the more successful you'll be in maintaining those relationships.

Yeah, because you can explain it. Like you can say, hey, like these are fees that are, you know, covering things that we provide for the resident. If we didn't charge residents those fees, it would have to be baked into your management fee. Like it's all very explainable.

Mm-hmm.

Exactly. Yeah.

Okay. So other things that we have recently launched, so obviously, you know, a hot issue in the space is is fraud and security. So something that we recently have launched is an anti-fraud acknowledgement form for self-showings. So, you know, we have many layers of protection on the prospect side, prospect fraud, right? We have the identity verification, we have blocks on VoIP numbers, we have IP address tracking, these things that As a prospect goes through the funnel, we're weeding them out if they look suspicious. And there's a lot of layers you can add there and, you know, all the way through your, of course, your screenings as well. But on the listing fraud side, it's, that's all happening outside of our systems and outside of our control. So the best thing that we can do is raise awareness of the issue so that prospects are not interacting with impersonating landlords or fraudulent landlords and on channels that are outside of your control.

So listing fraud would be like someone steals your photos and puts up a listing that's a duplicate of yours, but a much lower price. Probably everyone listening has experienced this. And then they— some poor, some poor prospect who has no idea wires money or does a MoneyGram or whatever to a scammer and then comes to your office and says, I'm here to pick up my keys. And you're like, we didn't rent the property to you. And they're like, yes, you did. Here's, you know, and it's a disaster. I feel we always feel terrible for those people.

Yeah, it's horrible. Right. And they're posting on, you know, sites like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. They're establishing a relationship with the prospect there. So they become used to messaging them there and learning about the property. And then those landlords or those, those, sorry, those fraudsters are essentially directing them to go self-show through legitimate channels. And that is our point of contact where we can save this prospect from the scam in that we can—

which is so wild. Yeah. Because the fraudster is like, hey, I'm just using this other company just for the showings. Like, here's the link, go through their instructions just to see the property, then let me know how you like it.

And then they— and the prospect's legitimate, right? So they pass the ID verification. They don't have a weird IP address. You know, when they're on site, they're geo-fenced and they're, it's their cell phone, it's the person who booked and they gain access to the unit. So all of that is legitimate and there's nothing that should be caught because that prospect is genuinely interested in your space. So the fraud acknowledgement is, is quite simple, but it just pops up and says, hey, you know, there is this prevalence of listing fraud. You should not be communicating through a landlord on these unauthorized sites. You should be working exclusively through here. And, you know, here, here's the information for the legitimate listing and raise awareness. And that way they read that and say, oh, I shouldn't be wiring money via PayPal and through Facebook Marketplace. So as a simple solution to, to help raise awareness, and we're working on some additional partnerships in this space, but we're, we're not quite ready to announce them, but I think there's some exciting things coming down the pipe. To help our PMs with listing fraud, which I know has, you know, is a prevalent issue. And then the last two on recent that are worth calling out is we've put Zapier integrations into both of our products. And so this is great for PMs that don't have designated IT resources. You can do— it's a low-code connector. So really non-technical people can connect your data in Tenant Turner and ShowMojo to 8,000 different apps. You know, most, most notably we see a lot of PMs connect to LeadSimple and Aptly, but being able to pass your data and use it in the workflow that you choose, it's really important for PMs.

And so that's fantastic. I need to update my blog post because I keep a list of software that property managers can use that has a Zapier integration. Oh yeah. It's a very short list.

Please, please add us.

Yes. Yes. I will. I will. I'll take a note to do that right now. I didn't know about that.

That's great. Of course. You know, we have our APIs as well, and so you can always build custom integrations, but not every PM has the resources and tech team to do that. And so Zapier is a great way to achieve that same effect without those, you know, customized development resources.

They both have API access as well? Yes.

That's awesome. And then, oh, and then this year we launched the Seros hardware at Tennant Turner. And so that is our own, proprietary hardware. We have our Seras Access app. And so now that's a highly integrated experience in order to have both smart lockboxes and smart locks that can help enable your self-showings.

And that hardware is common to both platforms. Yes. Okay. So in theory, if someone was kind of graduating from Tenant Turner needed more flexibility and customizability with ShowMojo, they could keep their hardware if they made a switch. Yes. That's a big deal.

That is a big deal. Yeah. So you'll be able to use Cerros on either platform. We still offer our Mojo Locks and Mojo Boxes on ShowMojo, and those will be supported in the Cerros Access app in first quarter. Okay, cool. So. And then upcoming, I think there's obviously a huge systemic change in technology right now with just the advancements in artificial intelligence. And so, you know, as people rework their tech stack and incorporate AI, we are dedicated to being a partner to our PMs in that change. And so we, on our roadmap, it's is of course heavy AI innovation, really bucketed into 3 categories. So first and foremost is our leasing agent. So that's the agentic model. That's what you are hearing about constantly, right? The more conversational flow, replacing some of the more structured questionings in our automation with a large language model so that it's a free-flowing conversation with your prospects. But I think what is important to note here is our solutions have had industry-leading conversion rates. So our conversion rate from an inquiry to a scheduled showing the last 3 quarters has ranged from 52% to 56%. We are dedicated to maintaining and improving on that conversion rate. And so when we institute AI, we want to do it really thoughtfully and we want to make sure that we are beating our own benchmarks. So, we do not want to implement AI for the sake of having AI and being able to say we have an agentic model because ultimately, especially in a really tough leasing market, which is where we're at right now, what matters most is people, like, boots, boots through your spaces, getting people there. And so, ensuring that we continue to beat those conversion rates. Is our number one focus, and using AI to do that, to enhance that, is really important to us and something that we're laser-focused on in 2026.

Yeah, and that metric starts to become even more important as the listing platforms start to charge. So we won't go too deep into the Zillow thing today, but, you know, Zillow is increasing the control they exert over property managers and That means for most of us, we have to pay. Now, I stopped paying Zillow recently and not really want to get into that here today, but I think in the long run, in the long run, we're all going to be paying these platforms for to have our rental listings on, on them. And so when you're paying for that traffic, it suddenly becomes a lot more important. The difference between a 45% conversion from inquiry to showing and a 60% conversion from inquiry to showing, you know, that affects your customer acquisition costs if you want to think about it that way with prospective tenants. So, you know, when it's free, you're kind of like, yeah, whatever, there's always more traffic. Like, but when you're paying for it, suddenly you're going to start to pay a lot more attention. It's like equivalent, almost like the closing rate when you think about, you know, owner leads.

So, yeah, absolutely. I think that's, you know, really important when you're thinking about where you syndicate to is As it's free right now, there's no harm to syndicating very broadly, right? But I think, you know, if you are anticipating having to pay eventually, then tracking your KPIs on your syndication channels now will give you the historics in order to make decisions later. So it's that balance of certainly I, I think most PMs get the vast majority of their traffic from Zillow. What we've seen nationwide is pretty strong conversion rates from that, but that can vary from market to market, asset class. You know, if you're student housing or manufactured homes or a certain market that has a more localized ILS that has great results, I think understanding what your options are and balancing your volume to conversion rate as you pay. I think thinking of it as a cost of customer acquisition or CAC. Yep. Should be something that PMs start to implement into their reporting so that you really understand your cost per showing or cost per lease with each channel and being able to take your marketing mix or the dollars amount that you will spend on listing and allocating it accordingly so that you can optimize and maximize that.

Yeah. And all those data points are really useful when you're speaking with owners because if you have a benchmark of, hey, 55% of leads that come in to our company on average convert to a showing, but Mr. Owner, on your property, we're only seeing a 20% conversion rate. That's some, that's a very useful piece of data you can use to have a conversation with that owner about, hey, maybe we need to pay for professional photos, or maybe we need to talk about the price, or maybe we need to talk about your pet policy. Like when you can tell an owner like you're way below the benchmark at our company, it comes across from a position of authority and expertise rather than a position of whining to your owner about why they need to lower their price.

Yeah. Or enhance their property, right? Yeah. Do some renovations, do some improvements. And so actually, Peter, that, that's the other kind of bucket of AI that we're focused on for 2026 is this listing optimization engine, right? It's if we know that your leads per days on market are lower than benchmark, what is it about your listing that's causing it to underperform? Is it your photos and incorporating AI into photo cleanup staging? You can, you know, do professional photos with a company like Planomatic. Is your listing description weak? Are your listing details too much or too little, etc.? So what recommendations, knowing what we know about your data and your listing, can we make that will help you move your vacancies faster. So that's the other area that's on our roadmap and that we're focused on is using AI to enhance that analysis.

Love that. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds really interesting. I wonder if there's also something where like, if you could somehow measure like prospect dwell time on photos and then like reorder the photos so that the most interesting ones are first. Mm-hmm. Because I, I often wonder about that, like photo ordering or like what's the primary photo. I feel like that has a huge impact on click-through rates on, on the listing syndication platforms, but I'm never really sure, like if it's like a condo unit, like an outside photo is kind of like, you know, which unit even is it? Do I care what the outside looks like? Obviously with a single family home, it's typically gonna be an exterior shot, but yeah.

Yeah. No, I think, I mean, you know, just psychologically that the photos are probably the most important part of your listing, right? It's like if you're looking for a rental or looking for your next home, do you start with the description or do you start with the photos? Right? Most people are starting with the photos. It's all about the vibes. It's all about the vibes. So I think that would be really interesting, like figuring out where the abandon is, where the dwell time is. I think that data is going to be typically hosted in the ILSs, right? They're the ones who are going to have the data. So then it's a matter of can that be pushed into your PMS or your leasing automation system in order to get better insights and inquiries?

And there'd be some direct traffic, like I know depending on how big your website is, You know, some, you'll have some traffic through the website looking, you know, directly with the iframe or whatever the embed is. So maybe you could use that data.

I don't know if there'd be enough data. And we do see the largest number of leads are coming from the embedded widget, the embedded listing widget. So directly from the PM's website, but that could be, they get redirected from an ILS to the website. Oh, sure. And then, and then into a showing. But they are, yeah, I mean, over 50% of leads are passing through the PM site and the PM's leasing widget. So that could, that could be a great place to start.

Yeah. Okay. So speaking of that and, you know, where leads are coming from, I definitely want to spend some time talking about your latest leasing report. I know it hasn't been re— it's not out yet. It's coming soon. But I was wondering if you'd be able to give us— Tomorrow. Oh, it's tomorrow. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So maybe you can give us a sneak peek of what we learned about the leasing market in Q4.

Yeah, I would say unfortunately not a lot has changed from Q3. So, you know, each year you see days on market kind of have this like seasonal U-shape, right? A high Q1 followed by lower Q2, Q3, and then Q4 is typically the highest. Of the year. And so what we saw in Q4 is the highest days on market that we've seen ever in our dataset. So since going back to 2017, and really it's been this continual incline and increase in days on market since the low in 2021. So, you know, when you hear PMs say things are really tough or every lead matters, they're not lying, right? That is— Yeah. That's where we're at right now is this— it's a slow market. So high demand—

So worse than Q4 of last year. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. And then rents, I think it was Q2, we saw like a— maybe it was Q3. No, it was Q2. We saw a blip up and we had seen flat rents all the way through the beginning of 2024. That immediately came back down right to that flat line. So essentially rents nationwide haven't moved in 2 years. So we're seeing flat rents, we're seeing high days on market. So I think, you know, that shows you where we're at, right? Those 2, those 2 metrics really show that the leasing market is soft. I think, you know, owners will be more, you know, will, will look to either change their PM or bring units back to DIY. And so that's where as a PM, you really need to be selling yourself, selling your operation, selling your knowledge as this, you know, true asset manager in order to keep and win more business in a tough environment, right? That's going to be— it'll be the big winners and big losers. I think anytime you see a down market, you see that.

Yeah. And I think, you know, these reports are very useful again in conversations with owners. Because when you go again, it's like the same thing I just said a few minutes ago. When you go to an owner and say, hey, your property's not renting, they immediately just think it's your fault, right? Their property's perfect. The pricing is perfect. They rented it no problem 3 summers ago for $300 more. And what are you guys even doing over there? Have you tried going to the grocery store and putting up flyers? Okay. I had multiple owners suggest that to me over the years.

So did you, did you do that?

No. So, but when, when we can bring a report from a third-party expert who has millions of units in their data set and say, hey, look, leasing times are worse than ever, right? Days on market is up. We're at a really tough leasing point right now, Mr. Owner. And so I want you to know that we're doing everything we can, but we have some serious headwinds here. And I understand that you may be considering bringing this back and doing it yourself or trying one of our competitors, but here's the data and you're really going to have a similar experience. We're using best-in-class marketing and syndications. And again, anything you can bring external to a conversation with an owner positions you as that expert rather than just like, I just, I always hate the dynamic where like you go to an owner and they're like scolding you or treating you like some like low-level employee of theirs or something. It's like, no, we're the experts. We have the data. We know what we're doing. We've leased thousands of units. We need to let you know, Mr. Owner, what's happening with your property.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, you know, our, our slides can definitely support that, right? So they're after every data talk, our slides are fully downloadable. It can be something to help support those conversations.. And I think coupling that with your own listing data and leasing data as to what you're seeing for that property or within your portfolio can only make that story stronger. But yeah, our data set goes back to 2018. We have over 23 million showings conducted on our platform. We have data from over, I think it's 76 million leads. Wow. And almost 700 million emails, calls, and texts. So, it is a huge dataset, you know, we're at 8 years of data now, so closing in on a decade, but those trends are valid and it, it can help support that conversation. It's, yeah. So, you can say, here are the 10 things I'm doing to move your vacancy. Mm-hmm. And here's the data to show that I'm doing everything I can do and in my power and that the rental market is slow, right? And this is what we're seeing in our market nationwide. And, you know, you can just expect additional days on market right now, but know that as a PM, you're going to have to do everything in your power to make your spaces as competitive as possible because the power really has shifted to the renter right now.

You know, somehow we've been relatively isolated from this in Columbus, Ohio. I don't know why, but our days on market has been pretty good all year, last year and this year. And we're moving properties. So I don't know if Columbus is somehow insulated a little bit from some of the broader economic headwinds, but that's been at least a little reprieve for us.

Yeah. Realtor.com had a great report on their top markets and the big winners were the Northeast and the Midwest. And that's— and specifically they call them like refuge markets. So versus, you know, a New York or a Boston where things are really pricey, people are moving out to— I think like one of the top 3 markets was Hartford, Connecticut, which is actually where my in-laws live.

I was born in Hartford Hospital, actually. Were you? Yeah, we lived in Connecticut for first few years of my life.

Okay, nice. Yeah, I go to, my husband is in Avon, so we head to Connecticut a few times a year. But that, like, Hartford is a booming market, right? Or I, I actually recently saw a little clip on Chicago because Chicago's doing really well right now. And, you know, where I live, our, you know, houses are on the market for, sometimes they never even really hit the market, right? They're sold on the private network. Before ever being listed. So things are moving really fast here. So there's these, these winner markets where things are a little more affordable, inventory's tight, schools are good. And so people are moving out of the really expensive markets and these moving to these refuge markets. I think Rochester, New York was another one listed. I don't know where Columbus stands. I, I'll, I'll have to take a look back at the report. But you are seeing this market-to-market mix and always with real estate, right? It's a local business. And so you need to understand your metro area and even your submarket and if those national trends apply.

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I think we're going to see more of the same. I think rents are going to stay flat through 2026. I think, you know, I, I, I don't see economics stability coming in the near term. And so I would not expect rents to rise or to have, you know, consumer sentiment be positive where people want to move to a bigger place or stretch financially. I think people are, you know, worried about job growth and are buckling down. And so I think you'll continue to see this flattening of the market. I don't think we'll see a crash. I just don't anticipate things getting better.

Do you think we're bottomed out or I guess topped out on days on market? Do you think that's just going to continue to get worse and worse?

You know, I think that's, that's a big question mark for sure. What we're seeing is the, the worsening trend lessening, right? It's less, less steep, essentially decelerating. Yes. So you're seeing a little bit of a plateau. So we're still seeing it. Take up, but it's not as dramatic as it was in '22, '23, '24. So hopefully I'm thinking 2026 is just stable at our current status quo. It's, that's, that's what I'm predicting. But obviously I don't have a crystal ball and I think anyone who's ever tried to predict the real estate market has been proven wrong.

So it's a, it's a dangerous game, right? Totally. Awesome. Well, I want to zoom out for a moment and just talk about property tech. People are genuinely curious about the holding company or the parent company of ShowMojo and Tenant Turner. First thing I want to ask is, are you eyeing other acquisitions, whether that's within the same category or maybe a new category of property tech? Is that something that's, you know, on your mind?

Yeah. So at this time, we are laser-focused on our two leasing automation platforms, growing those, enhancing those. We are investing heavily in innovation this year and into our development resources and product resources. So, that's really exciting. And we do not have any plans for acquisitions in the near term.

Got it. I love the clear answer. So many executives, when you ask them a direct question like that, they're like, well, you know, we're always eyeing opportunities, right? But I love that you're clearly focused on these, these two products.

That's great. Yeah, laser-focused on these two. So we're excited about the space. We think that especially now there's a real need and there always has been good markets and bad, but bad especially. I think you need to be really lean and efficient. And so I think this is our time to focus on these two software platforms. And, you know, adjust to this kind of systemic change in technology. And we're excited to work alongside our PMs and get, and get everybody there. So we're, I think we're, you know, overall the team is incredibly excited about what's in store for 2026.

Love that. I wanna talk about the broader sort of ecosystem that your company operates in, that we all operate in. When I think about our, our ecosystem, you know, we have the, the core accounting platforms, Appfolio, Buildium, Rentvine, et cetera. We also have these listing platforms, Zillow and Apartments.com, which also owns Homes.com. I think that's CoStar if I remember right. And then you also have like your direct competitors of like other listing platform, other showing and, and leasing platforms. I'm curious how you relate to— because there's all these dynamics at play with these platforms. I mean, platforms on platforms. I'm curious how you relate to all that and how you think about strategy for your products in navigating that, because it, it all feels very like not cutthroat, but it does. Like there's tension among all these different players and platforms.

Yeah, it's certainly competitive, right? And I think if anything, competition justifies that you're in an interesting space with a real need. And so, if you, if you're running a business and you don't have competition, then that's where you should worry that you're in a space that, you know, doesn't have real potential. So, I think, you know, when we think of our partners, you know, we have longstanding relationships with our PMS partners. We have, you know, worked on those integrations for over a decade and have incredibly strong integrated connections with two-way syncs between our PMS partners. I think that is a huge advantage and something that, that's a relationship that we strive to maintain and that we, I mean, we, we meet with our PMS partners at minimum on a monthly basis. You know, certainly, are they— do they have leasing solutions? Certainly. I think, you know, we have a team that is dedicated and thinking exclusively about leasing, and I think— and about access, right? We have our locks. And I think that's our advantage, right, is that we're laser-focused on this experience and on what a PM's needs are during this one moment in time. And so that laser focus is what will allow us to continue to deliver industry-leading platforms and focus on that conversion rate, which ultimately I think is all that matters is the performance. You know, in terms of ILS, we're working on improving our conversion with our ILS partners through their book now functionality so that you're not being redirected and then booking your showing, you're booking directly on the ILS platform. So I think, you know, deeper integrations there are only gonna enhance performance. And then, you know, general competition, I think there's nothing, there's nothing new about that. There's been players in this space for the, you know, entire 12 or 13 years. Dead Show Mojo and Tennant Turner have operated, Tennant Turner and Show Mojo, competed ruthlessly for many years. And now our teams, you know, work more closely together strategically. Which, which acquisition came first? They were within months of each other, but it was Tennant Turner followed by ShowMojo, I think 3 to 4 months later.

And, and were they, were they shocked to both end up under the same umbrella? I mean, assume you sort of didn't disclose to the other that you were like pursuing this.

So, I wasn't there during the acquisition, but I joined 2 months after the Shomojo acquisition. And so, I don't know how the dynamics were, but I think it's certainly a shift in mindset after— For sure.

A decade-long rivalry, right? Hey, we're at the same company kickoff annual event.

Hey. Oh, but I think, you know, now that The team has great camaraderie and works together and exchanges notes on what works and doesn't work on either platform. And, you know, some things work really well for ShowMojo, but, you know, not for the customer at Tennent Turner and vice versa. So, I think learning that and if anything, I think it helps you really understand the nuances of your customer and their preferences. So, this past year has been really fun with the two teams working more closely together. Yeah.

You know, we are super reliant on Zillow and these other listing platforms for tenant leads, which is the lifeblood. You know, that's the demand. We, the supply is rental homes and we secure the supply by engaging into, by entering into agreements with property owners. So that's our supply. The demand for our services as property managers is renters. They pay the rent and there's these platforms that control eyeballs and can direct them at their preference to our listings or not, depending on our commercial arrangements or whatever other nuances. And you all sit in kind of in the middle because we're, you know, we're syndicating mostly through your platforms. I'm just curious like how you relate to that because Zillow and, you know, homes.com, apartments.com, like they could cut you guys out or they can cut us off and just say you have to pay $500 a month per listing or whatever, whatever they wanted to charge, we would have to pay it. It's just, it makes me so uncomfortable and I'm just curious how you, how you feel about it.

Yeah. I think in any business there's always risks associated with, you know, other players who will do what. I think ultimately if you're delivering a product that your customers want, the risk of cutting somebody off who is kind of beloved in their tech stack is a terrible customer experience. And so, you know, that's why these partnerships and open APIs and kind of data ubiquity is really important. It allows the customer to dictate who they work with and what works best for their business. And that's also what drives, you know, healthy competition is if you, if you cut that off and you only allow one player, then now there's no motivation to continue to provide best-in-class solutions. So I think the ecosystem is in, in some way dependent on trust in on delivering to the customer's best interests and, and knowing that if they were to make a play and cut off any player in this space, then it's going to come with negative repercussions from a customer experience standpoint. If somebody really liked working with this software provider and now they're cut off due to a business decision by one of the players in the market, it's something that will cause customer backlash. And nobody— ultimately, the, the reason these companies got big and got really— and, and have been really successful is because they've been laser-focused on what matters, which is the, the consumer experience. So I think as long as they continue, Zillow or any of our PMS players or our competition, As long as everybody remains focused on what matters, which is delivering great results to the customers, then the ecosystem continues to survive.

I mean, we're focused on that. You're focused on that. Zillow is not focused on that. Zillow is introducing competitive products every quarter to your business and to my business. And that is upsetting. And it makes me wonder, like, could there be a move where we compete with Zillow and we say, you know what, we're bringing our million-plus listings or whatever to a new platform and we're going to try to compete with Zillow for renter eyeballs.

Yeah, I mean, Zillow is obviously a longstanding partner of ours and someone that we work closely with on a day-to-day basis. And, you know, we're working with them right now to institute our instant scheduling in their platform. But I think, you know, if, if the concern is diversification, there's a few things that PMs can proactively do. So of course you can continue to syndicate broadly, right? We touched on this a little bit earlier, but syndicate broadly, really focus on building out your reporting, balancing that lead flow and conversion rate and tracking that by lead source. Right. And so, and then taking that and centralizing it. So having all your leads, all your scheduling, all your fraud controls in one platform so that you can easily understand where everything's coming from and what is going to be the best risk-reward for you and your business. So I think, you know, ultimately you just need to focus on results and control, you know, control what you can control by putting the best, most efficient process in place for your business.

I think that's great advice. That's— you're right. And I worry a lot about this stuff, but I mean, all we can do is what we can do. And having our ducks in a row to be prepared if something were to change is, is the best course of action. So I want to get back to metrics for a second because you mentioned the lead to showing conversion rate being excellent on your platforms. I was curious, what other metrics do you think that property managers should be focusing on? To understand the health of their overall listing, showing sort of function at their business?

Yeah, I think one of the key stats to focus on is leads per day as on market. And so that one's going to show you your velocity and interest. And I think that is especially important in your first week of listing a space. So our data shows that If you require a rental rate reduction, you essentially sit on market twice as long. So it's, you know, more than a month at this point, a little upwards of a month of lost rent by mispricing your, by mispricing your unit. So by tracking your leads per days on market, especially in those first 7 days, you can see, am I getting, you know, Great traction, or am I lacking lead flow? And if you're lacking lead flow, is it because you're overpriced? So I think that's like one of the first KPIs you can start tracking and something that is, it's one of the most meaningful adjustments you can make on your listing is your asking price. And so making that early can save you money in the long run in a major way. So I think that should be a KPI that you institute immediately. And start tracking, you know, from the first, the first day that you go, that you list, that you list a vacancy.

Nice thing about that lead is you're getting data instantly. So within 2 to 3 days, you're going to have actionable data on leads per days on market, whereas some of the other metrics you might look at, like, like even the leads per showing conversion rate or the like, I remember we used to look pretty carefully at showings per lease signing. Like some of those metrics are a little further down the funnel. They're reactive, right?

Yeah.

By the time you know there's a problem, you've already been listed for 3 to 4 weeks.

Yeah. So, I think, I think that's great knowledge to have to think, what do I do differently next time? But by the time you have that data for that, for that listing, kind of that the ship has sailed, right? So, I think those are really important metrics to track and to adjust what you do moving forward. But the leads per days on market is something you can do proactively for your availabilities right now.

Yeah, that's great. Any other thoughts on sort of leasing metrics or leasing data over the last quarter, over the last year, or, you know, looking ahead?

Yeah, I think another one that is under— like undervalued in its importance is your policies. So having super clear policies in your listing or available, easily available. So I think, you know, Igeniq, Ageniq AI, leasing agents will help surface this stuff too, is really important because if you have clear security deposit policies, pet policies, etc., it reduces days on market by 2 to 3 days for each policy. So really what that is, is it's just removing unnecessary volleys with your leasing team, right? So— Got it. It's, I'm interested, I'm going to schedule a tour. What's your security deposit? Wait for a response. It's XYZ, you know, and it's 2 to 3 email volleys that have hours in between that can be easily removed by just being upfront in your listing about all of your you know, your non-negotiable policies, right?

And yeah, I've seen this handled a couple different interesting ways. I mean, of course the non-recommended way is to just not have your policies anywhere, right? Like, and do you see that sometimes?

You want the most lead flow, but maybe the least qualified lead flow, right? It's balancing qualified versus quantity.

Yeah. And this is what owners do when they try to, you know, self-manage is, you know, Duplex in German Village, call, no pets allowed, right? Just nothing. They give you nothing. Now property managers are smarter than that, but I, I see a couple different approaches here. One is they put all of the policies on the rental application to reduce the clutter and text on the rental listings. Mm-hmm. And they say, you know, all of our policies are on our viewable on our rental application when you get to that point. Another approach we see is, of course, just putting everything as much as possible in the rental listing, which that does clutter it up, make it really long.

And no one reads.

And no one reads. And so there's like a trade-off there. There's another approach which I've seen, which is in the rental listing, you include a link to a static webpage that has all of your policies. So it's just like rlpropertymanagement.com/listing-policies or whatever. And then all of your listings link to that. You can update it in one place. But my— what I'm always wondering with that is like, who's really clicking through? Who's clicking through? Yeah. Like nobody's going to do that. So I don't know.

What are your thoughts here? I think those are all really good concerns and I don't have data on that specifically, but it would be interesting to look into in terms of what— like, can you track the click-through to that policy and kind of triangulate that with your total traffic to see what percentage of your traffic is actually visiting that site would be interesting. I think certainly, you know, popping to another page leads to some friction, right? It's less likely that they'll go. But also I think there's that balance of do you clutter up the listing with every policy under the sun? So it's a delicate balance. I think you just need to, you know, as much, as much as possible and what data is available, dig in, maybe A/B test it, do both and see, see for when you do list in the listing description, how many questions do you get about those specific policies, which shows you that people aren't reading it versus visits to that site. Or at what point in your leasing process do you really emphasize the policies? Is it right before application or is it before showing?

Sure. And it also depends on how aggressive your policies are. So if your policies, if your policies are unlikely to cause anyone to think twice, it's probably not as important to display them sooner in the funnel. But if you have very aggressive policies around security deposits or, you know, fees or other things, I tend to think let's disclose that earlier rather than let someone get so far down in the process and now they're angry.

And it depends like how rigid you are on adhering to them too. I think, you know, you can certainly work them into your prequalification questions too, so that it's just going to be a balance of you'll definitely lose some leads as a result, but, but the leads you get will be highly qualified for the policies you have in place. So it's, it's just balancing that, which in this market, people might lean towards getting more leads and being a little less rigid on some of their policies. But I think that just depends why you have those policies in place and what risks you're willing to balance by loosening them.

Sure. Well, this has been great, Vanessa. Thank you so much for taking time to come on the show and talk us through your products and leasing data. I love this stuff, you know, being a kind of an engineer data nerd. So always fun for me. For folks who wanted to follow along with you or ShowMojo and Tenant Turner, where would be the best place for them to do that? Or how can they sign up for these data talks?

Yeah, so we can include a link to the Data Talk. It's happening on January 28th. So I think this might go live after that, so we can give a link to the download. So you can download those slides and sign up to be notified of our quarterly Data Talks moving forward. Also, I post a lot on LinkedIn about our product updates, our release notes, general thoughts on the leasing market and industry. And so you can follow me on LinkedIn as well.

Great. Awesome. Well, thank you.

Thanks again, Vanessa. Thank you for having me, Peter. This was a lot of fun.

I hope you have enjoyed this episode. If you like the show and want to get connected to the community, you can follow me on Twitter @PSLohmann and subscribe to my email newsletter on my website, peterlohmann.com. I try to share as much valuable property management content as I can on a regular basis. Thanks again for listening and have a great week.