Porte, a beautiful Lendlease Development, The John Buck Company, and Intercontinental Real Estate Corporation (Intercontinental) community in Chicago, Illinois, was the largest development built in the West Loop in 2020.

Porte has 586 units, including street-level townhomes and 46 different floor plans. So, when Porte began hard hat tours in March 2020, the team was ready to showcase the new building under construction. Then, a week later, the COVID-19 pandemic eliminated all hard hat and in-person tour possibilities.

Luckily, Porte’s team was simultaneously strategizing how they could provide additional touring options. Gerda Varkuleviciute, Leasing Director at Porte, remembered a conversation she had with a friend five years earlier, Co-founder and COO of Realync, Ani Rangarajan, where he discussed the value of a virtual tour solution for multifamily properties.

Pre-leasing Phase
Gerda reached out to Ani about leveraging Realync to meet the team’s needs during the pre-leasing, lease-up and stabilized phases for Porte. Initially, they needed a simple, frictionless, and easy-to-navigate solution to showcase Porte to prospective residents during pre-leasing, which fell at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lease-up Phase
When Porte’s team got back on-site in June of 2020, they continued in-person tours and captured pre-recorded videos of most of their units and amenities. Those video tours helped Porte’s team narrow down options for
prospects pre-tour, so they could have an effective and efficient touring experience every time. For such a large building, it was important for Porte’s team to have a library of evergreen video content they could use later down the line. And, they did just that—they used Realync pre-recorded videos during the lease-up phase. Then, Porte used video for other purposes when they reached stabilization.

Stabilized Phase

Porte leased almost 100 units from March 2020 to December 2020 with the help of Realync videos. Now in 2022, at 95% occupied, Porte’s team uses Realync to their advantage—building a library of video content ready-to-go for prospects when occupied units become available. Portes’s team has captured pre-recorded videos of almost all of their units!

“Just because you have high occupancy doesn’t mean you won’t use Realync. My recommendation for stabilized buildings is to create videos of your amenities, move-in and move-out videos, get creative and continue building your video library. The whole world shifted to virtual, and I don’t picture Porte not having technologies like Realync—it’s a forever partnership.” — Gerda Varkuleviciute, Leasing Director at Porte

In addition, the Porte team utilizes Realync pre-recorded videos to narrow down which floor plans a prospective resident wants to tour in person.

“We are able to show occupied floor plan types that offer a better picture compared to an ordinary 2D floor plan. Over the past 15 months, we have been lucky enough to be able to show actual available units to most prospects during our lease-up phase. However, with this coming to an end as we have achieved stabilization, we are able to utilize Realync videos again as an important tool in our leasing process to lease “on notice” units.” — Jenna Edgecomb, Leasing Specialist at Porte.

With some leases expiring, Porte’s team plans to use Realync to rent those units again and again. Remember that evergreen video library mentioned earlier? This is when it comes in handy! Porte’s team is sending Realync pre-recorded unit and amenity videos to interested prospective residents. Furthermore, they plan to continue leveraging Realync as a follow-up tool for in-person tours.