About Birdy
Birdy Properties, a PMI franchise in San Antonio, TX, is a multigenerational family-owned property management business managing roughly 1,000 residential units. Started in 1979, the business is now led by the third generation of Birdys.
Gregg Birdy, RMP®, TRLS®, TRPM®, Vice President of Operations and Broker Associate, has been a long-time Second Nature client. After using a Resident Benefit Package for years, he was an early adopter of Resident Onboarding. Resident Onboarding delivers an unskippable lease signing experience for residents that allows them to customize their resident benefits and get a deeper understanding of their lease obligations.
THE CHALLENGE
Lease signing was passive, ineffective and took multiple days to complete
Prior to Resident Onboarding, Birdy was using electronic lease signatures through Rentvine, but there were frequent problems with resident comprehension and compliance. The Birdy team was frequently fielding calls and questions from residents who didn’t understand the obligations outlined in their lease, especially with regard to filter changes and pest control.
"Even with e-signed PDFs, they sign in five seconds, and the ones that know how to take care of your house do it. The other ones that should have read it, didn't read it."
On top of that, the lease signing process took at least three days, with Birdy sending a pricing breakdown, collecting the security deposit, and then sending the lease for signature. It slowed leasing and extended vacancies.
Birdy also wanted more flexibility in how they offered resident benefits. Gregg found that offering the same exact package to every resident, regardless of their individual needs, was limiting. He wanted a way to offer more flexibility without sacrificing accountability.
These three key challenges led him to Resident Onboarding, where he hoped to find a clearer workflow for residents, and a living experience that they could customize to their needs.
THE SOLUTION
Adding On-Demand Pest Control and offering choice
Before adding Resident Onboarding, Gregg faced a dilemma when it came to pest control. He wanted to offer residents the opportunity to upgrade to a higher tier of pest control if they needed it, but he didn’t want to force all of his residents into a more expensive option.
The only way to offer multiple tiers would be to have the leasing team ask each resident individually, and then write it into the lease.
"I never really wanted to sign up for pest control until I had the ability to do it adaptively. I didn't want to put that on my team to have to manually ask them every single time which one they want. Now I don’t have to."
Resident Onboarding allowed Birdy to offer a baseline pest control package while giving individuals the option to upgrade, without adding manual work for staff. Since then, 10% of Birdy residents are already choosing upgraded benefits. That means higher resident satisfaction and higher income.
Saving three days by streamlining move-ins and deposits
Birdy had a multi-step pre-move-in sequence. First, they would send a pricing breakdown email with the move-in funds and monthly funds. Once the resident approved it, Birdy would collect the deposit, and then send the lease for signature.
In total, the process took at least three days.
"It combined three steps that almost took like three days into one," said Gregg. "It tells you what their funds are, and they’re reviewing it immediately after and then you're immediately paying for it."
Resident Onboarding also restructured the deposit flow to make things easier to understand for the resident.
"I will never execute a lease until we’ve received the deposit. Resident Onboarding puts the deposit payment in the right point at the right time... It saved a day or two of waiting for those funds and cut down on internal emails between the leasing and accounting teams."
Automating a full-time role
Building out resident financials was previously very manual for the Birdy team. They had an employee dedicated to creating charges, confirming deposit payments, calculating prorated charges, and more.
Because Resident Onboarding automatically updates the lease and lease ledger based on the resident’s selections, that manual work was virtually eliminated.
"All the charges are now created and set up automatically," said Birdy. "That was something we were doing four or five times a day for every lease that we were sending out."
That time savings is now being reallocated to other areas of the business, including planning updates to the Birdy office space.
Clearer financial statements reduced resident calls
Before Resident Onboarding, every resident would receive a long list of line items, and if the charge wasn’t relevant to that resident, it would simply say $0.
That caused confusion and frustration for some residents. Now, residents see a clear breakdown of their charges as they go through the lease signing process.
"If this fee doesn't apply to you, the line isn't there. It gets rid of all the zero dollar charges and it's just what you actually cared about. For some houses, it’s only five of the possible ten line items. So that's definitely another big piece that made things cleaner," said Gregg.
Liz Sheppard, the leasing specialist at Birdy, noticed the difference:
"Liz knows that she has fewer people reaching out to her with questions than she used to, because before it was a boring long email going over all those moving funds and pricing. Now they have less than half the number of questions because it's cleaner and condensed."
CONCLUSION
Minimal change management, maximum results
As an innovative company, Birdy was one of the first to adopt Resident Onboarding. While training staff on new processes can always be daunting, Gregg is glad that they jumped in feet first. In the end, the results were more than worth it.
"It solved so many problems. The reason why we're willing to jump into new stuff with Second Nature is because we know they have the level of support that they do. I know their character. And that's the one-hundred percent truth.
Now, we’ve sent out 200 leases and counting, and it’s working great. All of our residents are getting a better experience."
