Picture this: A highly motivated prospect schedules a self-guided tour at your community for 6:30 PM on a Thursday. They drive 25 minutes to get there. They find the parking lot, but then… they’re stuck.
Which entrance do they use? Where is Building C? Is the leasing office to the left or right of the pool? The leasing agent has left for the day, no one is on-site to ask, no signage is displayed pointing the way. After ten minutes of wandering, they give up and leave. No tour. No lease. In other words, another lost lead.
This scenario plays out more often than operators realize. And it’s not a prospect problem, but a technology gap. The rise of self-guided touring has been one of the most impactful shifts in multifamily leasing, but the experience has historically had a critical weak point: once a prospect arrives on-site, they’re often on their own.
That’s why we built Wayfinding technology for self-guided tours.
What Is Rently Wayfinding for Self-Guided Tours?
Wayfinding is Rently’s proprietary GPS-style navigation layer built directly into our self-guided touring experience for multifamily communities. Think of it as Google Maps, designed specifically for an apartment community, accessible on any smartphone through Rently’s app or web browser, and requiring no Wi-Fi, beacons nor onsite signage to operate.
Rently Self-Guided Tours with Wayfinding technology combine enterprise-grade smart access hardware or shackle-style lockboxes with intelligent leasing automation lead nurturing. Prospects verify their identity, receive a secure, time-limited access code, and tour your property at their convenience — whether that’s Saturday evening or Monday at 7 AM. You get a notification of the tour to stay in full control. They get the experience they expect. Perfect for pairing with agent-led tours for real touring flexibility.
When a prospect arrives for their tour, Rently’s Wayfinding feature activates on their phone as a real-time “blue dot” map. It guides them through each step of their visit:
- – Where to park when they arrive
- – How to locate the lockbox or access control panel at the main entry point of the community
- – The best route to walk to their scheduled unit or units, plus one-time code to access the unit(s)
- – Points of interest along the way — the pool, gym, clubhouse, and other amenities you want them to see
The result is a completely frictionless, true self-guided tour experience — no agent required, no phone calls or signage needed and no lost prospects. Renters describe it as “having a personal tour guide in the palm of their hand.” Check out our other blog to learn more about the renter experience of Wayfinding.
Why This Matters for Your Leasing Team
Self-guided tours have already proven their value: they expand availability to 24/7, reduce the burden on leasing staff saving approximately 30-minutes per tour, and accommodate the more than half of renters who prefer to tour outside of traditional business hours. But a self-guided tour that leaves prospects confused or lost can actually do more harm than good — creating a negative first impression of your community.
Rently’s Wayfinding GPS-style mapping technology closes that gap. Here’s what changes when you add it to your leasing stack:
1. First Impressions Go From Frustrating to Frictionless
A confused prospect is a lost lead. When renters can navigate your community confidently and independently, the tour itself becomes a selling point. They spend their time exploring amenities and envisioning themselves living there — not trying to figure out which door to use, path to take or what code to enter at each amenity.
The data backs this up: communities using Rently’s Wayfinding see a 20% increase in post-tour community ratings on average. One top multifamily community saw its average rating climb from 3.83 to 4.58 after implementation.
“The ease and convenience of Wayfinding has been a game-changer for both our prospects and our leasing team. Prospects arrive knowing exactly where to go, and our team spends less time fielding ‘where do I go?’ calls.”
— Samantha, Community Manager, Bell Partners
2. More Tours Get Completed — Which Means More Leases
Incomplete tours are a silent conversion killer. Rently’s Wayfinding eliminates the most common reasons a self-guided tour goes wrong before it even starts. With turn-by-turn guidance from parking spot to front door, to amenities and back to parking lot, prospect no-shows and abandoned tours decrease substantially.
Communities deploying Wayfinding see a 15% increase in the rate of completed tours converting to signed leases, typically 1–2 additional leases per month per community.
PRG Real Estate, which owns and manages over 11,000 units across 43 communities, reported a 28% increase in after-hours tours after implementing Rently’s Wayfinding, with 85% of leads scheduling and completing their tour the same day they inquired.
3. Your Team Gets Time Back
Every time a prospect calls during their self-guided tour to ask for directions, that’s a leasing agent pulled away from more valuable work. Wayfinding handles all of the logistical hand-holding automatically, reducing repetitive, low-value leasing tasks by 80–90% and saving your team roughly 30 minutes per tour. Rently’s self-guided touring platform also sends tour confirmations, reminders, post-tour follow ups and when tours are missed, the lead is nurtured to reschedule their tour – so no lead is missed or goes cold. All without an agent having to step in and manage that, saving even more valuable time.
That time adds up. For a busy community running 50 self-guided tours a month, that’s 25 hours of staff time recovered every month — time that can be redirected toward hot lead follow-up, lease renewals, and closing.
4. You Control the Tour Narrative
Rently Wayfinding isn’t just navigation — it’s a storytelling tool. Leasing managers can customize the tour route to highlight exactly what they want prospects to see. That means you can route every visitor past your newly renovated fitness center, through the courtyard, and by the rooftop before they reach the unit. Great amenities drive signed leases, and Wayfinding makes sure prospects actually see them. You can even ensure prospects are not walking past construction areas or the trash bins areas, the routes are completely customizable. Once your self-guided tours are set up, you can even verify the route using the “Tour Simulator” right from the Rently Manager portal and on your mobile device. You can see exactly what your prospects experience along their journey when touring your communities.
Rently Wayfinding setup is done entirely from the Rently Manager Portal. Property managers simply drop digital map pins on their community map to designate the unit, parking area, amenities, and points of interest they want to highlight. The whole thing takes less than a minute.
How a Wayfinding Tour Works: Step by Step
1: Prospect schedules a tour: Renters can book self-guided tours from Rently’s ILS or from our clients’ listings Apartments.com, Zillow, or another integrated ILS.
2: Arrival for tour: When the renter checks in for their tour, a GPS-style map appears in the Rently app or web browser. No download required, no Wi-Fi nor beacons needed.
3: Following the guided route: Step-by-step directions lead them to the unit they’re scheduled to tour, where they can explore at their own pace. They can also select amenities on the map to add to their tour.
What Sets Rently Apart from Other Self-Guided Tour Solutions
Not all self-guided touring solutions are created equal. Most on the market today are really “self-access” tours — a lockbox code is issued and the prospect is left to figure out the rest on their own, often with a PDF map or relying on on-site signage. Some even say to call another phone number when at the gate and a code will be provided, so the actual user experiences are not very seamless.
Rently is the only self-guided touring provider that has built Wayfinding navigation into its platform.
Here’s what that difference looks like in practice:
Who Benefits from Rently Wayfinding?
Rently Self-Guided Tours with Wayfinding was designed with the full leasing team in mind — not just one role. Here’s how different stakeholders experience the impact:
Leasing Agents & On-Site Teams
Agents spend less time scheduling tours, escorting leads on tours, fielding directional phone calls, and handling prospect frustration. With tour logistics automated, teams can focus on follow-up and conversion activities. Rently Self-guided Tours with Wayfinding also reduces the urgency to staff evening and weekend hours just to cover tour requests.
Property & Regional Managers
For managers overseeing multiple communities, Rently Self-guided Tours with Wayfinding provides a consistent, high-quality tour experience across every property. Tour completion data and community ratings flow through the Rently Manager Portal, giving managers clear visibility into touring performance without requiring manual check-ins.
Owners, Operators & Asset Managers
Shorter vacancy periods and stronger tour-to-lease conversion rates have a direct line to NOI. With Rently Self-guided Tours with Wayfinding, communities lease faster — and the modern mapping Rently generates can also be used in marketing materials, giving assets a polished digital presence that sets them apart.
Getting Started Is Easier Than You Think
One of the most common hesitations around new leasing technology is implementation time. Rently Self-guided Tours with Wayfinding was built to eliminate that barrier entirely.
Setup takes less than one minute, once a community map is provided. From the Rently Manager Portal, leasing managers simply open their community map and drop digital pins on the locations they want included in the tour: the parking area, unit entry, amenities, and any other points of interest. No physical hardware, no Wi-Fi infrastructure, no technician visit required.
Once configured, every prospect who schedules a self-guided tour automatically receives the Rently Wayfinding experience through Rently’s app or a direct web link — no app download required on the renter’s side.
For PRG Real Estate, the entire journey from contract signing to going live with self-guided tours with Wayfinding took just two weeks across their portfolio.
The Bottom Line
Self-guided touring is no longer optional in multifamily leasing — it’s an expectation. Most multifamily communities use self-guided touring to increase leasing velocity, reduce team workload, and exceed renter expectations. But offering a self-guided tour without navigation is an incomplete experience that risks losing your highest-intent prospects at the most critical moment: when they’re standing at your front gate.
Rently’s Self-Guided Tours with Wayfinding turn a friction point into a leasing advantage. It gives prospects the confidence to explore your community independently, puts your best amenities front and center, and delivers a first impression that’s polished, professional, and persuasive.
It’s the self-guided tour your community deserves — and the one today’s renters expect.
Ready to see Wayfinding in action?
Rently’s Wayfinding Self-Guided Tours are available today for multifamily communities of all sizes. See how it could work for your properties.
Sources
• Rently Renter Survey Data (internal)
• Rently Touring Platform Analytics (internal)
• PRG Real Estate Case Study
• Greystar Community Ratings Data (via Rently client reporting)
• Bell Partners Customer Feedback (via Rently)
• Rently Wayfinding Product Documentation
• Multi-Housing News — Rently’s Wayfinding Navigation Optimizes Self-Guided Tours
