The Multifamily Disconnect

The Consumer Perspective

Every day across America, millions of consumers embark on the apartment hunting journey. (add in the unfortunate reality of searching - monopoly of keywords)  search online for "apartments near me" or "2 bedroom apartments in [city]," click on property websites, and immediately encounter a barrage of obstacles:

• Intrusive pop-ups broadly communicating a special with *select units… (what units)
• Generic homepages with minimal unit information
• Broad navigation requiring multiple clicks to reach actual apartments
• Vague floor plans with little detail about specific units
• Promotional language without clarity on which units receive discounts
• Disconnected information scattered across multiple pages
• Poor mobile experiences despite most traffic coming from mobile devices

The result? A jarring, friction-laden experience that forces consumers to piece together fragmented information from disparate sources, with no clear path to finding the perfect apartment that matches their specific preferences and needs. Consumers repeat this process on EVERY SINGLE WEBSITE.

The Property Management Perspective

Meanwhile, property management teams struggle with their own set of challenges:

• Marketing teams spend enormous budgets on broad, ineffective campaigns
• Revenue managers implement sophisticated pricing strategies that consumers never clearly see
• Sales teams attempt to match prospects with units using inadequate tools
• Leasing velocity suffers despite significant marketing expenditure
• Hard-to-lease units remain vacant while easy-to-lease units turn quickly
• Disconnected departments operate in silos without cohesive strategy
• Data on consumer preferences remains elusive and incomplete or hidden

The common thread connecting these challenges is a fundamentally broken approach to multifamily marketing, one that ignores the most important aspect of the consumer decision: the individual apartment unit itself.

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The Traditional Multifamily Model: A Systemic Failure  

The Industry Default Position Tax

The Borrowed Paradigm Problem

Multifamily has adopted two borrowed paradigms that fundamentally don't fit:

1. The Hotel Model: Traditional multifamily websites emphasize amenities and common spaces, despite the fact that residents spend 99% of their time searching for apartments and they spend 99% of their time in their apartment – the exact opposite of how hotel guests experience properties. Yes, amenities are important but they do not solely sell the building–the individual apartment does.
2. The Single-Family Model: Property websites present a mountain of information for consumers to sift and filter through, despite apartments being products that could be precisely filtered and matched to preferences based on unit features, outdoor space, views, floor plan personalities or precise in-building location.

These misaligned approaches have created what we call the "Industry Default Position" (IDP) – a homogenized, ineffective approach that has been replicated across virtually every multifamily property in America.

The Averages-On-Averages Pricing Problem

Perhaps the most glaring systemic failure in multifamily is the complete disconnect between pricing strategy and consumer discovery. The industry's approach to pricing is fundamentally broken at every level:

1. Buildings Designed on Averages: Development decisions are based on market averages, creating buildings with average layouts with less sqft, average amenities with fancy wallpaper, and average features.
2. Pricing Based on Averages: Revenue management teams conduct market research based on averages of comparable properties, focusing on average rents, average concessions, and average lease terms. We even develop re-forecasts based on averages.
3. Generic Pricing Implementation: These generically developed lease-over-lease pricing strategies are deployed through websites that completely lack the infrastructure to communicate them effectively the customer. The result? Pricing models reduced to a generic "2 Months Free" on *select units” popup, marketing focused on home and hope and a website that is not designed to facilitate a decision around much of anything.
4. No Unit-Level Strategy: Revenue teams have no mechanism to implement strategic pricing for specific units that may be challenging to lease due to their layout, view, or location within the building.
5. Disconnected Departments: Pricing teams, marketing teams, and sales teams operate in silos, with pricing changes rarely informing marketing strategy and sales teams left to discover pricing changes after they've been implemented.
6. Invisible Value Proposition: When pricing teams adjust prices to reflect a unit's superior features or location, these differentiating factors remain invisible to consumers who see only a higher price with no clear explanation of the value.
7. No Pricing Signals: Consumers have no way to understand previous pricing, comparative value, or the specific promotional offers that apply to individual units.
8. No Data Feedback Loop: Revenue teams operate blindly, with no visibility into which units consumers are actually interested in, which pricing strategies are working, or how the market is responding to specific inventory. 

The result is an industry where sophisticated revenue management tools and talented pricing professionals are completely hamstrung by infrastructure that cannot execute their strategies or communicate their value proposition. Multifamily pricing has become an exercise in futility — sophisticated analyses that ultimately manifest as a guess, hope and generic banner ad that consumers immediately close.

The Flat, Homogenized Consumer Experience

At the heart of multifamily's problems is a fundamentally flat, two-dimensional approach to consumer discovery:

1. Limited Search Capabilities: Consumers are restricted to searching only for "apartments in [location]" or "1 bedroom near me" — extraordinarily broad terms that might return thousands of options in urban markets.
2. Exposure by Chance: Among thousands of apartments, consumers might be exposed to only 1% of available inventory, determined by which properties have the largest marketing budgets or ILS payments rather than which properties best match their needs.
3. No Personalization Capability: There is no mechanism for consumers to filter the market based on their actual preferences. Want a south-facing apartment with a balcony and side-by-side washer/dryer? Good luck finding that through traditional search methods.
4. Buried Apartment Information: Despite apartments being where residents spend 99% of their time, unit information is buried behind amenity showcases and marketing language.
5. Homogenized Presentation: Every property website presents essentially the same information in the same way, making differentiation nearly impossible except through price reductions.

This flat, homogenized approach creates an environment where meaningful consumer choice is an illusion. The industry has surrendered to a status quo that prioritizes internal consistency over innovation and evidence, clinging to outdated paradigms despite overwhelming evidence that they don't serve consumers or properties effectively.

The Home and Hope Strategy

The traditional multifamily model operates on what we call a "home and hope" strategy:

1. Broad advertisements drive traffic to a generic homepage
2. Consumers navigate through pop-ups, menus and filters to find apartments
3. Limited filtering capability forces manual examination of each floor plan
4. Disconnected information requires jumping between pages for details
5. Promotions are presented broadly with no clarity on unit-specific application
6. Consumers must piece together the apartment experience from fragmented information
7. Properties hope consumers find what they want before abandoning the process

This approach is not merely inefficient—it's actively hostile to the consumer journey, creating unnecessary barriers between prospects, the information they need most and billions of dollars and trillions of seconds have been wasted. Americans have wasted nearly trillions seconds—equivalent to 150,000+ human lifetimes—on redundant apartment searching processes over the last decade. Imagine if we could recapture this time, understand what consumers really want, channel it into creating living spaces that truly reflect what people need and want. 

The ILS Control Grid

The problem is exacerbated by Internet Listing Services (ILSs) that:

• Dominate SEO rankings for apartment search terms to prevent individual properties from gaining organic visibility
• Created a pay-to-play system that prioritizes payment over property quality, uniqueness or management excellence
• Occupy multiple ad slots in paid search results to prevent individual properties from gaining visibility
• Force properties to compete for visibility against the very platforms that should be promoting them
• Collect leads without providing meaningful decision-making data
• Present property information through the ‘list and hope’ strategy with limited filtering capabilities

This system creates a massive inefficiency in the apartment search process, with ILSs acting as gatekeepers rather than facilitators of meaningful consumer connections. 

The Marketing Keyword Monopoly

Traditional multifamily marketing is further constrained by a keyword monopoly:

• Limited search terms (apartments + location, apartments + unit type, near me, near + location etc.)
• High competition for narrow, generic terms
• ILSs dominating both organic and paid search results
• Inability to target specific unit features or promotions
• Generic landing pages for all properties websites with minimal apartment information
• Broad messaging that doesn't highlight an individual apartment, only a homogenized apartment page with filters, amenity page, gallery page and neighborhood page.  

The result is an incredibly expensive customer acquisition process due to the consumer search process, ILS’ eating impressions, poor web experience, broken market dynamics, and frustrated consumers. 

Consumers don’t simply vent their frustrations in multifamily; they painstakingly deal with the barrier laden shopping experience and ignore 99% of the information the IDP thinks is valuable. This has created not just an inversion of value. This has created a whole industry that doesn’t understand its market, its products, its marketing, its goals, its strategy and ultimately its customer. 

Here's the story of multifamily housing in America today:

We build buildings based on averages, then attempt to manage them with sophisticated systems that have no way to communicate their value. We create strategies in rooms that never reach consumers effectively. We hire revenue managers who craft intricate pricing models that ultimately manifest as nothing more than a generic "2 Months Free*" banner with an asterisk that says, *select unit.

The consumer's journey? Go to an ILS and see a map with 10,000 indistinguishable pins or Type "apartment" into Google and see just 1-2 properties next to the suffocating presence of ILS’. Click a generic ad,  "Now Leasing In [City] | Pet Friendly Apartments - Call For Current Specials!" only to land on a generic homepage with pop-ups blocking your view.

Close the pop-up. Avoid everything. Navigate through menus to find the apartments page. Face a homogenized display of identical 2D floor plans with prices attached, devoid of the information that would actually help you make a decision. No specific views. No actual unit photos. No way to find an apartment with the features you actually care about.

This is the grotesque reality of a trillion-dollar industry central to millions of Americans' lives—an elaborate charade of borrowed paradigms and internal consistency, where innovation is sacrificed at the altar of the status quo. Where the most powerful companies in the space aren't those creating the best resident experience, but those who've mastered the art of extracting money from a broken system.

Property managers know it's broken. Developers know it's broken. Marketing agencies know it's broken. Revenue managers know it's broken. Yet they all participate in perpetuating a system that fundamentally ignores the consumer at every turn.

This industry doesn't need incremental improvement. It needs revolution.

That revolution begins with a single idea: What if we actually put the apartment at the center of apartment hunting? What if we could help someone find the perfect apartment in seconds? What if?

The Centroid is not just a better website. It's the complete rejection of an industry built on averages, generalities, barriers, friction, decisions-lag and misdirection. It's the first system truly designed around what consumers actually want. 

And it's about to change everything.

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Centroid: The Unit-Centered Discovery Revolution‍

Redefining the Foundation through Re-Centering

The Centroid platform represents a complete paradigm shift, rebuilding the entire multifamily ecosystem around one central principle: the apartment is the most important element of the consumer decision.

Our research consistently shows that across all website analytics and broad consumer behavior, regardless of property class, consumers overwhelmingly prioritize the apartment itself in their decision process–especially online. The Centroid platform acknowledges this reality and:

• Eliminates barriers between consumers and apartment information
• Places unit types front and center in the navigation
• Creates a friction-free path to specific unit discovery
• Organizes all property information around the unit experience
• Enables personalization based on consumer preferences
• Delivers comprehensive unit-specific content in one place

This fundamental reorientation addresses the core disconnect in multifamily that has permeated the whole industry from the top to the bottom; we aligned the consumer experience with the reality of how consumers make decisions. But it goes further than that, our goal is to give consumers the ability to deeply personalize their search to find their perfect apartment.

The Four-Level Discovery Funnel

Centroid implements a natural four-level discovery funnel that mirrors how consumers actually make decisions:

Level 1: Home Page - Engaging video experience, brief orientation, amenities spotlight but the Centroid immediately directs to unit types 

Level 2: Unit Type Selection - Quick categorization by unit type getting a renter right into the shopping experience

Level 3: Floor Plan Selection & Experience - Visual floor plan comparison with available unit counts, personalize selector tools to narrow their search by feature, by location, by promo (ADD MORE) 

Level 5: Floor Plan Level - An apartment is a floor plan, regardless of the apartment number. Our goal is to not just have ‘information about’ the floor plan; our goal is to create as close of an experience as possible in a structure they will call home.

Level 4: Individual Unit Exploration - Detailed information about specific available apartments

This intuitive structure allows consumers to rapidly navigate from broad categories to highly specific units matching their exact preferences to direct experiences with their future home, without the friction, fragmentation or confusion of traditional websites.

Consumer care about the unit over amenities; it’s about time the industry accepts this truth.

Feature-First Filtering

Centroid's revolutionary single-click feature filtering system allows consumers to:

• Select exact features they want (balcony, side-by-side washer/dryer, kitchen island, etc.)
• Instantly see which floor plans include those features
• View only apartments that match their precise preferences
• Understand which unique features exist in different floor plans
• Discover promotions available for units with specific features or attributes
• Allow for customers to experience their future home like they never have; all of the information they want being in a single location.

This capability dramatically accelerates the apartment search process, allowing consumers to find their perfect match in seconds rather than hours of home page clutter, popup invasion, broad apartment pages or 2D floor plan with a few numbers. 

When you build for what customers want, [something here]

Complete Unit Visualization & Experience

Unlike traditional websites that offer generic floor plans and property-wide photos, Centroid provides:

• Floor plan-specific photography
• 360° virtual tours of specific layouts
• Videos showcasing particular units
• Detailed specifications and rich context for each apartment
• Information about unit location within the building
• View and exposure details
• Proximity to building features (elevator, stairs, courtyard, gym, pool, etc.)
• Unit-specific promotional details

This comprehensive approach eliminates guesswork, allowing consumers to develop a complete understanding of their potential home before ever setting foot on the property.

Renters on a Centroid not only spend 10x more time looking at their homes; they return again and again to see their future home. 

The Dynamic URL Framework

One of Centroid's most powerful innovations is its dynamic URL structure that:

• Creates unique, bookmarkable links for every unit type
• Generates specific URLs for each floor plan
• Maintains specific URLs for individual units
• Creates sharable links for feature combinations never seen before
• Enables direct linking to specific promotional offerings

This structure revolutionizes marketing capabilities, allowing for highly targeted campaigns that deliver prospects directly to the exact units that match their interests.

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Transformative Impact Across Property Operations

Marketing Revolution

Centroid transforms multifamily marketing from the broad, inefficient ‘Home and Hope” process to a precision targeting system:

• Unit-Specific Advertising: Create campaigns for individual floor plans, features, or units
• Direct Landing Pages: Send prospects directly to the exact apartments advertised
• Promotional Clarity: Clearly communicate unit-specific deals and incentives
• Reduced Competition: Break free from generic ads, generic consumer experience and advertising for what customers want–apartment information.
• Retargeting Precision: Follow up based on exact units, floor plans or features prospects have viewed
• Dynamic Ad Copy: Create compelling messages about specific unit advantages
• Measurable Performance: Track exactly which units generate the most interest
• CRM Integration: Send targeted communications about specific units, feature combinations or special bundles to prospects

The result is dramatically lower marketing costs with significantly higher quality leads and an accelerated leasing cycle. 

Less money on marketing, more efficiency for the customers, sales and operations.  

Sales Process Transformation

Centroid provides leasing teams with a powerful sales tool that:

• Facilitates collaborative apartment discovery with prospects
• Allows instant filtering based on prospect preferences during conversations
• Creates saved collections of units that match prospect needs
• Provides comprehensive details about every unit feature
• Enables clear communication of promotional details
• Supports post-tour follow-up with specific unit recommendations through a direct link and experience
• Allows easy sharing of unit details via email, text, or social media
• Creates a consistent sales narrative across all channels

This transforms the leasing agent role from information gatekeeper or forcing sales to correct for consumer confusion to a collaborative advisor helping a renter find the perfect apartment. This dramatically improves the prospect experience and increases conversion rates.

Pricing Strategy Alignment

Centroid enables revenue management teams to implement sophisticated, targeted pricing strategies:

• Create unit-specific promotional tiers
• Implement different incentives for different floor plans
• Address hard-to-lease units with targeted promotions
• Maximize premium unit revenue with appropriate pricing
• Clearly communicate the value proposition of each price point
• Stack multiple promotional elements for specific units
• Test different pricing approaches in real-time
• Measure consumer response to pricing changes immediately
• Adjust strategy based on unit-specific performance data

This creates a tight feedback loop between pricing decisions and market response, enabling data-driven optimization that wasn't possible in traditional models.

Operational Efficiency

The Centroid platform creates unprecedented operational efficiency by:

• Connecting marketing, sales, and pricing in one unified system
• Eliminating communication gaps between departments
• Providing real-time data on consumer preferences and behavior
• Identifying high-demand and low-demand unit characteristics
• Enabling precise inventory management
• Supporting data-driven budget allocation
• Reducing overall marketing costs
• Lowering cost-per-lease metrics
• Accelerating vacancy reduction
• Optimizing renewal strategy

This holistic approach treats property management as an integrated system rather than a collection of disconnected functions, dramatically improving overall performance.

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Revolutionary Data Insights

Consumer Preference Mapping

One of Centroid's most profound impacts is its ability to reveal consumer preferences at unprecedented levels of detail:

• Identify which features drive the most interest
• Understand which floor plans consistently outperform others
• Map consumer preferences against unit availability
• Track view patterns and engagement across unit types
• Measure the impact of specific promotions on consumer behavior
• Analyze abandoned searches to identify unmet needs
• Compare promotional effectiveness across different unit types
• Forecast demand for specific unit features

This wealth of data transforms property management from a reactive to a proactive discipline, enabling strategic decisions based on actual consumer behavior.

Market Demand Visualization

With Centroid, property managers gain unprecedented visibility into market demand:

• When one person visits the Centroid, you can tell with nearly 100% accuracy which unit type they want
• When 1,000 people visit, you can see the shape of market demand
• Track unit-specific views, saves, and applications
• Identify which units have the highest probability of renting next
• Measure the impact of pricing changes on consumer interest
• Predict vacancy patterns before they occur
• Optimize marketing spend based on actual demand data
• Develop targeted strategies for challenging inventory

This predictive capability eliminates the guesswork from property management, allowing data-driven decisions that optimize both occupancy and revenue.

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Financial Impact

Marketing Cost Reduction

Properties implementing Centroid experience dramatic marketing cost reductions:

• Total marketing spend reduction of 30-67%
• Cost per unit advertising reduced by 41-50%
• Cost per NET application decreased by 25-40%
• Elimination of ineffective ILS contracts
• Reduced reliance on broad marketing
• Lower dependency on amenity-focused advertising
• More efficient PPC campaigns with higher conversion rates
• Decreased cost per lead, tour, and application
• Reduce marketing and increase every KPI in your building

These savings come not from reducing visibility, but from dramatically increasing the efficiency of every marketing dollar spent.

Revenue Optimization

Beyond cost savings, Centroid enables revenue optimization through:

• Strategic pricing of high-demand units
• Targeted incentives for hard-to-lease inventory
• Reduced concessions through better matching of consumers to units
• Faster leasing velocity reducing vacancy loss
• Improved renewal rates through better initial unit matching
• Higher lease values through clear communication of unit benefits
• Premium pricing for truly distinctive units
• Data-driven amenity fee strategies

This two-sided approach—reducing costs while optimizing revenue—creates a powerful financial impact that dramatically improves property performance.

Operational Efficiency

The operational efficiencies created by Centroid further enhance financial performance:

• Streamlined sales process requiring fewer team members
• Reduced marketing management overhead
• Simplified budget planning with predictable costs
• Improved inventory management reducing carrying costs
• Faster decision-making through integrated data
• Reduced software stack costs through consolidation
• Lower training costs with intuitive systems
• Improved team productivity through better tools

The cumulative effect is a leaner, more efficient operation that delivers superior results with fewer resources.

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Implementation and Results

Rapid Deployment

Implementing Centroid typically requires:

• Initial setup of unit types, floor plans, and features
• Integration of property assets (photos, videos, virtual tours)
• Configuration of promotional strategy
• Team training on the platform
• Marketing campaign adaptation

This process is designed for minimal disruption, with most properties fully operational on the platform within days.

Immediate Impact

Properties typically see immediate results including:

• Dramatic increase in website engagement metrics
• Extended session duration (25-45 minutes vs. 2-3 minutes)
• Exponential increase in page views
• Improved lead quality
• Higher tour-to-application conversion rates
• Increased application volume
• Improved targeting efficiency
• Better alignment between marketing and sales

These early indicators quickly translate into improved financial performance as the system gains traction.

Long-Term Transformation

Over time, Centroid creates a fundamental transformation of the property operation:

• Complete realignment of marketing strategy around units
• Development of sophisticated, data-driven pricing approaches
• Evolution of the sales process to a collaborative, consumer-centric model
• Creation of a unified operational framework
• Establishment of a continuous improvement cycle
• Building of a comprehensive consumer preference database
• Implementation of predictive demand management
• Development of strategic inventory optimization

This evolution represents not just an improvement of existing processes, but a complete reimagining of multifamily marketing and operations.

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Centroid vs. Traditional Multifamily: The Capability Gap

The following comprehensive comparison illustrates the fundamental differences between Centroid and traditional multifamily approaches across key operational dimensions: