Nobody likes doing comp surveys. Fact.
Property comp surveys are annoying and time-consuming tasks agents just need to deal with. Debatable.
Every property should complete property survey comps regularly. Most PMC’s require agents to complete comp survey’s every week. Not only do these surveys keep your on-site teams up to date on their competition’s habits, but it gives your pricing strategists the insight they need!
We are on board, but can we circle back to the ‘Comps don’t need to be annoying’ conversation?
There are three steps needed to complete your comps:
- Fill out the survey for your property
- Collect surveys from your competitors
- Organize the data collected
Altogether, this typically takes 1-3 hours a week. A lot of PMC’s aren’t aware they can automate these steps to take 2 minutes of your agent’s time.
At Hy.ly, we have identified three ways your agents can complete your property comps. We like to think of this as a maturity curve. Each new method adds an extra layer of sophistication and decreases the time your agents need to spend on comps. Let’s explore the three levels of maturity for sharing survey comps.
Level 1: Manual Survey
Estimated Completion Time: 1-3 hours
Most PMC’s complete surveys use the manual method. To begin exchanging comps, agents need to determine which properties are their direct competition (similar location, price range, and offerings). Then, they need to reach out and see if their peers are open to sharing data. Finally, they can start the process.
This requires agents to spend a lot of time searching through long email chains, organizing excel sheets, and making a lot of phone calls to their neighboring properties.
Did we mention the emails? Loads of them. Just to get your competitors to share their data (even though they agreed to share when you created the email thread).
Manually collecting surveys is excellent for getting the information you want from your direct competitors. However, using the traditional method leaves your agents scrambling to track down all of the information your pricing strategists need.
Not to mention, the longer your agents need to spend on completing comp surveys, the longer they aren’t available to assist your prospects and residents.
Level 2: Survey Swap Software
Estimated Completion Time: 15 minutes
The second level on the survey comp sharing maturity curve is to use software to share your comps. By moving to Level 2, you reduce the completion time from 1-3 hours to 15 minutes!
Level 2 includes free survey swap apps that allow agents to share their comp surveys quickly. These apps only require agents to complete their property’s survey. The reminders, organization, and basically, all of the time-consuming parts of sharing comp data is done within the app.
This method provides the right information from the right properties. Plus, your agent only needs to complete your property’s survey. No follow-up necessary.
The one con associated with the survey swap software method is your agents still need to wait for other properties to complete their surveys. However, the survey swap software includes features that make your competitors more inclined to share.
With Level 2, you get what you give. Users can only see the information they shared. For example, if your peers don’t share their special offers, they can’t see yours. Pretty smart, huh?
Level 3: Scraping Software
Estimated Completion Time: 2 minutes
Level 3 is the fastest of the survey collection methods; it only takes about 2 minutes for your agents to add their special offer information and send it off to the property manager.
How? PMC’s at Level 3 use scraping software to your competitor’s information from their website. Your agents don’t need to communicate with your competitors at all.
The drawback: It collects everything except for the special offer section. This is unfortunate because that is what your pricing strategist is interested in most. On the plus side, Level 2 has free software that makes it easy to collect special offer information. We recommend combining Level 2 and 3 to create the ultimate survey collection method, but that’s just us.
Conclusion
There you have it, the three approaches to sharing your property comp surveys. Now, all that’s left to do is pick the one(s) right for you!
