Beware: Your cell phone knows where you are. GPS-enabled smart phones and cell tower triangulation have put mobile devices on the map, literally, and the functionality of systems and applications delivered to mobile devices based on pinpoint geographic location—known as “location awareness”—is about to explode. Possibilities for advertising—a text message coupon for $1.00 off a pound of Sumatra Gold just as you’re approaching a Starbucks or a Bud Light pop-up ad while you’re in line for beers at the game—will likely consume the first wave of location awareness. But applications for multifamily, both on the resident and operations side, are in the offing and could further redefine job roles and information availability at the site level. Throw in augmented reality—the use of camera technology to identify objects and offer layered, scroll-over information (think video and hyperlinked pop-ups) on mobile screens—and it looks like things are about to get really interesting when it comes to apartment technology.
“The need for the immediacy of data is one of the macro trends sweeping through the multifamily world right now,” says Larry Cotter, president of Austin, Texas-based Internet listing service (ILS) Apartment Home Living, a division of Chicago-based Apartments.com. In September, Apartment Home Living launched V3 video guides for apartment communities in the top 40 U.S. markets. Using graphic overlays activated by users clicking within a running video, V3 technology allows renters to roll over items to reveal details including floor plans, rent ranges, apartment amenities, current specials, contact information, and more.
To date, Apartment Home Living has kept the V3 focus almost entirely on the YouTube platform, which has about 90 percent of the online video market share, Cotter says. Up next is an even more concerted effort to get V3- enabled video guides into apartment hunters’ hands via cell. “We are really excited about mobile,” Cotter says. “The ability to provide multilayered, multimedia information on our communities out there to someone who is just driving down the road is exciting. The mobile phone can really provide all of the apartment information you need: availability, office hours, specials, and pet policies. But there are a lot of different technologies at play.”
Location awareness promises to deliver those technologies—whether voice, video, data, or Web-enabled—to user audiences in fixed locations, typically leveraging Bluetooth and other localized personal area network protocols. For multifamily, the marketing upshot alone makes for a tantalizing tech proposition.
“Take a UDR apartment location in the Fillmore district of San Francisco,” says Steve Taraborelli, vice president of marketing at Denver-based UDR. “We can target audiences leaving work within a quarter-mile radius of that apartment location, pick a time when you want the message to go out, say 5:00 p.m., and offer those prospects leaving work an apartment discount via their mobile device.”
Advances in providing ’Net-enabled mapping data could further help multifamily operators refine the geographic parameters for delivering data to localized audiences via location awareness-enabled mobile protocols. Norwich, Vt.-based Maponics, for example, has developed “cultural” mapping tools that provide contextual content overlays to traditional digital cartography, integrating street-level data that better defines neighborhoods as theater or entertainment districts versus, say, industrial zones.
“One dimensional and static mapping applications are already behind the curve of the end game in providing a user experience that leads to some type of transaction,” says Maponics CEO Darren Clement. “Too often, mobile applications are just doing distance-based searches like ‘get me everything within 2 miles.’ Well, 2 miles north might put you in skid row, and 2 miles south might put you in Beverly Hills. Applications are moving away from traditional radius-based searches and distance-based searches to include additional levels of intelligence.”
Better Than the Real Thing
That intelligence comes via augmented reality, whereby built-in mobile device digital cameras capture live images and integrate layers of graphic data into the on-screen image similar to V3 video technology. The technology allows mobile users to point their cell phone at a building and interact with the building virtually via their mobile device.
Sound too far out for deployment in the less-than-intrepid multifamily technology sector? Consider that UDR launched augmented reality mobile applications for iPhone, Blackberry, and the Google android phone in mid-October. The REIT is using the Layar augmented reality browser to enable apartment searchers to point their smart phones in any direction and view available UDR apartments within a 10-mile radius of their current location. Digital information, including apartment pricing, availability, distance to property, and the location of nearby museums, restaurants, and other cultural neighborhood amenities, is then superimposed on the smart phone viewfinder. The app has more than 100,000 users since its deployment. UDR would not disclose costs for its augmented reality application, but similar smart phone applications on the higher end of programming complexities can typically be had given a budget in the low six figures.
“The next version of augmented reality pinpoints down to the apartment door and specific units that are available in a building,” Taraborelli says. “Basically a prospect could point a smart phone at an apartment building, select a floor, see what units are available, and make leasing decisions on views and unit amenities without entering a leasing office.” The logical extension to that experience is linking users to a secured online lease application and closing the transaction via mobile.
X Marks the Spot
Location awareness applications need not end with a signed lease. For property managers and maintenance personnel, location-based data—provided by property management software and served up via mobile devices—could provide real-time, on-site information down to the individual apartment door. “The prospect of unit-level, mobile-enabled CRM [customer relationship management] is extremely powerful, as is the prospect of using it on the maintenance side,” says Kris Ellwanger, executive director of business applications for Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Laramar Group. “A technician going through a unit with a GPS-enabled device need only click a lights-out button, and the system automatically registers the unit location. It prevents the need for unit identification for both incoming and outgoing data.”
Behind the Front Door
Location awareness technology offers unit-level specifics to help property managers, residents, and prospects alike.
Applications for location awareness aren’t as far fetched as they may have seemed just a year or two ago. By integrating camera and GPS-capable mobile devices with site-level property management software, multifamily operators and residents can quickly get the following unit-level granularity in real time as they walk the property.
1. Rent status. Location awareness should ultimately be capable of delivering payment and additional resident balance status in real time as a property manager passes the unit door, offering a heads up on who does and who doesn’t need a knock-knock reminder.
2. Work orders. Maintenance personnel can use location awareness to automatically call up, perform, and close out apartment work orders. Instead of constant returns to a maintenance office, mobile devices will deliver appropriate info to workers based on their location on the property.
3. Apartment marketing. UDR has already deployed augmented reality applications for smart phones, enabling apartment shoppers to point a smart phone at a building, get real-time unit availability, place apartment holds, and link to a secure server for completing a lease online.
Likewise, property managers could logically use location aware mobile devices to walk a property and get vital customer information as they pass apartment doors: Unit 105 is six days late on their rent; John Smith in 672 is up for renewal in three weeks; or apartment 212 has been waiting 72 hours on a maintenance request. Location awareness could also provide up-to-date information on common areas, displaying pool hours, clubhouse availability, and/or special amenity or community event information for property managers walking prospects or for residents to self-serve property 411.
Of course all of this isn’t just plug-and-play magic. The GPS and compass location capability of smart phones can pinpoint users within a meter, but cell phone triangulation currently maxes out on accuracy between 20 feet and 30 feet. Likewise the process of maximizing location awareness ROI involves back-end labor that includes establishing GPS identifiers for properties and individual units and tying those location IDs back into a property management software platform of a corporate Web site.
It might even turn out that industry tech partners—particularly the ILSs—offer a value proposition to owners in terms of jumping into location-based apartment applications. “I’ve been excited by the early news on location awareness and the use of augmented reality,” says Peggy Abkemeier, president of Santa Monica, Calif.-based ILS Rent.com. “It might not make sense for the individual owner, but I think it could totally make sense for an ILS. I do think it is a part of the future, especially if it can be delivered in an app format.”