How Birge & Held Uses Self-Guided Tours to Expand Access and Leasing Capacity Across a Diverse Portfolio
“Flexible access has become an operational strategy. Of our 4,470 self-guided tours, 59% took place outside business hours. Those 2,637 tours created 1,978 hours of extended leasing capacity beyond the traditional workday. As search moves toward AI, that flexibility will matter even more. When a renter asks, ‘What can I tour after work tonight?’ we want our communities ready to be part of the answer.”
Kory Nelson
VP of Marketing, Birge & Held
Leasing Opportunity Doesn’t End at 5 PM
The traditional leasing model has an inherent conflict: leasing offices are often open during the same hours prospects are at work. Birge & Held saw an opportunity to rethink that model around how renters actually live and search. By expanding access beyond traditional office hours, flexible touring became an operational strategy designed around prospect needs, not office schedules.
With a diverse portfolio spanning Class A through Class C and more than half of its communities estimated to be Class B, Birge & Held serves renters with different lifestyles, price points, work schedules, and expectations. Across every asset class, one expectation is consistent: renters want access on their schedule. For someone working traditional business hours, that might mean after 5:00 PM. For a shift worker, it could mean early morning. For another renter, the weekend may be their only realistic opportunity.
Tour24 gives Birge & Held a way to expand access without requiring leasing teams to expand office hours alongside it. And across 85 communities, the data shows just how much demand exists outside the traditional leasing window.
Operational Results | 85 Communities
- 4,470 Completed Self-Guided Tours
- 59% (2,637 SGT) Outside Business Hours
- 39% Weekend Tours
- 78% Same-Day Tours
- 58% Within 60 Minutes
- 3,350+ Total Hours of Added Leasing Capacity
- 1,978 Hours of Added Leasing Capacity Outside Business Hours
Capture the Moment of Highest Intent
Flexible access is not a Class A amenity. It is a renter’s expectation. When renters have access, they move quickly. Across Birge & Held’s Tour24 communities, 78% of tours were scheduled for the same day, with 58% occurring within 60 minutes of scheduling. That behavior matters. Apartment shopping can move from discovery to decision in a very short window. A prospect finds a community, sees an available apartment, and wants to experience it while their interest is high.
Traditional touring can add friction to that moment: submit an inquiry, wait for a response, coordinate schedules, book an appointment, and return later. Self-guided touring compresses the journey. Find it. Schedule it. Tour it.
Instead of asking prospects to wait for the operation to catch up with their intent, Birge & Held gives them a path to act when they are ready. At scale, that flexibility doesn’t just improve the prospect experience. It creates more opportunities to move high-intent renters further into the leasing funnel.
Turn Tour Volume Into Leasing Capacity
The renter impact is only one side of the equation.The same 4,470 self-guided tours that expanded access for prospects also created significant capacity for Birge & Held’s leasing teams. Using 45 minutes as the average time required to conduct a traditional tour:
4,470 Tours × 45 Minutes ÷ 60 = 3,352.5 Hours
That represents more than 3,350 hours of added leasing staff capacity in six months. Put another way, it is approximately 419 eight-hour workdays of touring capacity that did not require a leasing professional to personally conduct each appointment. That doesn’t mean eliminating 3,350 hours of work. It means changing how those hours can be used.
Leasing professionals can redirect that capacity toward prospect follow-up, application management, lease conversion, resident engagement, and the conversations where human expertise creates greater value.
That distinction becomes increasingly important as operators centralize. Lead management, communication, follow-up, and other leasing functions can move to centralized teams. But apartment touring remains physical. The renter still needs access to the property. Tour24 connects centralized leasing to the physical community. Instead of tour volume requiring a proportional increase in onsite staffing, Birge & Held can support more prospect activity while creating capacity across its leasing organization.
One Strategy Across a Diverse Portfolio
Birge & Held’s results demonstrate why self-guided touring should not be evaluated solely as a property-level amenity. At portfolio scale, it becomes infrastructure. It extends property access beyond office hours. It captures prospects while intent is high. It creates leasing capacity. And it supports an operating model in which technology and leasing teams each do the work they are best positioned to do. That value can translate across asset classes.
“A Class A renter may choose self-guided touring because they prefer a digital-first experience. A Class B or C renter may need it because their work schedule makes a traditional appointment difficult,” said Kory Nelson.
l Make the property available when the renter is ready. And that strategy may become even more important as apartment discovery changes.
As Kory points out, AI will increasingly influence how renters search and which properties surface as viable options. A request like, “What apartments can I tour after work tonight?” introduces a new signal into discovery: Can the prospect actually access the property when they want to? In that environment, flexible touring doesn’t only support conversion after a property is discovered. Access has the potential to influence discoverability itself.
The Operational Impact
Birge & Held has turned flexible touring into a scalable operating strategy, aligning property access with how renters actually search, tour, and make decisions.
The result is a model that expands access for prospects while creating greater capacity for leasing teams to focus where they have the most impact.