When prospective tenants are researching properties, it’s almost guaranteed that they'll want to confer with rating and review sites. But that means they'll leave the leasing website to research ratings, which decreases the amount of direct leads from that website.

In hopes of increasing the lead-to-lease conversion rate on the leasing web page, software provider On-Site has teamed with RentLingo to include reviews on its clients’ websites.

Unlike Apartment Ratings, which uses random user reviews, RentLingo hires former property managers to mystery shop and provide an overall expert rating and review for various properties. RentLingo’s CEO Dan Laufer often equates the difference between the two models as the difference between Yelp and Zagat: Where Yelp takes loosely-regulated reviews, Zagat curates objective, expert reviews.

This "expert" model gives more credibility so there’s less liability down the road, the company says. 

“We felt it was more fair and it gave us comfort that any future review will never include inappropriate or libelous content which you can see in some user-generated reviews,” On-Site’s director of product management Zeke Kirkpatrick said in a statement.

By including these reviews directly on a property’s websites, users are less likely to click-away to another site and more likely to click-through to set up a showing. As Laufer notes, properties with reviews have seen a 30% improvement in lead conversions compared to those without reviews.

On-Site is first rolling this out only to clients’ properties that received positive reviews, but it will soon be available to all clients’ properties.

“But On-Site has made it so they can easily toggle it on or off,” said Laufer, so properties uncomfortable with the reviews can choose not to show them.