Atlanta-based Pegasus Residential manages more than 40,000 luxury apartment homes across the southeastern U.S. for various institutional clients, partnerships, and individual owners. With a focus on high energy sales and support structure, the company is committed to abandoning outdated industry practices that increase risk exposure and sacrifice asset value.
Pegasus Residential identified significant inefficiencies on the back end of its leasing process, requiring an unacceptable time commitment from its teams to process leasing deposits at move-in and refunds upon move-out. On-site associates were so consumed with debt recovery responsibilities that overall leasing efforts took a back seat. Conversely, too little attention to unpaid account balances led to lost revenue.
“When we looked at the archaic nature of security deposits and the time spent dealing with them on the back end, that sacrificed leasing velocity,” said Kurt Blanton, Vice President of Accounting at Pegasus Residential. “There’s always a better way to do things. Anything we can do to make the leasing process more efficient and easier on our residents and our teams, that’s our goal.”
Pegasus Residential needed a financial technology solution to streamline move-outs, mitigate financial risk, and reduce the role of on-site associates to optimize revenue capture.
With LeaseLock’s financial technology platform, Pegasus Residential replaces security deposits with lease insurance in order to predict future rent loss and property damage and thus, recapture net operating income (NOI) that would otherwise have been written off as bad debt. Expedited claims processing and maximized debt recovery helped Pegasus properties improve operational efficiency and drive greater asset value.
“Because filing claims with LeaseLock is so smooth, our property managers aren’t chasing down residents to get a new email address, telephone number, or forwarding address,” Blanton said. “LeaseLock streamlines operations not just for the accounting group but for the property management group and the on-site staff.”
Since launch, Pegasus Residential has experienced a 66% reduction in final account balances with a projected annual NOI lift of $187 per home. Contributing to those favorable numbers is a streamlined move-out process that reduces unit turn time by 4 days.
LeaseLock’s deposit-free solution has been adopted by 98% of Pegasus residents. In addition, Pegasus properties have rolled out LeaseLock at renewal, which helps increase resident retention, eliminate costly administration, and boost ancillary income.
“Deposits pose a financial barrier for many prospective renters, but LeaseLock effectively removes it,” said Wendy Dorchester, Senior Vice President of Operations at Pegasus. “We’re excited to upgrade the resident leasing experience at all of our communities and improve the protection and NOI for our clients and their assets.”
Blanton added that Pegasus Residential will continue to seek out technologies like LeaseLock to drive property performance.
For a closer look at Pegasus Residential’s decision-making process and performance highlights, including total estimated asset value increase across its portfolio, click to download the case study digest:
