Mobile. The word is everywhere. The gadgets are everywhere. Mobile devices, from smartphones to tablets, do everything. They play games, organize our lives, tell us how to get places, and otherwise occupy our time in meaningful (and meaningless) pursuits. They’re cool, sexy, and just for fun and leisure, right?

Not really. In fact, integrating mobile tech into your leasing office can boost your leasing performance substantially. The best way to understand what mobile can do for your leasing office is to understand the costs of not integrating mobile into your office. What are the costs of keeping your leasing operations immobile? Here are the top five costs of having an immobile leasing office:

1. Wasted Time

To understand this one, imagine one of your leasing agents leaving your office with a prospect, papers in hand, maybe some information about a particular available unit. They get to the unit, tour it, and—good news!—the prospects love it. They want to lease from you, and everyone in the room is feeling the love. It’s closing time… except for one problem: the application your agent needs is back in the leasing office on the other side of the community.

As your agent and the prospect hike back to the office, enthusiasm is whittled away by buyer’s remorse, nitpicking, and general anxiety. The lease is in danger.

Now, imagine the same situation, except your agent is armed with an iPad that is outfitted with an app that features fully functioning leasing applications and lease payment processing—like Property Solutions’ SiteTablet, for instance.

When that moment of “we-want-to-lease-this-unit” euphoria occurs, your agent whips out the iPad, completes the application with the prospect, and even takes their application fee electronically. The lease is closed before anxiety can ruin it.

2. Lost Flexibility

Let’s go back to our unequipped leasing agent example. This time, however, the prospect wants to know if there are any other units available. Once again, the information the agent needs is all the way back at the office. The agent and the prospect hike back to the office then to any available units. If the prospect is still uninterested in your property’s offering and wants to know if any of your sister communities have availability, your agent has to get on the phone and call the other communities’ offices.

Now imagine this agent had all pricing and availability data on her iPad the entire time. Imagine she could even refer to availability and pricing at all surrounding sister communities with a few taps of the finger. You would’ve given your leasing agent the flexibility to react in seconds to prospects’ questions and concerns.

3. Clutter, Clutter, and Clutter

The leasing business is big on documents and files. All this paper has to be filled out with ink, stacked, collated, stapled, labeled, filed, and otherwise organized. Property managers do everything they can to keep it all under control, but, even then, documents are misplaced and confusion ensues. Sometimes, that mess can overflow into your customers’ line of sight, giving a less than favorable impression of your community.

In the age of mobile integration, clutter is no longer a necessary evil. Why? Because when applications, guest cards, and payments are handled on integrated mobile devices, each is tagged, tracked, and placed electronically in the company’s database without you ever having to see a single sheet—unless you want to.

4. Sub-par Customer Service

So we’ve talked about unsightly clutter, inconveniencing prospects with day hikes, and generally taking a long time to serve their needs, but what so much of this boils down to is poor customer service. How your agents manage their interactions with the prospect is how they will treat them when (or if) they become residents—at least that’s how your prospects see it.

If your leasing office appears overwhelmed, if agents seem disorganized, what message does that send about your community? Definitely the wrong message.

5. Lack of Credibility

Customer service ultimately translates into credibility (or the lack thereof) with prospects and residents. These customers are receiving clues from you of what kind of community you are running, whether you want them to or not. When these clues are processed in the customers mind, they will add up to a big thumbs up, a thumbs down, or, most commonly, something lukewarm in the middle. This is your credibility, and there’s no faking or forcing it.

Imagine a prospect encounters leasing agents who have to return to the leasing office every time they don’t know something. Fair or not, this is interpreted as a lack of credibility. Whether you like it or not, it will hurt your ability to close leases.

Now imagine your leasing agents can answer questions on the spot about darn near everything. The technology in the agent’s hands represents the best technology on the market. This is interpreted as the actions of a progressive community in touch with residents’ tastes and needs. This equals a thumbs-up, a vote of credibility.

Should you investigate mobile solutions for your leasing offices? The answer is a resounding yes. Are you missing out on sales-boosting activities by avoiding this technology? Also a yes. Mobile leasing solutions, like SiteTablet, can transform the way your leasing offices convert prospects into leases. So ask yourself, “What can SiteTablet do for me?”