case study • MULTIFAMILY REAL ESTATE in AUSTIN, TEXAS

The Johnny: From 80% occupancy to a self-sustaining leasing engine in six months.

Case Study Details

Client:

Tarantino Properties: The Johnny

Market:

Austin, Texas (competitive urban multifamily)

Timeline:

Six months

Sector:

Luxury multifamily real estate

From 80% occupancy to a self-sustaining leasing engine in six months.

0 %+

Occupancy achieved (from low 80s)

+ 0 %

Increase in website clicks

# 0

Search became top lead source

0

Renter direction requests via Google

THE SITUATION

The Austin multifamily market doesn’t forgive an invisible digital presence.

Tarantino Properties operates The Johnny, a multifamily community in one of the most competitive rental markets in the country. The property itself was good. The in-person experience converted well. But occupancy was sitting in the low 80s, and the leasing team was spending significant time chasing the wrong inquiries while the right renters were signing leases elsewhere.

The digital presence wasn’t working. A templated website with no organic visibility, a minimal social presence, and no paid architecture meant that renters actively searching for luxury multifamily in Austin, in the right neighbourhoods, at the right price point, looking for the right lifestyle, had no reason to choose The Johnny over the competitors they did find.

The problem wasn’t the product. It was that the right renter had no way to encounter it, and nothing to trust if they did.

“It’s rare to find a marketing partner that understands the business side of multifamily as deeply as they do.”

Regional Manager, Tarantino Properties

THE ARCHITECTURE

Before a renter books a tour, they’ve already decided.

The brief for The Johnny wasn’t to drive more traffic. It was to ensure that every renter who was right for the property, actively searching, at the moment of decision, encountered something that made the tour feel like the obvious next step rather than one option among many.

That required building the architecture backward from the belief state we needed to create, and designing every channel to do its specific job in sequence.

01

Search visibility as the first encounter

The templated website was the starting point, not because it needed to be prettier, but because it was invisible. A renter actively searching for luxury multifamily in Austin was the warmest possible lead, and Tarantino Properties wasn’t appearing for them at all. The SEO work made The Johnny findable at the exact moment renters were ready to decide, generating 7,900+ impressions and making search the top lead source within the engagement.

02

Paid media that did its work before the click

Google and Meta campaigns were built around the lifestyle signal, not the square footage or the amenity list, so that renters arriving from paid channels arrived already feeling something about The Johnny before they read a word of the listing. The result was a 5.21% CTR and a 64% increase in site clicks, numbers that reflect the quality of who was clicking, not just how many.

03

The website as the moment of confirmation

A renter who found The Johnny through search or an ad arrived at the site with a feeling already forming. The website’s job was to confirm it, immediately, without asking the renter to work for the information. New users increased 16% to 740. Total views increased 24% to 2,560. More significantly, the visitor-to-tour conversion rate reflected that the renters arriving were arriving ready to move, not exploring.

04

Social as the ongoing proof of community

The social presence was rebuilt as a lifestyle architecture, content designed to create the feeling of living at The Johnny before a renter had ever visited. Engagement rates reached 14%+, a signal that the content was reaching people who genuinely wanted what The Johnny offered. Renters who followed the account before touring arrived already emotionally invested in the community.

05

Local intent as the final conversion signal

222 direction requests via Google represented renters who had moved through the full sequence and were physically navigating to the property. This is the metric that matters most in multifamily, not sessions or reach, but the renter who has resolved their questions and is ready to walk through the door.

THE outcome

97%+ occupancy. And a leasing engine that didn’t stop working.

Within six months, The Johnny reached 97%+ occupancy. But the more significant change was in how the leasing team spent their time. Conversations that had previously opened with a renter still deciding whether The Johnny was worth considering started opening with renters who had already decided, and were using the tour to confirm what they’d already concluded remotely.

When that shift happens, everything downstream changes. Tours convert at a higher rate because the renter isn’t starting from neutral. Residents who chose a place they were already invested in stay longer and refer more specifically. The leasing team’s energy goes toward the right conversations rather than into qualifying people who shouldn’t have been in the pipeline in the first place.

The pipeline that produced 97% occupancy continued producing after the initial goal was reached, because the architecture was doing its work before anyone on the leasing team had to.

“Their team didn’t just fill units. They reshaped our brand presence, optimized lead generation, and built a consistent digital strategy that keeps occupancy high. From data-driven campaigns to storytelling that actually connects with renters, their results speak for themselves.”

Regional Manager, Tarantino Properties

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR PROPERTIES

The gap between an 80% and a 97% occupancy rate is not a marketing spend gap.

The renters who would have been right for The Johnny were in the market the entire time. They were searching, forming their sense of which properties were worth their time, and signing leases elsewhere, not because the property was wrong for them, but because nothing in their digital encounter gave them a reason to believe The Johnny was for them.

The same gap exists in most multifamily portfolios. The product is good. The in-person experience converts. But somewhere between the renter’s first search and their decision to book a tour, something fails, a website that doesn’t match the quality of the property, a social presence that doesn’t create the feeling of the community, a paid campaign that drives clicks from the wrong people. The tour never happens. The renter never knew what they missed.

The question worth sitting with is not whether your occupancy could be higher. It’s what a right-fit renter finds when they search for properties like yours, and whether what they find makes the tour feel like the obvious next step, or just one more option to consider.

contact us

If your properties are good and your pipeline doesn’t reflect it — that’s an architecture problem, not a product problem.

We start every multifamily engagement by looking at what the current digital presence is actually building in the minds of renters who encounter it, and whether that’s enough to make the tour feel inevitable. That conversation is where the architecture begins.

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