How Walk2Campus Increased Tour-to-Lease Conversion 32% with Rilla

About Walk2Campus

Walk2Campus provides student housing for university students across 8 markets, with thousands of bed spaces under management. Unlike traditional apartment operators, Walk2Campus serves a dual audience: the students who choose where to live, and the parents who typically pay the bills. This dual-audience dynamic makes the leasing conversation especially high-stakes — every tour must be thorough, accurate, and consistent.

“Going from having 1% visibility to 100% visibility now that we use Rilla has been completely eye-opening.”

Helen Holcomb

Regional Manager, Walk2Campus

32% More Leases — and 40 Hours a Month Back for Coaching That Actually Scales

For Walk2Campus, the leasing experience is everything. The company doesn't just market to students — it markets to their families. Parents are often the decision-makers and the ones signing checks, which means every tour needs to communicate the value of the property clearly, thoroughly, and consistently, regardless of who's conducting it. Before Rilla, ensuring that consistency happened required Helen to be physically present in each market. Training happened on-site. Coaching required flying in. A week of her time would go toward shadowing, ride-alongs, and one-on-one sessions — time that crowded out everything else her remote leadership role demanded.

Rilla eliminated the need to be in the room. By recording leasing conversations during the touring process, Walk2Campus gave Helen the ability to listen to exactly what was being said — not a summary, not a report from a manager, but the actual conversation. She could hear tone, inflection, and pace. She could go to the exact moment where a rep failed to explain utilities or amenities correctly and address it directly. Coaching became specific, timely, and grounded in evidence rather than memory.

The time math alone tells a powerful story. Before Rilla, reviewing what was happening across Helen's markets consumed roughly 40 hours per month — time spent traveling, sitting in on tours, and trying to observe as much as possible during limited in-person windows. With Rilla, she can review conversations and add coaching notes in 20 minutes. That's not just time saved — it's a fundamental change in how centralized leasing leadership can operate at scale.

Rilla Intelligence extended that capability further. By asking pinpointed questions across all recorded conversations at once, Helen can pull out recurring objections, moments of hesitancy, and topics that generate excitement from prospects. That intelligence shapes how the team trains, what they emphasize on tours, and where they focus their coaching energy. Instead of waiting to observe a problem organically, Helen can proactively surface it from data and address it before it costs a lease.

The results showed up directly in the numbers. When Walk2Campus compared its tour-to-lease conversion rate year-over-year — before Rilla versus after — they saw a 32% increase. That's not a marginal improvement. It reflects a leasing team that's more consistent, better coached, and better equipped to handle the full range of questions and objections that come up when talking to both students and their families.

The team's response to Rilla also stood out. Rather than pushing back on being recorded, Helen's leasing staff adopted it openly and ran with it. They listened to their own conversations, took the feedback, and internalized it. Helen describes the result simply: "I can tell that they take the feedback that I give them through Rilla, and it has been more consistent." When a team owns the tool rather than tolerates it, the compounding effect on performance is real.