How many renter leads reach leasing@thesitusgroup.com, how many staff type into AppFolio by hand, how long that takes, and what it would take for Clara to do it, as she already does at Western Slope.
2026-10-23. Read-only pass over the leasing inbox, Jul 25 to Oct 22, 2026 (90 days), matched against our copy of Situs's AppFolio guest cards. No emails, labels or AppFolio records were changed.
Contents
Short version. 197 renters wrote in by email in 90 days. Staff hand-typed a guest card for 91 of them, a median 18.5 hours after the email. Another 46 sent enough to make a card (name plus email or phone) and never got one. At Western Slope, Clara makes that card from the email in about 6 minutes and replies.
Renters by where the email came from
| Source | Renters | Card typed by staff | Never carded | Other* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TurboTenant | 88 | 69 | 14 | 5 |
| AffordableHousing.com | 56 | 13 | 39 | 4 |
| Zillow via AffordableHousing | 24 | 3 | 19 | 2 |
| AppFolio text alert | 14 | 4 | 3 | 7 |
| Website form | 13 | 2 | 10 | 1 |
| Direct email | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Total | 197 | 91 | 87 | 19 |
*Other: already had a card and no new inquiry (12), card made by AppFolio itself (4), creator unknown (2), card more than 21 days later (1). Not counted as renters: 7 fake (link-only Zillow messages), 5 Zillow conversations about a San Jose listing routed to Situs (Aug 12–13), 4 non-renter website forms. Lead emails by month: Jul (from the 25th) 37, Aug 110, Sep 111, Oct (to the 22nd) 69. None landed in spam.
| Cards | Per 30 days | At 3 min each | At 5 min each |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typed by hand today | 30 | 1.5 h / month | 2.5 h / month |
| Plus the renters who never got one (cardable) | +15 | +0.8 h | +1.3 h |
| Clara would make | 45 | 2.3 h / month | 3.8 h / month |
The typing time is modest. The bigger gains are speed and coverage: a renter waits 18.5 hours (median) for a card today, only 27% are carded within 4 hours, and 46 renters in 90 days were never entered at all, mostly Zillow leads (19) and website forms (10).
Share of emails that include each field. A card needs a first name (last name can default to "Unknown", as at Western Slope), one contact (email or phone) and the property.
| Email type | Emails | Full name | Renter email | Phone | Property | Unit | Message | Enough for a card |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TurboTenant "New lead!" | 83 | 25% (first only 75%) | 73% | 0% | 100% | 75% | 20% | 75% |
| TurboTenant pre-screener done | 38 | 100% | 100% | 0% | 100% | 32% | 0% | 100% |
| TurboTenant "new message" | 25 | 100% | 0% | 0% | 100% | 92% | 0% | 0% |
| Zillow lead via AffordableHousing | 40 | 100% | Zillow relay 100% | 62% | 100% | 0% | 98% | 100% |
| AffordableHousing own lead | 7 | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 0% | 100% | 100% |
| AffordableHousing "message from a renter" | 88 | 100% | 0% | 0% | 53% | 0% | 100% (mostly "I'm interested") | 0% |
| AffordableHousing application notice | 13 | 100% | 0% | 0% | 100% | 100% | 0% | 0% |
| Situs website form | 14 | 86% | 86% | 14% | 14% | 0% | 93% | 86% |
| AppFolio text alert | 17 | 76% | 0% | 100% | 0% | 0% | 100% | 76% |
Move-in date and bedroom count appear in under 5% of lead emails, except application notices (bedrooms 100%). The shape of the problem in two numbers: 121 of 197 renters sent enough by email for a card; 76 sent only a notification ("you have a message, log in to read it"), which can be answered only inside the listing site.
| Date | What shipped |
|---|---|
| Sep 29 | Company setting for email leads, off by default (#13518); matched email leads go to the guest-card engine (#13658); Outlook mailboxes and brand-new senders too (#13711, #13714) |
| Sep 30 | Fede turned the setting on at Western Slope |
| Oct 1 | First card from an email (Oct 1). One engine, old reply paths removed (#14408); a known renter gets a note, not a second card (#14509, #14549); card source reads "Zillow" (#14963, #14965) |
| Oct 9 – 14 | Zillow relay-only leads matched by name, one card per person across homes (#18085, #19629) |
| Oct 17 | Choice of which email leads Clara answers; sender checks on AppFolio-relayed email (#20621, #20743) |
It needed: the setting on, the browser robot allowed to write, and Clara's own AppFolio user (property-manager role). Before every card Clara checks for an existing one by phone, email, then name at the same home, and waits a minute so a duplicate from AppFolio's own feed can land first.
What a card would hold from email alone: TurboTenant first lead, first name + email, last name "Unknown" until the pre-screener fills it; Zillow via AffordableHousing, full name + relay address (62% also a phone). Situs prospect replies are held for staff approval (supervised mode) today.
Short version. On Nov 2 at 12:36 PM an AffordableHousing.com notice for 3134 W Arizona Ave reached leasing@. It carried the renter's name, the home and one line ("I'm interested in 3134 W Arizona Ave"), and nothing else: no phone, no email, no reply-to address, only a "Reply to message" button that opens AffordableHousing's website. Clara opened the prospect, posted the new-lead card in the Situs Slack channel and created AppFolio guest card 9029 with blank contact fields, then stopped with "carded, no address". Nobody was told that she could not reply. Fede's rule for a fix (Nov 2 night): build a reply fallback only if the email carries a usable reply-to address. It does not, so nothing was built.
What the AffordableHousing notice carries
| Notice type | Reply-To | Phone or email in the body | Seen at Situs, Oct 24 to Nov 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Prospect Message Alert | none | none (name, home, one line) | 4: Jasmyn Means, Vanessa Lumsden, Taquisha Lovelady, Melissa Otiz |
| New Message from a Renter | none | only if the renter typed it in the message (1 of 4 did) | 4: Vanessa twice, Abdoulfaradj Adam, Jodie Piacente |
| You have a new applicant | none | none ("View Application" link) | 4: Jasmyn Means ×3, Aqua Love |
| New Renter Lead (Zillow, relayed by AffordableHousing) | a Zillow forwarding address | phone and the forwarding address | 1: Michael Jordan (our own test, Oct 28) |
For comparison, in the same mailbox Zillow's own notices carry the renter's real email as Reply-To and the phone in the body (Matthew Smith, Nov 2). TurboTenant is like AffordableHousing: a "view lead" link that needs a login.
How common an empty card is, per customer (raw AppFolio guest-card report of Oct 9, covering Jul 11 to Oct 9; our own copy of AppFolio drops every card with no phone and no email at sync time, so it always shows zero)
| Customer | Cards with no phone and no email | Where they come from | Does the renter get a reply? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Situs | 0 of 358 | Staff type AffordableHousing leads by hand after looking the renter up on the site; 76 of 77 such cards have contact info. Clara's automatic card (Melissa) is the first with none. | No. Only through the AffordableHousing site, by hand. |
| Western Slope | 78 of 356 (22%) | 71 from Zillow, "did not provide contact info yet" | Yes. The same renter's Zillow email reaches the mailbox and Clara answers through Zillow's forwarding address: 12 of the 14 empty cards since the mailbox was connected on Sep 15 got replies (1 to 16 Clara emails each), 1 unverified (Katelin Johnson), 1 arrived before the mailbox. The 64 older ones predate the mailbox. |
| JP&Co / Camellia | 13 of 188 (7%) | "no source" (7) and phone calls (6) | Not checked; no listing-site email path there. |
Two more things the check found at Situs
What a fallback could look like
| Option | Works for | Cost | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Reply to the listing site's reply-to or forwarding address | Zillow, Apartments.com, Apartment List, Rent.com. Already built and live at Western Slope. | none | Not applicable to AffordableHousing or TurboTenant: no address to reply to. |
| 2. The model reads contact details the renter typed into the message, verified as exact quotes, and Clara uses them | "New Message from a Renter" notices where the renter typed a phone or email (1 of 4 seen) | small, one PR, no switch | Worth doing, but rare; Fede's call whether it is worth a PR now. |
| 3. Reply on AffordableHousing's website with Situs's login (browser robot presses "Reply to message") | every AffordableHousing notice | new third-party integration, Situs's AffordableHousing credentials, robot work | The only path that reaches Melissa. Fede's decision; depends on whether AffordableHousing matters enough to Situs (56 of 197 email renters in 90 days came from it, section 2). |
| 4. Tell the property team that Clara could not reach the renter (Slack card turns to "Needs you", with "reply on AffordableHousing") | every unreachable lead | small | A floor, not a fix: it hands the lead to staff, which Fede's Oct 27 ruling rejects for anything we can do ourselves. Only if option 3 is a no. |
Fede's rulings, Nov 3 morning. The empty card in AppFolio is fine ("not the end of the world"): staff look the renter up on the AffordableHousing site as before. The website-reply robot (option 3) is a no. The two small follow-ups (the Slack "cannot reach this renter" line, option 4, and a check on the mailing-list skip) are also a no. Closed: nothing is built from this incident; a name-only AffordableHousing lead becomes an empty card that staff work from the site, as before.
Morning asks for Fede (as written overnight; answered above)
Mailing-list skip, checked Nov 3 (Fede: "look into it"). Already closed by code, no fix needed. The rule drops any email with an unsubscribe or list header (auto-reply-guard.ts). The Oct 28 change (#23047) made the inbound path recognise AffordableHousing and TurboTenant notices before that drop, and the Oct 31 change (#24013) sends them to the lead engine. Replay of the nine real skipped Situs emails: all dropped on the code before Oct 28, all taken in as leads on today's main (Vanessa Lumsden's with her phone and email); the "Market Rent Update" control still drops. Since Sep 1, across all customers, the skip ate 9 AffordableHousing notices, 6 TurboTenant leads (Oct 24, fixed by #23047) and 10 AppFolio website inquiries (Oct 3 to 28, fixed by #23280); everything else it dropped was marketing and alerts. One latent gap, nothing real has hit it: Zillow, AppFolio "New Lead", Apartments.com and Tenant Turner notices are recognised after the drop, so if one of those sites ever added an unsubscribe header its leads would be dropped. Not built, per "a gate that would have touched nothing real is not built"; the fix would be to run those recognisers before the drop like AffordableHousing's.