Product Updates: Week 7

Rental scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated, especially when it comes to listing fraud. This week, we're rolling out a new fraud prevention feature that adds a critical checkpoint before prospects can access self-guided showing codes.

We've also made significant AI performance upgrades that reduce unnecessary escalations and improve response accuracy, improved multifamily automation to eliminate repetitive prompts, and added new marketing capabilities for creating targeted property widgets.

Here's what's new in RentEngine!

Fraud Prevention for Self-Guided Showings

Prospects who want to access a property using a self-guided showing code now need to confirm where they heard about your listing before receiving access codes.

How it works:

When a prospect verifies their location to start a self-guided showing, they'll see a customizable message asking them to confirm they didn't hear about the property on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist (two platforms commonly used for rental scams where fraudsters repost legitimate listings).

If a prospect acknowledges they did see your listing on one of these platforms, they can call your phone number directly. You'll be alerted to a potential scam before they access the property, giving you a chance to verify the lead and prevent fraudulent showings before they happen.

This creates a checkpoint that legitimate prospects can clear in seconds while flagging potential fraud before scammers gain property access.

Activation:

You can activate and customize the scam prevention message to match your communication style or address specific scam patterns you've encountered in your market.

Where to find it: Settings > Showings > Prescreening > Scroll to the bottom of the template to edit your message

Pre-Screening Rejection Highlights

When a prospect is rejected during pre-screening, you'll now see exactly why with red highlights on the specific questions or requirements they didn't meet.

Previously, when reviewing a rejected pre-screening, you had to scan through all the responses to identify what disqualified the prospect. Now the system highlights the exact issue: income requirements not met, failed screening questions, or other specific criteria that triggered the rejection.

You can still manually approve pre-screenings in the Command Center if the situation warrants it, the highlights simply make the rejection reason immediately clear.

Where to find it: Click "Review Prescreening" on a "Prescreening rejected" action in the Command Center

RentEngine AI Performance Upgrades

We've made significant improvements to both text and voice AI performance across several key areas:

Multifamily Unit Responses

RentEngine AI now responds more accurately when prospects ask about different units in the same multifamily building. The AI can now distinguish between unit-specific features (like square footage, floor plan, or specific appliances in a particular unit) and building-level amenities (like pool, gym, or parking) when answering prospect questions.

Move-In Date Accuracy

The AI provides more accurate responses when prospects ask about the earliest available move-in dates. It now better accounts for lease terms, availability windows, and property-specific timing constraints.

Escalation Logic

Major improvement: RentEngine AI now escalates significantly fewer messages that don't actually require human intervention.

Previously, the AI was escalating too many messages that it could handle on its own, creating unnecessary work for leasing teams. We've refined the escalation logic so it only flags genuine edge cases that truly need human attention, like complex situations, requests outside normal parameters, or conversations where the prospect explicitly asks to speak with someone.

Accurate Showing Confirmations

The AI now confirms showings more accurately and handles confirmations in more situations, reducing back-and-forth when prospects are trying to lock in a time.

Improved Multifamily Auto-Matching

When you activate a new property, the system attempts to auto-match it to the relevant multifamily building based on address, property name, and other identifiers.

The previous version would prompt you to match properties even after you'd declined the suggestion. Now, if you cancel an auto-match, the system remembers your preference and won't ask you to match that property again.

Marketing & Communication Updates

Accompanied Showing Text Messages

Text message structures for accompanied showings are now clearer, especially when they include location instructions for where to meet.

Instead of generic "let me know when you arrive" messages, prospects now receive specific access instructions tailored to the property.

Customize your messages: To edit your location instructions, go to the unit settings > Showings > "Meeting Location for the Showing". When this field is left empty, the message won’t contain any instructions. 

Website Widget Zip Code Filters

You can now create custom widget filters based on zip codes and property owners, enabling highly targeted property listings for specific neighborhoods or owner portfolios.

How it works:

When building your website widget, you can now:

• Type in a specific zip code or list of zip codes to display only properties in those areas

• Select an owner from the dropdown to show only their properties

Why this matters:

This is particularly valuable for neighborhood-level PPC or marketing campaigns. Instead of sending all paid search traffic to a generic property listing page showing your entire portfolio, you can create location-specific landing pages that display only properties in the neighborhoods you're actively advertising.

For example, if you're running Google Ads targeting "apartments in downtown Atlanta," you can send that traffic to a widget showing only your downtown Atlanta properties, improving conversion rates by showing prospects exactly what they searched for and reducing wasted ad spend on irrelevant clicks.

It's also useful for companies managing properties for multiple owners who want dedicated listing pages per owner, or for creating neighborhood-specific pages on your website that improve local SEO.

Where to find it: Company settings > Listing Widget Builder

Special Offers Without End Dates

Special offers no longer require an end date. Previously, all promotional offers needed both start and end dates, now you can create ongoing offers that remain active until you manually remove them.

RentEngine Cross-Sell in Reports

In the prospect source report, "RentEngine Website" is now labeled "RentEngine Cross-sell" to more accurately reflect what this source represents.

This tracks prospects who were initially interested in a unit that wasn't available and were then pointed to a different unit in your portfolio. The relabeling makes it clearer that these are cross-sell opportunities within your existing prospect base, not new website visitors.

Questions or feedback? Give us a shout via the Chat!