They say
“Our listing sites already report leads.”
We say
Each with its own definition and its own window, and none of them can see a lease. This puts them all on one number.
For Rent Manager
Which marketing signed the lease, not which filled the calendar with tours.
Export signed leases from Rent Manager, upload the enquiries beside them, and rank listing sites and campaigns on leases rather than on leads.
No API key Nothing to install in Rent ManagerNothing to install No card requiredNo card
CloseRev reads a Rent Manager export of signed leases — the resident's phone or email, the rent billed and the lease start — and matches it against the enquiries, calls and tours that preceded them. It answers which marketing produced leases rather than which produced tours, and across a portfolio it separates the properties where a channel works from the ones where it does not. Leases with no matching enquiry are reported as Direct / Unknown.
Last checked against Rent Manager's own documentation on September 24, 2026.
The gap
Every listing site invoices you monthly and reports its own leads. Not one of them can tell you how many of those leads signed, and neither can you.
Rent Manager sees
What was sold, to whom, and for how much.
no shared row
Your ad account sees
The click, the keyword, the call, and what each one cost.
The file
What the export needs in it.
Three things carry the match: who, how much, and when. Anything else is optional and only changes how the report can be sliced.
- Needed
Resident phone or email
On the resident or applicant record. Enquiries arrive by phone from some sources and by email from others, so both columns matter more here than in most catalogues.
- Needed
Rent billed or lease value
Monthly rent, or the total lease value where you have it. Total value is the better comparison when unit sizes differ across a portfolio.
- Needed
Lease start or signed date
When the lease begins or was signed. Signed date ties more tightly to the marketing that produced it.
- Optional
Property and unit type
The split that makes a portfolio report useful. One channel works for a class A building and not for a workforce housing property, and the blended figure hides it completely.
Step by step
Getting the file out of Rent Manager.
Written for somebody with Rent Manager open in the next tab. Report names vary by edition, so each step says what to look for.
-
Export signed leases
One row per lease with a resident contact detail, the rent or lease value and a date. Look for the export that lists leases with their terms.
-
Bring the property with it
For anybody managing more than one property this is the column that makes the report worth producing. Without it you get a portfolio average that describes no building you own.
-
Export every enquiry source
The listing sites, the call tracking, the website forms and the walk-in log. Any source left out becomes Direct / Unknown and makes the rest look worse than they are.
-
Cover the leasing cycle
Enquiry to signed lease is usually weeks, and longer for larger units. Let the lease file reach back past the enquiry file.
-
Upload both
The join is the phone and the email, normalised on both sides, with weak links flagged rather than counted.
What comes back
The page Rent Manager cannot show you.
Revenue by channel, the count of sales behind each figure, and an honest bucket for the ones nobody could trace. Sample figures, from the worked example on the Property Management page — not from a Rent Manager account.
Traced to a channel$265,50059% of $450,000
Sales matched75 of 127high confidence only
Average sale$3,400per paid sale
| Channel | Share | Sales | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 41 | $148,500 | |
| Meta Ads | 12 | $40,500 | |
| Referral partners | 22 | $76,500 | |
| Direct / Unknown | 52 | $184,500 |
Unmatched sales stay in Direct / Unknown. They are never spread across the paid channels to make the total look better.
The argument
What changes when the lease and the ad share a row.
Listing sites report their own performance and mark their own homework
Every syndication partner and listing site sends a monthly invoice and a report showing leads delivered. Each uses its own definition of a lead, its own attribution window, and none of them can see a lease.
The result is a set of vendor reports that cannot be compared with one another and cannot be checked against anything. The obvious question — which of these produced tenants — has no owner and no answer.
Uploading a lease export beside the enquiry files puts every source on one axis with one definition: a signed lease. It is the first comparison most management companies have ever been able to make between their listing vendors.
Tours are the metric available and leases are the metric that matters
Tour counts are easy to gather and close enough to the enquiry to look like progress. They are also where channels differ most: a portal lead touring four buildings in an afternoon and a referral from a current resident convert at wholly different rates.
Ranking on tours therefore ranks on the wrong thing with confidence, and it consistently favours the high-volume, low-intent sources because that is what they are good at producing.
With both files the report gives tour-to-lease by source, which is normally the number that changes a listing budget.
A portfolio average is true of nothing in the portfolio
Marketing is bought centrally across properties that differ by market, price point, unit mix and competition. One cost per lease covering all of them is an arithmetic fact about the company and a poor guide to any decision.
The same source can be the cheapest lease in one submarket and the most expensive in another a few miles away, and nothing in a blended report will ever reveal that.
Splitting by property is the entire value of doing this for a management company, which is why the property column is worth insisting on in the export.
Renewals are revenue and they are not marketing
A renewal produces rent without producing an acquisition, and if renewals sit in the same export as new leases they will attach themselves to whatever enquiry first produced that resident — often years earlier.
That flatters the acquisition channel and, worse, makes a property with excellent retention look like a property with excellent marketing.
Where the export distinguishes new leases from renewals, keep the distinction. Where it does not, the report separates repeat residents from first leases so the two are at least visible apart.
Fair questions
“Rent Manager already does that.” Not quite.
They say
“We manage for owners who want their own numbers.”
We say
Split by property and each owner gets theirs, from the same two files.
They say
“Leasing agents record the source at the tour.”
We say
They do, and it is the same known-unreliable answer people give everywhere. It is worth having beside the match rather than instead of it.
No. It reads a file you exported; nothing holds a credential to your database.
Signed leases with a resident contact detail, the rent or lease value and a date.
Total value where you have it, especially across mixed unit sizes. Either works if the file is consistent.
Yes, and for a portfolio it is the point. A blended cost per lease is true of no building you manage.
They are kept apart from first leases, so retention is not mistaken for acquisition.
Yes, on signed leases rather than on each vendor's own lead definition. That comparison is usually the reason to do this.
Yes, if the enquiry file includes tours. It is normally the number that moves the listing budget.
Past the enquiry file by a comfortable margin — weeks for most units, longer for larger ones.
Log them as a source and they rank beside the paid channels. Omitted, they inflate Direct / Unknown and make paid look worse.
Direct / Unknown, and a large bucket here normally means a source is missing from the enquiry file rather than that the lease came from nowhere.
A contact detail, an amount and a date, plus a property if you include one. No payment history, no screening results, no maintenance records. Encrypted in transit and at rest and deleted with the import.
Leases and rent by source and by property, the share matched, and everything unmatched kept visible.
By trade
Trades that run Rent Manager.
What the report looks like once the export is in, written for each one.
- Property ManagementWhich channels produced signed management contracts?
- Apartment CommunitiesWhich channels produced signed leases?
- Student HousingWhich channels signed beds during the pre-leasing window?
- Build-to-Rent CommunitiesWhich channels leased up the community, and how fast?
- Affordable Housing CommunitiesWhich channels produced households that actually qualified?
Other systems
Also worth reading.
Running more than one system, or comparing? The method is the same and the columns are not.
Closed-sales file Yardi Multifamily and senior housing operators Closed-sales file What to export Closed-sales file AppFolio Property managers and small multifamily Closed-sales file What to export Closed-sales file RealPage Multifamily operators Closed-sales file What to export
All 60 systems 
Rent Manager and the other product names and logos on this page belong to their owners and are shown to identify the software a file comes from. CloseRev is not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and connects to none of them: it reads a file you export.
Start today
Two exports, and you will know.
Nothing to install in Rent Manager, no API key, and no need to have been tracking anything until now. Last year works as well as this month.