They say
“Yardi has its own marketing reporting.”
We say
It reports on the sources recorded against the guest card. This adds the campaign and keyword underneath them, and ranks everything on rent actually billed.
For Yardi
Which channels produced leases that actually paid rent?
Match signed leases and the rent they earn over a tenancy to the campaigns and calls that produced the resident.
No API key Nothing to install in Yardi No card required
The gap
Your syndication feeds report leads. Your ad account reports clicks. Yardi reports rent. Nobody reports which clicks became rent.
Yardi 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
The applicant or resident contact. Both are worth exporting — people apply from a personal address and are billed at the unit.
- Needed
Rent billed or lease value
Billed rent is the strongest measure because it accounts for concessions. Lease value works where billing is not easily exported.
- Needed
Lease start or billing date
Lease start for acquisition, billing dates for the tenancy. Either works if used consistently.
- Optional
Property and unit type
Studios and three-bedrooms rarely come from the same channels, and properties differ more than portfolios admit.
Step by step
Getting the file out of Yardi.
Written for somebody with Yardi open in the next tab. Report names vary by edition, so each step says what to look for.
-
Export signed leases or the rent roll
One row per lease or per billing period, with the resident's contact detail, the amount and a date.
-
Decide concessions up front
A free month changes what a lease is worth. Billed rent handles it automatically; lease value does not, so say which you are using.
-
Include the contact columns
A unit number cannot be matched to a click. The resident's phone or email is the join.
-
Export CSV and upload
Mapping is suggested and confirmed by you, with manual mapping always available.
-
Add the demand sources
Paid search, paid social, syndication feed enquiries, locator and broker referrals. Each is ranked on rent rather than on leads.
What comes back
The page Yardi 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 Apartment Communities page — not from a Yardi account.
Traced to a channel$756,00060% of $1,260,000
Sales matched360 of 601high confidence only
Average sale$2,100per paid sale
| Channel | Share | Sales | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| ILS portals | 204 | $428,400 | |
| Google Ads | 107 | $226,800 | |
| Meta Ads | 49 | $100,800 | |
| Direct / Unknown | 241 | $504,000 |
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.
Syndication reports leads because leads are what it can count
Listing syndication is the backbone of multifamily demand generation and it reports what it can see: impressions, enquiries, sometimes tours. It cannot see which of those enquiries signed, what they signed for, or whether they renewed.
That is not a criticism of the feeds. It is the same boundary every upstream channel has: the revenue is in the property management system and never crosses back. The consequence is that a channel producing many enquiries and few leases looks strong indefinitely.
Reconciling signed leases against the enquiry sources ranks them on rent. Upload the syndication enquiry export as a source file and it competes with paid search on the same measure, which is a comparison no feed provider will hand you.
Concessions mean the advertised rent is not the revenue
A free month, a reduced deposit, a gift card at signing — concessions are routine, and they are not uniform across channels or across the year. A report built on advertised or lease rent overstates every channel, and overstates them unevenly.
Billed rent is the honest measure and it is the one that reconciles to the owner's statements. On a lease-up especially, where concessions are heaviest, the difference between the two is large enough to change which channel is funded.
Renewals belong to the channel that produced the resident
A resident who renews twice is worth three times the lease the marketing is credited with. Treating each renewal as a new event credits nobody; ignoring it undercounts the acquisition.
Matching on the resident attaches the whole tenancy to the original channel. A channel whose residents renew is separated from one whose residents leave at month twelve, which is invisible on any per-lease measure and is frequently the largest real difference between two sources.
Portfolio averages are the number nobody can act on
A portfolio spanning markets, vintages and price points has no meaningful average cost per lease. The city asset and the suburban one draw on different demand and respond to different channels.
A property column splits the report so each site's budget follows its own evidence. For senior housing operators running Yardi, a care-type column does the same thing for assisted living against independent living.
Acquisition and renewal are different budgets and different jobs
Most multifamily marketing spend is acquisition, but a meaningful share of net operating income comes from residents who renew. The two are managed by different people, measured differently, and routinely blended in any report that starts from lease count.
Because the match attaches the whole tenancy to the acquiring channel, the report separates them naturally: acquisition is credited with the first lease, and renewals appear as continuing revenue against the same resident and the same original source.
That lets an asset manager ask a question that is normally unanswerable — whether a more expensive acquisition channel pays for itself through longer tenancies — and get an answer from billed rent rather than from an assumption.
Fair questions
“Yardi already does that.” Not quite.
They say
“Our leases come from the feeds.”
We say
Then the report will show that, on revenue rather than on leads — which is the first time that comparison has a common unit.
They say
“We have thirty properties.”
We say
A property column keeps them separate. The portfolio average is exactly the number this is designed to replace.
Signed leases or the rent roll: a resident phone or email, the amount, and a date.
Billed rent, because it accounts for concessions and reconciles to owner statements.
Yes, and they credit the channel that produced the resident originally.
Yes — a feed export is a source file and ranks on rent beside paid channels.
Yes, with a property column, on Growth and above.
Yes, with a unit-type column.
Yes. Add a care-type column so assisted living and independent living are not averaged.
No. It works from a CSV export, so nothing is authorised.
Twelve months at minimum; a full lease cycle is better.
Encrypted in transit and at rest, isolated per workspace, deletable in one click, DPA available.
Yes. Renewals appear as continuing revenue against the same resident and the same acquiring channel.
Yes, with a care-type column so assisted living and independent living are not averaged together.
Yes — their placement lists are source files and rank on billed rent beside paid search and the syndication feeds.
Export both where you can. The match runs on either, and a weak link is flagged rather than assumed.
Yes, if concessions are exported as a column. Channels differ in how heavily they need discounting to convert.
Yes. Keep a property column and the report splits by site while the portfolio total stays available, which is usually how regional managers want to read it.
Then those enquiries cannot be matched and are reported honestly as unattributed. Capturing an email or phone at the guest card is the single change that improves the match rate most.
By trade
Trades that run Yardi.
What the report looks like once the export is in, written for each one.
- Apartment CommunitiesWhich channels produced signed leases?
- Property ManagementWhich channels produced signed management contracts?
- Senior LivingWhich channels produced move-ins, and what did they earn?
- Student HousingWhich channels signed beds during the pre-leasing window?
- Build-to-Rent CommunitiesWhich channels leased up the community, and how fast?
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 AppFolio Property managers and small multifamily Closed-sales file What to export Closed-sales file RealPage Multifamily operators Closed-sales file What to export Either file WelcomeHome Senior living operators Either file What to export
All 20 systems 
Yardi 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 Yardi, no API key, and no need to have been tracking anything until now. Last year works as well as this month.