When your team is preparing to lease 500, 1,000, or even 4,000 apartments, clarity matters.
Not just in your timelines or your floorplans—but in how each space communicates. Because at scale, confusion costs time. And vacant square footage doesn’t explain itself.
So how do you help a student, or a parent, or a leasing team see the potential of an apartment before it’s lived in?
That’s the problem CORT was solving when they stepped into a 470-square-foot studio at Loria Ansley, a high-rise student housing development near the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Midtown Atlanta.
Not with a design package. With a perspective.
Disclaimer
The above podcast episode was generated using AI based on an interview transcript. While the content remains true to the original conversation, the voices, tone, and delivery were synthesized and do not represent actual recordings of the speakers. This AI-generated format is intended to enhance accessibility and provide an alternative way to engage with the discussion.
How to Make Small Student Apartments Lease Faster
CORT Account Executive Kenny Gallo didn’t walk in with a checklist. He walked in with a memory.
“As soon as I walked in, I stepped out of my current mindset and back into the shoes of my 19-year-old self,” Kenny said. “I asked myself—what would that version of me have needed to feel at home here?”
Instead of leading with product, he led with empathy. And that shaped every decision from there.
The apartment was technically move-in ready—cleaned, inspected, functional. The paint was fresh. The appliances worked. From an operational standpoint, it checked every box.
But that’s not the same as someone walking in and immediately understanding how they’d live there.
So Kenny created zones. A rug that defined the living area. A small table near the window to serve as both a dining spot and study space. The bed faced the balcony—to give the apartment a sense of openness, not enclosure.
No staging flourishes. Just clear, functional purpose.
“I always want it to feel like the person walking through could take a deep breath and say, ‘Yeah, this works. I can see myself here.’”
This wasn’t an aesthetic exercise. It was a leasing solution—built for the people touring, the people signing, and the teams trying to meet pre-lease targets without adding friction.
How a Furnished Model Apartment Can Accelerate Leasing
Kenny didn’t change the floorplan. But he changed the experience of walking through it.
Instead of asking where a bed might go, potential renters could focus on whether the space fit their life. Instead of explaining how the layout worked, leasing staff could guide a story that was already visible.
That’s not just a good walkthrough. That’s a faster one. A more confident one. The kind that helps reduce the number of second visits, the need for imagination, and the pressure on your teams to fill in gaps.
It’s what happens when the model apartment isn’t treated like a marketing feature—but like a tool.
Why Furnished Apartments Work in High-Volume Student Housing
For student housing developers and institutional operators, model strategy is often a checklist item: design the layout, furnish it, open it.
But in reality, your model apartment is doing more than welcoming future residents—it’s doing sales enablement. At speed. At volume.
And whether you’re opening a new property with 1,000 apartments or managing absorption across multiple floorplans, a thoughtfully furnished apartment is not a nice-to-have. It’s a clarity tool.
“I think offering furnished apartments really helps with the convenience and move-in readiness,” Kenny said. “It also really prioritizes the comfort, functionality, and aesthetics of a space. And it really makes it feel like a home and not just four walls.”
What Makes CORT a Scalable Furnishing Partner for Student Housing
Yes, CORT rents furniture. But that’s not the point.
What makes CORT different isn’t the product—it’s how the people behind it approach every apartment. With intention. With empathy. And with the operational capacity to support hundreds—or thousands—of placements across markets.
In Kenny’s case, that meant imagining a first-year student, alone in a new city, looking for a space that felt stable. Functional. Possible.
That kind of thinking doesn’t get added to the invoice.
But it does show up in the room.
And at scale, that kind of thinking is what separates one walkthrough from another. One lease-up from the next.
“Not polished. Not temporary. Just calm. Clear. Like a place you’d want to come back to.”
How to Support Leasing Teams Ahead of Pre-Lease Season
If you’re managing your next launch, coordinating multiple deliveries, or considering how to support your leasing teams with fewer unknowns—
You don’t need more design.
You need a partner who understands how space affects story, how layout affects clarity, and how furnishing—done with empathy—can shorten the path to yes.
That’s the work. And that’s where CORT shows up.
