I mystery shopped six apartment communities and it got me in the door

Six weeks ago I knew nothing and had no way in. Someone in another thread said leasing response time is where most communities lose money, so I decided to measure it instead of reading about it.

I picked six communities between 90 and 300 units in one submarket, all with online listings. Sent a website inquiry from a real email at 7:40pm on a Tuesday, same wording each time, one bedroom, moving in about six weeks. Then I logged everything on a spreadsheet: time to first response, channel, whether they asked a qualifying question, whether they offered a specific tour time, and whether anyone followed up after the first contact.

Results. Two responded within 40 minutes, both automated but one of those actually offered three tour slots I could click. One responded at 11am the next morning from a person. One responded 31 hours later. Two never responded at all. Of the four who responded, only two followed up when I didn't reply. One of the non-responders had a leasing office I walked into on a Saturday and they had no record of the inquiry.

The part that nearly wrecked it: my first draft of the writeup was basically a list of what everyone did wrong, and I almost emailed it to the regional manager of the worst one. A friend who runs a small service business read it and said you've just told a stranger their team is bad at their job, what do you expect back. I rewrote it as timestamps with no adjectives, sent it to a regional at one of the mid-performers, and said I found this interesting and I'm trying to learn the business.

She replied in a day, we met for coffee, and I'm now working weekend tours at one of their communities. It pays badly. I've learned more in three shifts than in three months of reading.

What I'd keep: the timestamps and nothing else. The moment I removed my opinions the document became useful to somebody.