Gen Y's New Leasing Rules

Millennials don’t just prefer on-demand service—they expect it. Enter Campus Apartments, which asks if students can order grub with their iPad, why not sign a lease with it? (Make it a game... call it Flappy Leases.) This new technology is also set to make property managers' lives a little easier.

Campus Apartments just finished rolling out Smart.Lease across all of its 62 properties nationwide. You can complete the application process online in five minutes. (Use the rest of the time to figure out how to watch the Olympics on your iPad.) CIO Andrew Marshall tells us Smart.Lease is even customized by property so students can use criteria like move-in date and exact floor plans to pick their desired abode. The platform also gives property managers more efficiency by removing the overhead costs from repetitive clerical work, he says.

Last week, Campus Apartments (its West Philly HQ above) did away with even more paperwork in announcing its partnership with RoomSync to allow residents to pick their roommates using Facebook. Residents will be able to browse potential roommates based on interests, mutual friends, academic majors, and more. (Because electrical engineers gotta stick together. And not just when electromagnets are forcing them to.) Andrew says his team is never short on ideas for automating services and is mulling other areas to geek out on, including accepting emerging payment methods.