Greystar

Greystar is one of the world’s largest, fully integrated real estate companies, specialising in the investment, development, and management of rental housing. A global firm, it operates in over 15 countries and oversees more than $300 billion in real estate assets. To date its brand had been B2B only, reflecting its core development, property and investment management, and construction activities.

The mission was to create a consumer-facing website that is the place "where renters come to belong", positioning Greystar as the global brand for renters by creating a frictionless digital experience that captures and converts prospective residents. This would be a critical first step in moving Greystar towards becoming a direct to consumer brand, consolidating existing services and reducing lead generation and leasing costs.

Scope / Role

Following-on from a period of managed services support for the existing site (2020 onwards), Digitas was commissioned to rebuild Greystar.com as a direct-to-consumer proposition (2024-2025). This included a detailed experience strategy (product, data, tech); creation of a full design system and solution architecture; and then end-to-end design, integration, build, and rollout of the digital platform.

• Exec / co-pitch lead (2020, 2024)
• Exec Sponsor (2024-2026)

Outcomes

• Customer-first experience with fee transparency (e.g. Total Monthly Leasing Price), consolidated search and property information, and new brand design system.
• Key behaviours (searchers, virtual tours) up 30% and secondary property website visits up 8% (driven from Greystar.com)
• Qualified leads / click to apply up (confidential), with forecast profit break-even and ROI well ahead of targets, driving lower-cost leases for Greystar's network of property estate owners
• Modern composable MACH platform (including SitecoreXM, Next.js, Vercel, Azure Cloud, Salesforce, Engrain, Peek, LCP, Matterport, Coveo, Google Maps; see BuiltWith)
• Vertical leading Google Page Speed scores: Accessibility (100), Best Practices (100), SEO (92)

The brief read 'website'; the work was transformation: re-designing and re-platforming Greystar onto composable and system foundations built to keep evolving, with outcomes well ahead of the planned timeline.