In addition to paying rent, residents can view their account balance. The application is available for free download in Apple’s App Store.

“Our mantra is to make us the easiest apartment company to work with and this app is a natural extension of that,” said Donald Davidoff, group vice president and head of marketing at Archstone, Denver.

“So, we focused our efforts on allowing residents to complete important transactions from their smartphones while on the go,” he said. “Our customers are savvy professionals who live fast-paced lifestyles and expect the companies they interact with to offer the convenience of being able to do business with them right from their smartphones.

“Mobile technology is a perfect fit for that strategy and it has a lot of momentum today.”

Archstone’s portfolio is concentrated in many neighborhoods, including Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, New York, Seattle and Boston.

Mobile rent
Users can check their payment history in line-by-line detail, as well as the status of their service requests.

The company has implemented an integrated marketing campaign to make sure its residents and prospects know about the iPhone application.

In addition, Archstone is getting the word out about the application via Facebook, its company blog, Twitter and on-site.

“We’ve also designed a dedicated Web page promoting the app and placed a graphical ad on our resident-only Web site, where they can do many of the same things they can do with the app,” Mr. Davidoff said.

Consumers can make service requests via the application

Platform extension
Archstone is looking into extending the application to other platforms and has discussed the possibility of developing applications for Android, BlackBerry and other platforms in the future.

Residents can send a message to the company

“We’re regularly brainstorming, developing and testing ideas on how we can implement technology, including mobile, that makes living at Archstone easy,” Mr. Davidoff said. “And there’s more to come in the mobile space.

“The one effort we’ll launch very soon is a mobile-friendly version of our Web site, ArchstoneApartments.com.”

Final Take
Rimma Kats is editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York