Most student housing communities hire one vendor to build the website and another to run the ads. On paper, that sounds fine. In practice, the ads send people to pages that weren’t built for them, the site can’t answer the questions the ad raised, and budget leaks out between the two.
Straits Row is a good example of what happens when one team owns both. Between January 1 and August 2, 2026, the community generated 340 completed online applications and 146 signed leases, and several floor plans sold out. Here’s how the site and the campaigns were built to work as one system.
meet Straits Row.
Straits Row is an 18-story, fully furnished community for students and young professionals in Chicago’s Printers Row neighborhood, within walking distance of Columbia College Chicago, Roosevelt University, and Adler University. It was developed with Q Investment Partners and is managed by PeakMade Real Estate.
the challenge: two prices for every floor plan.
Straits Row leases by the bed. A student can rent a single bedroom in a four-bedroom, four-bath unit on an installment schedule, or a group of friends can rent the whole unit together. That means every floor plan carries two prices: $1,629 per bed or $6,516 for the full four-bedroom unit.
That flexibility is a selling point, but it’s also easy to get wrong online. If a prospect can’t quickly see which option fits them and what it costs, they bounce. And with the website and media traditionally handled by separate vendors, there was a real risk of paying for clicks that landed somewhere unhelpful.
what we built.
a website that tells the building’s story.
The site opens with black-and-white photography that shifts into full color as visitors scroll, moving from the building’s history to its present. Curated art, custom finishes, and the rooftop amenity deck appear throughout, so prospects get a feel for what living there is actually like before they ever book a tour.
The design earned a Silver MUSE Award for Real Estate Website Design. But the part that did the most leasing work was less flashy.
pricing that answers the question right away.
Every floor plan, from studios through four-bedrooms, shows per-bed and full-unit pricing side by side, along with availability. That holds for both the main collection and The Lofts at Straits Row on the 16th floor. A student looking for a single room and a group of four planning to live together can each find their answer on the same page, in seconds.
paid media built around the site.
The campaigns ran across Google Search, Google Display, Facebook, and Instagram. Instead of pointing every ad at the homepage, we sent traffic straight to the specific floor plan and pricing pages that matched what the ad promised.
Because the same team ran the media and the website, the conversion paths were designed around the traffic the campaigns would actually send. Prospects arriving from an ad about a four-bedroom unit landed on a page built to help them lease a four-bedroom unit, with clear next steps to call, request a tour, or apply.
the results.
From January 1 to August 2, 2026, the campaigns and site turned attention into signed leases:
- 2.18M+ impressions
- 41,833 paid ad clicks to the site
- 367 click-to-call leads
- 148 tour requests
- 340 completed online applications
- 146 leases signed
Several floor plans sold out during that window.
The website itself got better at its job, too. Compared with the year before, average session duration rose 31% and the user conversion rate rose 68%. People were staying longer and acting more often, which is exactly what you’d expect when the page they land on matches the ad they clicked.
On Google Search specifically, campaigns earned a 5.34% click-through rate and a 6.29% conversion rate, adding up to 886 conversions.
what the client said.
Jaylynd Hill, Regional Sales Manager at PeakMade Real Estate, described the work as “a true partnership” and called Straits Row one of the team’s favorite projects, from the building designs created at the start of lease-up onward:
“Threshold’s patience and communication with both Peak and the Straits clients have been nothing short of collaborative.”
what other student housing marketers can take from this.
- put the price where the decision happens. By-the-bed leasing is confusing until you show both options side by side. Per-bed and full-unit pricing on every floor plan page removed the biggest barrier to applying.
- send ads to the answer, not the homepage. Every click cost money. Landing prospects on the exact floor plan and pricing page they cared about turned more of those clicks into calls, tours, and applications.
- build the site and the media as one system. When the same team plans both, the pages are built for the traffic that’s coming, and the campaigns can be adjusted based on what the site shows is working.
- let design do the selling, then get out of the way. The scroll-to-color photography and amenity imagery set the tone, but clear pricing and simple next steps are what closed the gap to a signed lease.
see the full case study.
Want the full story, including more of the site design? Read the Straits Row case study.
If your website and media are managed by different teams, or your floor plan pages aren’t pulling their weight, let’s talk about building a leasing engine that works as one.
