How to Create a Property Management Dashboard in Google Analytics with AI

Juggling dozens of listings, tracking vacancy rates, and figuring out which marketing channels actually attract qualified tenants can feel like a guessing game. A property management dashboard turns that guesswork into a clear strategy. This article will show you exactly how to build one in Google Analytics to see your most important performance metrics in a single, glanceable view.

Why Property Managers Need a Centralized Dashboard

As a property manager, your data is probably scattered. You have website traffic in Google Analytics, lead information in your CRM or email, ad performance on various ad platforms, and listing data from services like Zillow or Apartments.com. Trying to connect these dots to understand what’s working is time-consuming and often leads to incomplete conclusions.

A well-built dashboard centralized in a tool that can connect to your data sources solves this by giving you a single source of truth. It allows you to:

Make Data-Driven Decisions: Stop guessing where your ad budget should go. See precisely which channels (Organic Search, Google Ads, Zillow referrals, etc.) are driving the most inquiries and applications.
Optimize Your Listings: Identify which of your properties are getting the most views and engagement. A high-traffic listing that isn’t getting applications might need better photos or a lower price, while a low-traffic listing might need a sponsored boost.
Improve the Tenant Journey: Pinpoint where potential tenants drop off. If many users visit a listings page but few click "Apply Now," maybe the application process is too complicated or the page is missing crucial information.
Spot Regional Trends: A geo-based dashboard view can show you where your most valuable traffic comes from. You might discover a new “feeder market” of people looking to relocate, allowing you to target your advertising more effectively.

The Most Important Metrics for Property Managers

Before you build your dashboard, you need to know what to track. Simply looking at "website traffic" isn't enough. You need specific metrics that tie directly to your business goals: filling vacancies with qualified tenants. Let's break these down by the typical tenant journey.

1. Acquisition: How People Find You

These metrics tell you where your potential tenants are coming from. The goal is to identify your most effective marketing channels and double down on them.

Sessions by Channel: This is your bird's-eye view. It breaks down your traffic into categories like Organic Search, Paid Search, Social, Referral, and Direct. Is your SEO paying off? Are your Facebook ads working? This metric tells you.
Users by Source/Medium: This gets more specific. Instead of just “Referral,” it will show you zillow.com / referral or apartments.com / referral. You can see exactly which listing sites send you the most traffic.
New Users by Geographic Location (City/Region): Crucial for understanding where your demand is located. Target these high-performing areas with your next ad campaign.

2. Engagement: What They Do on Your Website

Once a potential tenant lands on your site, what do they do? These metrics tell you if your listings are compelling and if your website is easy to navigate.

Pageviews by Property Listing: A simple and reliable way to see which specific property is generating the most interest. Sort a table by this metric to find your "hottest" properties.
Engagement Rate: In Google Analytics 4, this metric shows the percentage of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had at least 2 page views. A high engagement rate indicates that users are actively exploring your content, which is a great sign.
Clicks on Key Elements: Did they click to view the photo gallery? Did they watch the tour video? Tracking these micro-conversions shows deeper engagement with a listing page.

3. Conversion: When They Take Action

This is the most important category - it’s where traffic turns into leads. These actions must be set up as Conversions (formerly called Goals in Universal Analytics) to be tracked properly.

"Apply Now" Clicks: This is a high-intent action and likely your most valuable lead. Each click is a potential tenant application in progress.
Form Submissions: Tracking submissions from your "Contact" or "Schedule a Viewing" forms tells you how many people have officially raised a hand and want to talk.
Click-to-Call Clicks: A significant portion of would-be tenants are searching on their phones. Making the phone number on your site clickable and tracking its clicks is essential.

Setting Up Conversions in Google Analytics 4

To track high-value actions like form submissions or "Apply Now" clicks, you must tell Google Analytics what to count. In past versions of Analytics, these were called Goals, but in GA4, you configure Events and mark them as Conversions.

While the technical details can be complex and are best handled with Google Tag Manager, here is the basic concept using a "Schedule Viewing" form as an example:

Identify the action: Users fill out the form on yourwebsite.com/listings and click "Submit." After submitting, users land on a "Thank You" page: yourwebsite.com/thank-you.
Define the Event in GA4: You can create a new event in the Google Analytics UI (under Configure → Events) that fires whenever someone views the "Thank You" page. You might name this event tour_request.
Mark as a Conversion: Once GA4 sees your new tour_request event, you can switch it to a conversion in the Configure → Conversions section to tell Analytics that this is an important action to track for your business.

Now, any report or dashboards you build in Analytics will treat tour_request not just as another pageview but as a conversion, an accomplishment to your business goals, helping you calculate a valuable metric such as conversion rate.

Building Your Dashboard: The Traditional vs. The AI-Powered Way

Once your tracking is in place, it's time to build visualizations to display your most valuable metrics.

Option 1: The Manual Approach (Using Looker Studio)

Google's own Looker Studio (previously called Data Studio) is a free, powerful tool that connects natively with Google Analytics. Looker Studio allows you to drag and drop visualizations to create fully customized dashboards. The typical process looks something like this:

Connect Looker Studio to your Google Analytics 4 property as a data source.
Add a new chart to your canvas (e.g., a pie chart for channel breakdown).
Manually configure the chart by selecting a "Dimension" (what you are measuring, such as Session Source / Medium) and a “Metric.”
Repeat this manual configuration for every chart, scorecard, and table across your dashboard each time you create something new.

The issue is that it can be tedious and involves a lot of button-clicking, with a considerable learning curve. Understanding what is a dimension, what is a metric, and what is a filter vs. a segment can take time. But what if there was a smarter way?

Option 2: The AI-Powered Approach

Imagine if instead of spending hours clicking around, you could simply describe the dashboard you wanted to your AI analyst. The AI could then create the visualizations for you.

The AI is now capable, you can say, “Make a pie chart showing my traffic by city for Q1.” Or “Build a trendline showing tours by week for this year.”

With an AI-driven analytical tool, you have the ability to use natural language commands that translate your English requests into data visualizations. You could do much more with an advanced AI, and we are now using these analytical AI solutions to achieve this:

Create dashboards showing my best-performing listings, displaying the top pages by pageview and the number of applications submitted via the corresponding button.
Compare our traffic from Facebook, Google, and other social channels with bar charts to compare these channels side by side.

This makes accessing data and information almost as simple as having a conversation with an analytics expert, but that expert is on your computer and responds in seconds.

Designing Your Perfect Property Management Dashboard

Whatever method you choose - manual or AI-driven - the layout of the essential widgets we recommend you include in your dashboard at a glance can give you all the insights and answers to any question. Arrange the layout for a logical view with top-level KPIs displayed at the top of the page, then progress to deeper analytical breakdowns as you move from top to bottom and left to right.

1. Top-level KPIs (Scorecards)

These at-a-glance numbers should be positioned top and center on your dashboard. They provide the most crucial snapshot of "what happened" metrics, such as:

Total Users: A total count of visitors.
Conversions ("Apply Now" / "Submit"): Total leads, indicating your pipeline and sales flow.
Total Form Submissions: The number of tour requests, contact requests, etc., as your company defines as a goal in GA4.

2. Where Our Users Come From (Pie Chart or Geo Map)

Just below the KPIs, provide a visualization and breakdown of your total traffic sources.

Pie Chart Session by Source / Medium: A simple pie chart illustrating your top 5 sources (e.g., Zillow, Google Search, Facebook) and showing how your company acquires its customer base and visitor traffic.
Geo Map - Users by City and State: Provided with a map to visualize top cities where users visit your website from, helping target marketing campaigns.

3. Property Performance (Table Report)

This crucial section of your dashboard links website traffic to your listings. A table in this format is easy to scan and sort. An ideal table should list each of your properties, pageview counts, time spent on page, and conversion events such as click-to-call or "Apply Now" form submissions.

Final Thoughts

Building a responsive, data-driven property management dashboard in Google Analytics is a game changer. It transforms your raw website traffic data into an actionable roadmap for your advertising spend, marketing strategy, and listing optimization.

At Graphed, we believe that creating powerful dashboards shouldn't need a data analyst. Instead of wrestling with Looker Studio, we simplify the entire process so you can say what you need in simple English and create a dashboard in real-time, always connected to your Google Analytics account. No more manual refreshing or updating. Sign up with Graphed today and let our AI analyst help you get the data answers you need in seconds, allowing your team to focus on productivity and growth.