Changing the expectation for resident turnover

As we have a fantastic resident retention webinar coming up, I'm in full retention mode right now. And I want to throw out a question to you all. I believe people live up to (or down to) whatever expectations are made of them. Right now, the national turnover rate is consistently 60%, but what would happen if you told a group of property managers that their comps all had 40% resident turnover. If you made that their focus, do you think they would somehow find a way to hit that number?

Hello Brent,

Numbers can be reached, but the goal setters need to understand that it is a team effort. It means they have to bring something to the table and normally that means money to invest into the property and the training of their personnel. Short word, “the means to get there”.

So, it is one thing to set a goal, now it needs to be outlined on how and what it will take to achieve the goal!

Hey Nate - I agree 100%. Even if it just means time allocation, simply asking someone to do more with the same amount of time won't be realistic.

I agree with you both. As the manager of a seniors community for those 62 and older my main focus is retention. Not only do I have a very tiny demographic to pull from, but in preparation for the so called Boomer Boom my market is over developed with seniors communities. Add to the there is no way to close the "back door" on move-outs related to illness or death, retention is all I have.
Nate you are right on target, we have to spend money to achieve the retention goals. The owners of my community every year hold a "wish list" meeting. We are asked to provide proposals for things to enhance our communities and make residents want to stay. For instance one of the things I have that my comps don't is raised flower beds for resident planting. This is hugely popular here so this year we had an additional bed built. We also offer a resident $100 of their rent each month to be an activities director. She is only responsible for two resident functions per month though every director I've had has done so much more that is required. I really don't know why more communities don't do this. For $1,200 a year we create a true sense of community.
In 4 years I’ve had 6 residents move out on a 60 day notice to go elsewhere, all the rest were due to illness or death.

I agree with you all about the budget, but I want to make a note that there are a ton of no-cost options that you all probably do without even thinking about it, but the average community doesn't realize. For example, many communities have a completely wrong strategy about retaining residents, or no strategy at all. When a resident leaves, we often too easily slide into the "well, we need to lease that apartment" rather than sitting back and asking ourselves, "what could we have done to keep that person?" If we lost 10 residents one month, a regional should be able to ask for the reasons for each of those lost residents, but too often, that self analysis simply isn't done.

I absolutely get what you are saying, Brent. Every year the on site team should be evaluating its turnover percentage and figuring out where they can improve. If a property loses its current residents to other apartment communities, then they better be asking what it wrong. Obviously if they lose residents to house buying or building there isn't anything they can do to help this, or if they lose people due to job relocation. I think you are right that if the expectation is there, and the challenge is made, then the team should step up to the plate. I don't think it has anything at all to do with the budget.

Here is a great example. I will not name the management company because one of their corporate execs posts on here, too, and I do not mean any disrespect at all. I just assisted a young man move out of this complex and into another last weekend. He was in a downstairs 1 bedroom and had been without sleep pretty much the whole year he was there because of a dog issue. It got so bad that when he complained the last time, the upstairs neighbor was informed so the neighbor spent the next (and final 3 months of his lease term) placing his dog's poop at his front door. It almost came to blows at one point and this is the point that he came to me to ask for help.

Now, the property was for sale at that time and the former manager must have left and a new one started during the middle of all this. The new manager never called him until the day he was turning in his keys and said basically, Have a nice life at XYZ community (and yes, she knew about the issues.) I was shocked. I told this man that what she should have done was been proactive in seeking him out and offering him a transfer at their expense and then she should have dealt with the crappy tenant upstairs and his attitude.

When someone is turning in his keys is NOT the time to ask why he is moving.

Thanks for the response, Mindy, and I would actually take it a step further - Instead of saying that it is "reasonable" to leave when buying a new home, I look at it in one of two ways:

1) In the future, I really think apartment communities are going to find their "identity" - what makes them a compelling option, so that their isn't a standard apartment -> home ownership track. Although it's not here now, I would constantly push my community to understand what experience we can provide that will make it better than single family homeownership.

2) For the present, I think my strategy would not be to win the "battle" against homeownership, but rather simply delay that person for one year. I mentioned this a couple of years ago, but if we delayed homeownership for one year per renter across the board, every single community in the country would see an occupancy jump of 10%! (Actually, our entire industry may not even be able to handle that bump)

I would say there are strategies for just about every single supposedly impossible situation, aside from illness/death. For example, talking about job transfers/new jobs... If this is a big issue for the community, then I would say that targeting companies and industries that have lower job turnover would be brilliant, or possibly requiring that the renter have lived at their prior residence for at least X years to show they are less transient in nature.

I think there is a strategy for just about everything!

What a great idea about targeting companies and industries that have lower job turnover - if you have a community in a fairly stable market. Some of our markets have no real job growth, period, right now, so that may have to be on the back burner until the economy improves. But I like that challenge of thinking of other ways to circumvent this issue. I think the economy as it was tanking did help stabilize some communities though as people did not want to venture into a mortgage. If you have other thougts, or anyone else, I would love to hear them because reducing turnover and creating tighter-knit communities is what I would like to do.

I mentioned this a while ago, Mindy, but even for a market that has no job growth, that doesn't mean that the entire market is perfectly flat. So there will be companies that are doing great, and some that are doing poorly, and it averages out to flat growth in jobs. So even in these markets, I'm a firm believer of looking at Craigslist to see who seems to be hiring and flourishing.