Resident retention is usually thought of in terms of what the landlord or property manager can do around the end of a resident’s tenancy to encourage them to stay: clear communication, responsiveness, concessions, a new appliance, and so forth.  But in this article we take a position that resident retention should start much earlier in a tenancy.  In fact, before it even begins.  It should start with apartment marketing.

A resident can decide to vacate for any number of reasons, including significant life events or other rigid issues that cannot be negotiated away, no matter what rent concessions may be offered.  But for other renters, it comes down to “fit”.  Is the apartment the ideal aggregation of attributes, quirks, and benefits that they want in a home, given the rent, or not?  Is it “best-fit” housing? On renter surveys, there is usually no option to cite “not a good fit” as a reason for moving out, but this reason can be disguised in the answers to other questions, most often ones that ask about rent.  According to Zillow’s Consumer Housing Trends Report of 2019, 55% of renters nationwide say a rent increase contributed to their decision to move out.  Moving out because of the rent or a rent increase, if not a strict budgetary decision, is just another way to say the apartment’s perceived value does not match up with the rent being paid.  It is not a fit for the resident anymore.  And that is an unfortunate reason to lose a resident, because every resident should be moving into an apartment in the first place that they believe is their best-fit home.   

“Best-fit” housing comes down to the right apartment for the right person, given their unique sensitivities, preferences, and priorities, and given the uniqueness of an individual unit. In rental listings, advertising traditional things such as building amenities, features, and policies contributes to renters finding their best-fit housing, but these kinds of attributes all have one big limitation: they do not necessarily speak to a renter’s experience in an apartment. Features can break, causing maintenance headaches.  Amenities are usually external to the unit itself and can be crowded or closed or unappealing, providing little to no value. A renter can have a “good” unit in a “bad” building, and vice versa. These kinds of attributes are not irrelevant, but they do not quite make the connection with true best-fit housing.

How do you make sure you are speaking the language of best-fit housing then? By developing an experiential resume of an individual unit via past renters’ actual experiences.  Experiences are not hypothetical, and they tell the story of how physical things like features and amenities actually translate into quality-of-life. While various resident engagement platforms have multiple touch points with residents during their tenancy, bitResi is a new example of a simple platform that is designed to gauge a resident’s quality-of-life experiences in their apartment. The result is the development of an experiential profile of a specific unit, a record of how actual renters experienced it.

Through ratings like this, landlords and property managers can understand the desirability, or lack thereof, of specific units and the reasons behind those ratings.  Positively-rated experiences can and should become part of that unit’s subsequent marketing, to add another layer of detail and context to the listing so it is more likely to appeal to a prospect’s unique preferences and sensitivities. In this way, think of experiences as just another category of amenity. 

It is key to understand that “best-fit” means something different to everyone. For some renters, a quiet apartment is most important. For others, it is being pest-free. And so on. These kinds of differentiated experiences help prospects self-select into apartments that are best fits for them. Fewer move-in surprises, better perceived value for the rent, and a higher chance of satisfaction from the very beginning of the lease.

And, as a landlord or property manager, just as with physical, traditional amenities, positive experiences need to be maintained for future renters. If in-apartment laundry machines are consistently rated as a positive experience, and you add that experience into the marketing for that unit, you cannot then ignore machine maintenance. It is no different for a physical amenity: once you advertise a rock-climbing wall or fitness center, you cannot close them down without some pushback. 

Although we are limiting our discussion to marketing, the concept of best-fit housing certainly has other implications for pricing and revenue management as well, but that is a separate topic for another day.

To sum up, it is useful to think of retention in terms of best-fit housing, which itself starts with individual apartment marketing and how prospects are being provided the information necessary to make the trade-offs that are uniquely important to them.  Getting this right at the marketing phase will lay the earliest possible foundation for renter satisfaction and, ideally, retention.