First in a 9-part series of “quick hit” blogs on the quickest way to uncover hidden revenue from leasing based on the presentation Bryan Pierce, Carol Enoch and Donald Davidoff gave at NAA’s 2024 Apartmentalize conference. In a year with at best anemic rent growth in most markets, operators are under tremendous pressure to find/save every possible dollar. They pay close attention to growing labor costs, implement “back to basics” ...

Given both my history as the leader of the team that built LRO® and the company that has built REBA RentTM, I’ve obviously been watching (and commenting on) the evolution of the legal and legislative environment w.r.t. pricing and revenue management (PRM) software in the rental housing industry (often referred to as “algorithmic pricing” to make the software sound scarier). In past blogs and white papers, I’ve commented on both ho ...

So it happened: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/san-francisco-becomes-first-u-s-city-to-ban-automated-rent-fixing-technology/ The first “ban” on pricing and revenue management (PRM) software or “algorithmic pricing” in rental housing has passed. And make no mistake, this is just the first domino. With the American Economic Liberties Project behind this and the general tenor of the political environment given persistent rent i ...

In my last blog, I commented on how our industry regularly falls prey to the “scratch an itch” approach of buying point solutions rather than making decisions about where their company wanted to be with their tech stack in 3-5 years. That got me thinking about how, if I was a Chief Information or Chief Technology Officer for an operator or owner, I would go about making decisions differently. How would I expect systems to connect and wha ...

Almost a year ago, we embarked on a set of interviews and studies to “bring to life” how business intelligence (BI) drives enhanced performance in multifamily housing operations and asset management. For many years now, I have observed how hard it is for CEOs and COOs who have never had good BI to understand how the apparent “soft” return of “better decisions, faster” can justify the “hard” costs (i.e. writing a check) to pay for a BI plat ...

Over the years, one of the most frequent complaints I hear from CIO/CTOs, COOs and CEOs is how the proliferation of proptech in the rental housing space often creates a rat’s nest of disparate tech solutions that rarely, if ever, integrate in a way that creates an easily manageable data ecosystem. For many years, I truly empathized with this challenge as I felt their pain and wished that vendors would do a better job at making lives e ...

While it’s almost become a meme to comment on how “backward” the multifamily housing industry is when it comes to technology, the reality is much more nuanced now than it was back in 1999 when I first started leading the work that eventually resulted in LRO, the industry’s first-ever automated rent setting application. I was blessed to work with perhaps the most technology-forward operator of the time. Archstone was the first major ...

45As "the guy" who led the development of the first pricing and revenue management system for multifamily housing (LRO) and was the industry's first-ever VP of Pricing and Revenue Management (PRM) back in 2001, I've watched with great interest the past 23 years as adoption evolved.What started out as a practice highly questioned for its relevance to rental housing has become de rigeur for the NMHC Top 50 and at least a few hundred other companies ...

 To those paying attention, there is a growing list of states (and even the US Senate) who appear to be attempting to outlaw algorithmic pricing in rental housing thus rendering the software used by virtually all of the NMHC Top 50 and hundreds of other operators illegal.As the industry contemplates being forced to go back to the manual pricing processes of the 1990s, there's a lot of understandable teeth-gnashing…not to mention an immediate ...

It's no secret that 2024 will be a year of anemic revenue growth for multifamily rental operators and owners. On the one hand, we are still benefiting from the once-in-a-lifetime rental growth in the early post-pandemic years; however, on the other hand, growth is very much a "what have you done for me lately" proposition. And the challenges of slow rent growth play out in a variety of ways from deferrals in tech investments to increased pressure ...

(This blog recaps a portion of the podcast interview Matt Knight of the Property Tech Angels Group conducted with Donald Davidoff, CEO and co-founder of Real Estate Business Analytics.)The effective integration of disparate data sources stands as a cornerstone for informed decision-making and strategic planning across industries. However, the path to seamless integration is riddled with complexities unique to the multifamily housing sector. Donal ...

Navigating the multifaceted realm of multifamily real estate has traditionally relied on occupancy as a compass—a lagging indicator that reveals the current state with limited foresight. However, a recent webinar sparked a paradigm shift, highlighting the predictive strength of leading indicators, particularly focusing on availability.While occupancy directs today's cash flow and influences profit and loss, the real narrative unfolds in availabil ...

In the fast-paced world of multifamily real estate, staying ahead of the curve is essential for success. To ensure your multifamily revenue management strategy is not only relevant but also resilient to changing market conditions and evolving regulations, it's time to embrace the systems of the future.Understanding the Multifamily LandscapeMultifamily executives and leaders are well aware that the market can be unpredictable, and regulations can ...

 Legacy pricing & revenue management systems changed the multifamily industry. Now, with almost 25 years of learning, it's time for more contemporary approaches that reduce the total cost of ownership, improve acceptance and are more flexible in adapting to recent and future changes in the multifamily pricing arena.Here are 10 questions you should ask when evaluating pricing & revenue management software. To get our comprehensive PRM ...

Intelligent pricing inputs ensure we're reacting to the right things. After two decades of legacy system use, the industry has learned lessons about what should and should not be part of any contemporary PRM system. For example:1. Comp DataUsers should have the option of whether, and how much, comp data is included in their pricing algorithm. Where they can collect accurate data and, as a matter of corporate strategy, want to include that data th ...