How to Build Long-Term Retention Loyalty from Day One

Are you waiting until the last minute to encourage residents to resign their leases?

Research shows that asking residents to renew their leases has the opportunity to save landlords up to $2,500 on everything from:

✅ Marketing vacant units

✅ Screening new residents

✅ Receiving and processing applications

✅ Showing your community

✅ Processing new leases.

Fortunately, the multifamily industry is in a season where lease renewals are at an all-time high, but it’s not a give-in your residents will resign.

The average apartment turnover cost is also around $1,750 per month, making any vacant units a profit-killer for your multifamily business.

Tip💡: If you want to keep residents in your units and your vacancies as low as possible, your retention strategy isn’t something to start 60 to 90 days before a lease ends.

It’s an approach to take from day one.

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Empower Residents to Get the Answers They Need

Do you make it ridiculously easy for residents to get the answers they need?

Or do you lack SOPs for even the basics, from maintenance to complaints, and have a voicemail that always says it’s full?

A lack of communication is a slippery slope when it comes to resident retention.

Research shows that a lack of communication is among the top complaints of residents.

Instead of making residents jump through hoops, empower them to find everything they want to know by:

💡 Creating a physical binder for all residents and organize tabs by categories to easily find what they want

💡 Publishing FAQs on your website with search functionality for residents to quickly find the information they’re looking for

💡 Making communication a priority during staff training

The goal is to make residents feel valued and respected and eliminate the desire to move anywhere else.

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Develop a Culture of Hyper-Responsive Management

Residents want multiple ways to communicate with landlords and property managers.

However, communication isn’t something to just check off your to-do list.

It’s about creating a culture of hyper-responsive management through:

• Creating an SOP of how soon to respond to a call, text, email, or verbal complaint or request
• Leveraging AI tools, Elise can take calls during late-night hours and get appointments and requests on your calendar
• Responding to all online reviews, good and bad, to signal your commitment to residents and making your community better

Tip💡: The results can prove impressive and an easy way to keep residents happy. Research shows 79% of renters want to communicate with property managers via text or chat.

Offer Multiple Ways to Pay Rent

Are you still relying on old-school methods to pay rent, like only accepting checks?

Data shows that 93% of today’s renters want to pay their rent online via:

👉 An app

👉 Credit card

👉 Debit card

👉 Digital wallet

Beyond the upsides flexible payment options provides residents, it also simplifies your rental business.

Tip💡: You can reduce your operating expenses while increasing on-time rent payments when offering more options to pay.

You also help residents avoid eviction and give them more financial flexibility when they can pay with options like a credit card.

Make it Easy for Residents to Befriend Each Other

One of the most overlooked retention strategies in the multifamily industry isn't updating your amenities or dropping the rent (though those things both help).

It’s fostering resident relationships with one another.

Research shows that 29% of renters who don’t know anyone in their community are likely to sign up for another year. Renters who know seven or more people in their community are 47% more likely to renew their leases.

It makes sense.

People live busy lives and having friends next door or on the next floor improves their quality of life and ability to easily socialize.

You can help nurture resident relationships in your community with a few easy tactics:

🎉 Throw regular gatherings, from holiday parties to watching the big game together

🎉 Host regular happy hours

🎉 Organize pet play-dates

🎉 Book a chef for a cooking demo

🎉 Throw a community BBQ

When there’s always something going on in your community, residents have less opportunity to feel frustrated and lonely over their social lives.

Why wouldn’t they resign their lease?

Report On-Time Rent to the Credit Bureaus

Are you reporting rent payments to the credit bureaus?

Less than 1% of credit files contain any rental information, despite the fact that all the major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) will include rent payment information when they receive it.

Yet research shows that 68% of renters surveyed would choose a landlord who reports rent payments.

Residents want rent reporting for a variety of reasons that can dramatically impact their lives, including:

• Restore subpar credit
• Build credit to secure a better mortgage in the future
• Unlock cost savings with the best financing rates and credit card promotions

Even if residents don’t particularly care one way or another about the rent, reporting it makes them more likely to pay on time anyway.

Why?

If residents know you’re reporting their activity, they’re more likely to get their rent in on time to keep up their credit score.

Gather Feedback

Taking a proactive approach to resident retention don't need to be an educated guessing game.

Sure, your maintenance should be top-notch and communication on-point, but what else do your residents actually want?

Ask them directly through periodic surveys and train your maintenance and leasing staff to record complaints and feedback given verbally.

Leave answers open-ended instead of strictly multiple choice to get more context from residents.

Tip💡: You can apply the feedback to improve your community but you’ll also gain valuable zero-party data directly from your residents.

Look for commonalities across the responses and data to help shape your next marketing campaign and improve your targeting.

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Waive the Renewal Fee

Make it a priority to work on resident retention from day one, but when a lease is about to end, there’s still time to make a final push.

Community renewal fees typically range from 25% to 75% of the rental amount.

Waive your renewal fee to make it easy for residents to say yes resigning their lease.

Beyond not paying your renewal fee, your residents can also avoid paying for:

✅ Moving supplies

✅  Movers

✅ Application fees

✅ Move-in fees

The combination of waived fees and a community that values the comfort and happiness of its residents are powerful motivators.

In other words, prioritizing what residents want makes it easy to say YES to re-signing their leases.

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