How to Measure the Demand of Active Residents in Your Multifamily Market

When you're spending all your time trying to gather leads and figure out your lead quality, it's easy to overlook one crucial aspect of your marketing:

Demand.

How do you know how much of the multifamily market you can realistically capture without understanding the potential demand?

You may realize you’ve got a lion’s share of the market and can just double down on what’s working.

Or you may realize those hundreds of leads are only a tiny portion of what you could be capturing.

Here’s how to figure out the demand for active residents in your market and what to do next.

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Look at Population vs. Number of Renters

Measuring multifamily demand isn’t always straightforward.

You could cross-reference tons of data from every real estate site you can find or let a site like RentCafe do the super sleuthing for you and put it into an easy-to-digest resource.

For example, if you're interested in the average rent in Orlando, RentCafe will show you that 62% of the population lives in renter-occupied households.

They break it down further to show multifamily rent ranges. Here's a breakdown:

(Source)

Next, grab the population of Orlando from the U.S. Census Bureau, which was 316,081 in 2022.

If 62% of Orlando residents live in multifamily communities or other rentals, you’re looking at an active resident demand of a little over 195,970.

RentCafe will also tell you:

👉 More popular neighborhoods in your market

👉 Number of apartment listings

👉 Average rent prices

From there, you’ll need to think about your own target market and demographics, but you should now have a good idea of the overall demand for your community.

Assess the Demand and Development in Your Neighborhood

Your community may be situated in a popular neighborhood, but for whom?

If your neighborhood is filled with single-family rentals without many amenities, or public transportation, you likely won’t see the same demand as neighboring communities across town.

Or, if your community is the best option in the neighborhood with stand-out amenities that your competitors don’t offer, you may already have all of the demand you need.

But if you’re struggling to see the leads and conversions you want, it may be the neighborhood and the demographic it attracts.

You can adjust your marketing, but it's also a good idea to keep tabs on the development in your neighborhood or overall city.

Tip 💡: To find out what's going on, look for economic and development organizations in your area that are listed on your local convention center's website.

In Orlando’s case, this could be the Orlando Economic Partnership.

New neighborhood amenities, multifamily communities, and public transportation all signal the promise of prospective residents. 📣 📣 📣

(Source)

You can also dig into neighborhood data with the U.S. Census Bureau to pore over countries, places, zip codes, and other juicy bits of data.

You’ll end up with more detailed micro-data about how your area is growing and what to expect.

Tip 💡: Next, combine all of that data with what you’re seeing with your neighborhood's development to get an idea of how your area is growing and how fast.

Consider the Competition

Once you have an idea of how much overall demand is in an area, you can now drill down and figure out how you stand out from the competition.

If your community is the only multifamily complex in the area with a swimming pool, free parking, on-site fitness gym, and access to public transportation, then it makes sense you’ll corner the market.

But if you realize your competitors also have top-notch amenities and renovated units (along with competitive rental prices), your community won’t be at the top of the list for prospective residents.

So now what? 🤔

Let’s say you’ve done some rough calculations with the help of the U.S. Census Bureau and sites like RentCafe and determined the rental demand is around 60% in your area.

You’ve studied the demographics of your market and figured out you can realistically count on about 40% of the overall multifamily market.

It’s challenging to know exactly how much demand and leads you should be generating...

But you can conclude that if you're getting a paltry 5% of the potential leads in your multifamily market, it’s time to reassess:

✅ Your multifamily marketing

✅ Your lead quality

✅ How do you stack up to the competition

Understanding the demand for your multifamily market should help shape the points listed above, but it isn’t an exact science.

At the end of the day, your goal should be lead quality within the demand of your multifamily market.

Truth 💣: It’s not about capturing all the demand, or you’ll end up with poor leads that don't fit your demographic and don’t convert.

Make sure your marketing reaches your target market and make it a no-brainer to opt into your marketing funnel, whether that’s catering to their pain points or the most coveted amenities your community is known for.

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