Resident Retention Starts Before a Lease is Signed

 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, becau……