One of the biggest questions any property management team can ask is ‘How can we increase resident retention?’.
The unfortunate truth is turnover is expensive. Between the cost to make a unit ready to rent again, and the time it takes to find new qualified prospect, properties can easily spend over $5,000 on a single turn. (source: propertymanagementminute.com) That, paired with the average turnover rate of approximately 50% (source: NAA), a property of 200 units could be spending $500,000 or more per year to move in new residents. Now, that’s a lot of dough!
Each additional renewal you bring in will have a huge impact on the bottom line. As little as one extra renewal each month can save you $60,000 in a single year! However, getting residents to renew takes more finesse than simply offering cute renewal gifts and/or exciting concession offerings. Residents chose your community for a reason. They definitely don’t want to feel like they made a bad decision. Keeping a pulse on each of your residents throughout the year will prove to be an invaluable method for knowing their levels of satisfaction, and ultimately help you retain them.
The reality is: your residents are human, and communication is king. Ensuring your residents are communicated with regularly, and with purpose, will make your residents feel as though they are actually part of a community that cares about them and therefore will not want to leave when their lease is up. Put it plain: communicating with residents will increase your retention rates!
So, what can be done?
Obviously, building a resident retention strategy that works is no small task. That being said, if you spent a couple hours strategizing what your outreach is going to look like, half the battle is already won. Make sure your team understands how important it is to communicate as much as possible with each resident, then empower them to create useful monthly newsletters, plan engaging resident events, and communicate absolutely anything that a resident might deem remotely important (temporary utility outages, amenity closings/openings, scheduled repairs, etc). You and your team are responsible for your residents’ experiences within the community, so why not go all out?
Resident Retention – Timeline & Strategy
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Your resident retention program should be in addition to any resident events and marketing outreach (ie- monthly newsletters) you schedule on a regular basis that feels more personalized.
Now, onto execution.
Executing on a resident retention program that works is where things can get tricky, especially for communities with smaller teams. So, how can teams set up a successful resident retention program without overworking themselves? This is where having the right tools in place is imperative to the success of the retention program.
Nurture Boss is an intentional and effective communication tool specifically designed for the multifamily industry. The purpose of this tool is to provide our clients with a powerful communication tool that assists in increasing conversion rates, both with prospects and residents. With the integration between Nurture Boss and your PMS, along with our automation features, teams can set up their resident retention program quickly; then their program is “Always On” and running as new move-ins happen throughout the year. This “Always On” automation provides teams peace of mind, knowing their residents are being nurtured throughout the span of their lease term in a strategic way without teams having to take any additional time from their busy work weeks.
With Nurture Boss, our clients have a net positive ROI as quickly as their first additional renewal! Based on the assumptive math above, at $5,000 per turn, with less than one renewal you will already cover the annualized cost of Nurture Boss tenfold.