It’s time to stop guessing about what your residents want, and to trust the data instead.

Recently, we surveyed renters to get a better understanding of where property management companies are excelling and where they have room for improvement. What we found was that most renters care about the fundamentals — good communication, building condition, transparency — much more than fancy perks. If your renewal or occupancy rates aren’t where you’d like them to be, then adding new amenities at random isn’t what will move the needle.

Read on for the results of our Renter Satisfaction Survey on Property Management.

Key Takeaways on Renter Satisfaction

• Overall, most renters are satisfied with their property management companies. The renters who are dissatisfied cite larger delays in communication with their PMC than those who are satisfied.
• While renters tend to rank their building’s technology adoption as their least important priority when evaluating their PMC, they have expectations that technology can help their PMC meet. Renters reported feeling that faster responses to maintenance issues, more streamlined rent payments, and better communication and transparency from their PMC were all very important to their satisfaction with their PMC.
• More and more PMCs are offering their residents faster response times to their initial maintenance requests, signaling that a sub–3 hour response time isn’t just a nice-to-have but a must-have to stay competitive.
• Most renters want their PMCs to be proactive about routine maintenance and building upkeep rather than waiting to react to new maintenance tickets.
• The longer a resident is made to wait for a response to their inquiries, the more likely they are to want their building to adopt AI and automation technology.

Survey Results

1. How would you rate your current landlord, overall?

2. On average, how long does it take for your property management company to respond to your initial message when you report a maintenance issue?

3. Which of the following options is most important to you when evaluating your landlord or property management company?

4. What does your property management company do well, and what could be improved?

5. When submitting a maintenance ticket, would you prefer to receive an immediate response from an AI assistant or to wait longer for a human reply?
   
   (We segmented these responses by response wait times. The numbers inside the circles represent how long survey respondents reported waiting for a response from their property management. Larger circles indicate a higher number of responses.)

Learn More About the Survey

This survey is part of our most recent report, Measuring Impact in Multifamily: Setting New Performance Benchmarks in the Age of AI. The goal of this report was to identify where AI and automation are having the most impact in multifamily operations, and how these technologies are shifting expectations for renters and property owners alike.

To download the full Measuring Impact report, fill out this form.

Methodology

We surveyed 248 renters across a proportional distribution of incomes, ages, genders, and regions via SurveyMonkey. To learn more about the panel of respondents, visit SurveyMonkey.com.