When rent growth is slow, property managers reset priorities. In 2025, rent growth was essentially flat. One reliable third-party source (Yardi Matrix) reported that U.S. multifamily advertised rents ended 2025 with zero percent year-over-year growth, while another data provider (brokerage giant Cushman & Wakefield) reported a 1.1 percent annual increase in asking rents nationally.
The first half of 2026 seems to be more of the same, with Yardi measuring 1 percent rent growth. In the absence of record-breaking rent hikes — 15.3 percent at the start of 2022, per RealPage — how do owners ensure steady cash flow, cover fixed expenses and maximize a property’s value? Where do they start?
“Renewals first,” asserts Andrew Kadish, CEO and chief investment officer of CAPREIT, a private multifamily investment and development firm based in Bethesda, Maryland.
“A renewed resident is a known quantity. You’ve already absorbed the turn cost, you understand his or her payment behavior, and they don’t require leasing resources. Protecting renewals is the most capital-efficient play in a soft market.”
Kadish isn’t alone in this belief. RealPage reported that 56 percent of leases were renewed in 2025, a trend many experts say is likely to continue throughout this year.
“In most markets, renewals remain the primary driver of rent growth,” says Carl Whitaker, chief economist and vice president at RealPage.
With retention and consistent occupancy top of mind, multifamily owners and managers focus intently on influencing the day-to-day behaviors that determine whether residents choose to stay or go.
Occupancy thresholds vary by owner, by market and by asset type, but the industry consensus is that an occupancy rate in the mid-90-percent range keeps most investors and creditors happy.
By common measures, occupancy of about 95 percent or higher is considered excellent, while 92 to 94 percent occupancy is typically in the normal range. Nationally, occupancy registered 94.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to RealPage.
“Anything below 93 percent gets my attention,” says Kadish. “Below 91 percent, alarm bells are ringing. Is it a pricing problem, a product problem or a people problem? Those require completely different responses. Operators who treat all occupancy softness the same way tend to make it worse.”
Owners work with an arsenal of tools to tailor strategies that keep their properties full and their residents satisfied. In many cases, retention and occupancy success stories begin with a setback.
What follows are five field-tested approaches to tenant retention.
1. Use Tenant Reviews to Reset Priorities
Leaders at Fogelman Properties received a wakeup call when the frequency of negative reviews increased at one of the company’s third-party-managed communities. In 2023, more than a third of the reviews of Retreat at Steeplechase in Houston were less than ideal. That’s when the Memphis, Tennessee-based owner and property management company decided it was time for a sweeping, big-picture internal shakeup.
“What became clear is that reputation cannot sit within a single department,” says Tammy Yeargan, Fogelman’s senior director of brand and communications.
“These reviews were treated as operational signals rather than commentary. New on-site leadership was installed with a focused mandate to realign service delivery with resident expectations,” explains Yeargan.
Prior to 2023, Fogelman’s marketing teams alone were managing property reputation and resident reviews.
At Steeplechase, tenants were registering their dissatisfaction about maintenance delays and communication gaps with property management.
The team broke down the challenge into attainable goals. For example, one goal was to complete maintenance duties more efficiently. Within 90 days, the team reduced the number of work orders that exceeded 425 to approximately 180 through a triage process and hands-on oversight.
The property managers adopted a policy of transparency in resident communications, incorporating documented timelines for completion of requests. The operational reset translated to measurable results. Income in the third quarter of 2024 exceeded the prior quarter’s income by 9.3 percent.
Negative sentiment also dropped from 33.5 percent of all reviews in 2023 to 26.6 percent in 2024. In 2025, that number again dropped to 20.7 percent.
“The takeaway is straightforward,” says Yeargan. “When review data is treated as operational intelligence rather than external commentary, it informs leadership decisions, sharpens execution and strengthens asset performance.”
The refocus wasn’t just a one-off Band-Aid covering a specific problem at a single property. Greg Williams, senior vice president of property operations, says Fogelman’s property managers now undergo new and improved onboarding procedures.
“Training now emphasizes the impact of everyday touchpoints: communication style, responsiveness, professionalism and team dynamics,” notes Williams. “Reputation is ultimately built through consistent experiences, not isolated initiatives.”
Williams says reputation data is no longer viewed as a marketing metric. Insights from reviews direct activity in nearly all departments at the company.
“Reputation feedback from residents influences everything from investment priorities to training strategies to performance discussions,” he points out.
“Importantly, transparency also extends to associate sentiment through platforms like Glassdoor. This reinforces the connection between associate experience and resident experience,” continues Williams. “Patterns in feedback help us identify opportunities, address friction points and refine how we support our teams. The data creates clarity, but more importantly, it creates accountability.”
Nationwide, Fogelman operates more than 111 multifamily communities totaling over 31,000 apartment homes across 12 states in the Southeast, Southwest and Midwest.
“Reviews reflect performance realities,” concludes Yeargan. “Operators who treat reputation as a cross-functional discipline rather than a departmental task tend to unlock far greater value. It becomes a lens into customer experience, team effectiveness and operational health — not simply a brand-management exercise.”
2. Revisit Your Pricing Strategy
If the main concern of American voters is said to be the economy, the main concern of apartment renters is how much rent they pay each month, plain and simple.
To shift focus onto renewals, Branchburg, New Jersey-based developer, builder and property manager Larken Associates took a hard look at its pricing strategy and began noting some interesting trends.
Over the past 15 months or so, company leaders observed that the market had started to soften, says Jessica Heckman, executive vice president of multifamily operations. Renter demand weakened in ways the company hadn’t experienced in previous years.
“We’ve always been proud of our retention rates, which often remain well above the national average, but that number started to decline,” notes Heckman.
Many of the firm’s competitors were pushing rents, sometimes up to 10 percent increases per year, yet still operating properties with occupancies in the low 90s, according to Heckman.
On average, existing renters typically pay between 3 and 5 percent more rent at renewal time, according to property management software company TenantCloud.
“We wanted a solid strategy to keep our occupancy rates up and keep our retention rates firmly where they’d always been,” she says. “There is a lot of debate on how to achieve this goal: More amenities? Better customer service? Renewal incentives? Our team decided to focus on the one area that would impact our residents the most — their wallets.”
Larken adjusted its renewal pricing to help prevent move-outs. The Larken Living multifamily portfolio consists of Class-A luxury communities and Class B garden-style apartments throughout New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. The company owns and self-manages approximately 3,000 multifamily units
Pricing varied for different categories of renters. For long-term residents who already were paying above-market-rate rents, Larken instituted a lower percentage increase. “This allowed us to keep long-time residents but still capture an increase to cover the rising costs we were seeing,” says Heckman.
“By keeping legacy residents and increasing our retention rates, we experienced cost reductions in other areas, such as marketing efforts and materials costs. Reducing rent increases will always result in collecting slightly less rent. But the trade-off we’ve seen is that cost savings in other areas have offset that loss.
The changes have kept occupancy rates consistently above 95 percent portfolio-wide, while the retention rates remain eight to 10 points above the national average of 56 percent, says Heckman.
The company also has reduced its make-ready expenses — the costs required to bring a vacated unit up to move-in-ready standards — especially during high turnover months in the summer.
“The general idea of adjusting renewal rates was implemented portfolio-wide, but we saw stronger results when we tailored the percentages specifically by asset class and submarket,” explains Heckman.
3. Use Holistic Approach to Applicant Screening
Apartment Management Consultants (AMC) is a third-party management company that ranked seventh on NMHC’s 2025 Top 50 Managers list, with 152,989 units under management.
For the Cottonwood, Utah-based firm, tech and customer service are the linchpin for producing high occupancy. Ensuring a quality resident moves in is the first step toward increasing net operating income (NOI) and retaining renters.
Renters at AMC properties have access to a digital app where prospective residents can apply for a lease, complete screening and get help with moving in or out. AMC uses several solutions for fraud detection.
“We also use a scoring model, instead of just a traditional credit score, to identify and measure the risk of an applicant and to set deposit tiers accordingly,” says Jon Tullo, executive vice president of client services.
A traditional credit score shows how an applicant has handled debt but not how he or she will behave as a renter. AMC’s screening process looks at income-to-debt ratio, rental history, landlord collections, income limits and more.
AMC also adheres to a strict practice to only work with incomes that can be fully validated. Gigs and side hustles, such as rideshare driving, pet sitting or seasonal holiday work, would require additional scrutiny and validation efforts.
Tullo explains that digital tools and vendor partnerships have helped identify and mitigate losses due to fraud, reduce unqualified prospects as well as overall bad debt.
In addition, the technology streamlines the application process for prospective residents and relieves on-site teams of administrative screening burdens.
Tullo says increased screening efforts pay off for portfolios of any size. In today’s environment, just one eviction can lead to a costly write-off for a property owner. Catching fraud before move-in is always the best option, he says.
“Owners or operators may think that if a resident is approved through basic screening models, they’re good to go and vetted to move in,” says Tullo.
“However, outside of the traditional screening models, an operator should also be using ID verification, income verification and residency verifications, as well as set restrictions on what constitutes valid sources of income. It takes a holistic approach to applicant screening to prevent as much fraud as possible,” stresses Tullo.
Tullo also advocates placing enhanced effort into the turn process. The company follows specific procedures to ensure quality control and cost discipline. He explains that the main goal in the move-in, move-out process is to minimize vacancy.
The process includes booking the notice to vacate in the internal management system with urgency placed on pre-leasing efforts prior to the tenant moving out. The company also conducts pre- and post-move-out inspections and repair-versus-replace evaluations.
Residents receive clear, consistent communication about what to expect on move-in and move-out day, including parking and loading rules and elevator restrictions.
AMC assigns dedicated staff specifically to assist residents who are moving and tracks data between the time the notice was given to the time the unit is ready for re-renting.
“We feel our efficiencies with these initiatives did prove meaningful in our upward growth in income in 2025 versus 2024 in a market that showed a decline in rents and occupancy struggles,” points out Tullo.
“Our primary goal is to implement best practices that will increase overall NOI for our clients and their communities,” he continues. “The efficiencies that these technologies bring to operations assist in overall resident satisfaction, staff satisfaction and the retention of both.”
4. Combine Tech With Human Oversight
A Google Business Profile (GBP) is often a renter’s first touchpoint with a company or property. It’s the business listing that appears in a Google search and in Google Maps, showing basics such as location, hours, photos, reviews, Q&As and, in some cases, apartment pricing and floor plan information.
In 2025, third-party property manager RKW Residential partnered with vendor Maven AI, a multifamily marketing company, to take advantage of its Google Business pro service.
The service automated daily posts, pricing updates, community details and Q&A responses across RKW’s Google Business Profiles, replacing a more manual process shared among on-site teams.
Prior to implementing the new pro service, the company was managing its GBP listings with Reputation.com, a software that helps companies manage how they appear online.
Responsibility for creating posts and product cards — the modules that display information such as available floor plans, starting prices and more — was split among on-site teams. RKW also was previously utilizing search engine marketing partners that were charging for search engine optimization services.
This specialized automated service reduced RKW’s cost per lease and caused the lead-to-tour conversion rate to rise from 22 percent in 2024 to 31 percent in 2025.
But it wasn’t just the tech alone that led to leasing and occupancy success. RKW implemented human oversight. Teams were tasked with reviewing the scheduled posts for the GBP.
“This human oversight helps to prevent posts that we deem to be too repetitive or that highlight an amenity or feature we don’t want to be prioritizing on our digital channels,” says RKW Digital Marketing Manager Nick Storm.
To measure the impact of the investment, Storm says he made sure to limit the sample communities to properties with at least six months of historical performance data prior to implementation.
“It has been interesting to see how the Google Business Profile has become a very critical touch point for the majority of our portfolio,” says Storm.
He explains the GBP-management changes have been directly related not only to increased leasing and occupancy, but also to an overall increase in people visiting property websites.
5. Reset Expectations, Service Response Times
For CAPREIT, which owns and/or manages approximately 13,000 apartment units in more than 20 states, a renewal strategy starts with a math problem. Kadish, the company’s leader, advises caution about raising rent too aggressively at renewal time because losing a resident can wipe out any potential gains.
Before increasing a resident’s renewal rate, CAPREIT calculates how many days it would take for a unit to sit empty before the rent increase stopped making sense. Kadish refers to this guardrail as the “break-even vacancy day calculation.”
“We evaluate this before we push any renewal offer,” emphasizes Kadish. “In most of our markets right now, that threshold is uncomfortably short. That discipline keeps our teams from chasing ‘headline’ rent at the expense of economic occupancy.” Industry leaders have built a benchmark around the headline-making rents that followed the COVID-19 pandemic. By most reports, the rent growth that occurred in 2021 and into 2022 was the highest ever recorded.
Kadish says it’s a mistake to apply a blanket renewal strategy to an entire portfolio because every asset and market is different. But
customer service tends to be a common denominator when it comes to retaining residents.
Reducing response times between residents and management is key, emphasizes Kadish. Additionally, the renewal request must have a personal touch and feel meaningful to the resident.
“We look at the friction points that drive non-renewals,” he says. Kadish explains that renters often leave because of management’s failure to deliver great service. Maybe an appliance broke, and no one came to fix it. Or perhaps an impersonal, automated renewal request left the resident feeling more like a number and less like a person trying to answer one of life’s most important questions: Where will I live?
Kadish points to an unnamed project in the Mid-Atlantic with a strong location. The company was experiencing steady resident churn and mediocre online reviews. When company leaders examined the situation closely, they discovered the problem wasn’t that the apartment rents were too expensive. Rather, it was a communication breakdown.
CAPREIT reset expectations around service response times and tightened maintenance scheduling. Renewal outreach became proactive, rather than reactive. “We also simplified the renewal conversation, so residents were hearing from someone who actually knew them rather than receiving a generic notice. None of that was revolutionary, but operational discipline moved the needle quickly.”
More specifically, CAPREIT tightened the response-time standards for maintenance service requests by reviewing them weekly with the community manager. Company leaders mandated that renewal outreach begin early and require a personal touchpoint before a renewal offer was made. In other words, there were no more generic renewal notices.
They also removed friction in the leasing office by reducing call wait times and ensuring prospective and existing residents could reach a human being.
“Within six months, renewal rates improved meaningfully and occupancy stabilized,” says Kadish.
“Within a year, the community was running consistently above our portfolio average. None of that required new technology. It required consistent execution. Operational attention is one of the most powerful levers a leadership team has.”
— Lynn Peisner