As competition for apartments increase along with rents, apartment shoppers need to be even more informed and savvy. They must understand the different market rates of apartments located in the areas they want to live in order to be able to identify realistic housing options during their search.

At Apartments.com, we wanted to find out if our users have a firm grasp on the actual cost of rent, or if their rent perceptions needed to be put in check. To find out, we compared the average cost of rent our visitors were using to search for a one bedroom apartment on Apartments.com to the actual rent being advertised. The results revealed a significant gap between how much apartment hunters think rent costs and reality. Here are some of the findings: Read More

Could renters be the ones to call this upcoming presidential election? If history repeats itself, they most certainly will. Four years ago, Apartments.com visitors were surveyed on the 2008 presidential election and more than half said they were voting for then-candidate Barack Obama. As the countdown to the 2012 presidential election winds down, we reveal the results of a similar survey where nearly 70% of respondents say they are backing a President Barack Obama re-election over Governor Mitt Romney.

When comparing the two surveys, we noticed some interesting trends in how the attitudes among renters about certain aspects of the election and how their political activity fared from 2008 to 2012.  For example, the number of survey respondents who said they are registered to vote fell 10% from 2008 to 2012, and more than 40% described themselves as very politically active back in 2008 in contrast to the 22% who consider themselves that way today. Read More

Must love dogs is what the sign outside your property should read if you want to attract pet-loving prospects. Dogs of all sizes dominated the list of the most popular pets for renters, according to a recent survey by Apartments.com.

If your apartment community does not have a pet-friendly policy, you may want to reconsider as 43% of renters surveyed said they are pet owners, with more than a quarter planning on getting a four-legged friend within the next year.  This is especially true if you have properties in Texas, California and Florida as those states ranked the highest in pet population among renters . Renters also made it clear that whether or not a property had a pet-friendly policy played a major factor in choosing where to live. Read More

Raising the rent is a necessary reality in the life of a property manager.  If you never raised rents, you’d be out of business before too long.  With retention as a primary goal for many property managers, tackling this topic with residents is a difficult and uncomfortable conversation for many to have.  However, we learned last week, during the Training Series Live! webinar, hosted by Sarah Greenough (@SGreenough), SVP and CMO of Princeton Properties, there are ways of having these conversations.  The key to communicating a rent increase is to deliver the news in a confident, positive manner while keeping the resident’s perspective in mind.

Here are five tips Sarah covered to prepare you when having the talk with your residents: Read More

Kids these days. What do we really know about them? Well, these coming-of-age youths of Gen Y are more technologically evolved than preceding generations, which is evidenced by their behavior: co-dependent relationships with their mobile phones, addiction to social media and video games likely accessed from their tablet. And, apparently, they prefer renting an apartment over owning a home. That’s one of the factors cited by Reis for the historically low vacancy and high rents being seen in the U.S. right now.

In a recent Chicago Tribune article, Ryan Severino, senior economist at Reis, says This generation doesn’t hold home ownership on a pedestal the way prior generations did. Read More

Last week’s edition of Training Series Live!, hosted by Karen Courtright, Research Director at Slack and Company and Susan Bryant, VP of Marketing at Apartments.com, unveiled a comparative research study, reviewing what multifamily professionals perceive to be true about renters, versus the renters’ actual apartment search process, attitudes and behaviors. 

It turns out what consumers are doing isn’t exactly what we on the property side think they are doing!  As someone who works in the multifamily industry and is also a renter, I was particularly surprised by some of the results.  In addition to highlighting the key findings from yesterday, I’m sharing some of my ever so helpful ah ha! moments:   Read More

This post was originally written by Jim Davoren, Senior Analyst, Data Products at Apartments.com 

In the spirit of March Madness and, of course, all things data, I thought it would be nifty to craft a visualization of actual Apartments.com data in tournament bracket style.  With the help of our very talented Senior Graphic Designer, Laurie Genzlinger, we put together a data driven visualization that illustrates the top 16 user searched amenities on Apartments.com. Read More

A compelling description engages renters with your listing and moves them closer to your leasing office.  According to a study conducted by Apartments.com, a well worded short description can increase the click-through rate to your listing by 4%.

Tips for writing powerful community text descriptions: Read More

In response to the news that apartment vacancies are the lowest we’ve seen since 2001, we conducted a survey of Apartments.com visitors to find out about their moving plans for 2012, including reasons they are moving, why they are opting to rent versus own property, when they plan to move and which tools they value most during their apartment search. To help break down the results of the survey, we created the infographic below. You can click the image to enlarge it.

If you have any questions about the survey or have noticed any moving trends in your area, tell us in the comments section. To learn more about the survey findings, check out our press release. Read More

Moving into a new apartment can mean so many decorating opportunities for enthusiastic residents!  While hanging pictures, painting walls, putting up window treatments or even stapling the area rug in place (EEK!) might be exciting and innovative to residents, it could mean disaster for your maintenance team.  Here are five tips you can share with residents to help them decorate within the guidelines of the rental agreement, ensuring a happy living situation at your community

1.)    Offer to do it for them – Whether it be painting or hanging items on the wall, give your residents the VIP treatment—and avoid potential disaster–by offering up your professional services.  Before a new resident moves in, ask them if they would like to pick out a new color for the apartment and offer to paint as long as they front the supplies.  As a result, your happy resident will feel more at home, while you control the quality of the paint job. Read More