SECTION 3
Property Maintenance:
The Operational Stress Test
Maintenance has become one of the clearest indicators of operational performance, influencing satisfaction, retention, and trust across every stakeholder group.
WHO WE SURVEYED
930+
property managers
1500+
renters
290+
rental owners
The old formula for running a property management company is breaking down. Portfolios are growing faster than teams, owners expect more transparency, and renters expect faster follow-through—all as margins continue to compress.
Our 2027 State of the Property Management Industry Report looks at what's replacing that old formula, and what it means for how property management companies staff their teams, grow their portfolios, structure their offerings, and compete in their local market.
Growth, maintenance, property ownership, and resident retention are all being reshaped by the same pressure: doing more without overtaxing your team. Most AI adoption to date has focused on individual tasks, like drafting messages or summarizing documents. The bigger opportunity is connecting those tasks into workflows, so work keeps moving instead of stalling at each handoff. That's what frees your team to spend time on judgment calls, relationships, and strategic decisions instead of manual coordination.
But that opportunity comes with real risk: Poorly designed workflows can get faster without getting better, because no amount of technology compensates for weak processes, unclear ownership, or a lack of trust.
The companies best positioned for success won't be the ones adopting the most technology. They'll be the ones combining it with strong processes, clear accountability, and human expertise. In an industry built on homes, investments, and relationships, that combination remains the ultimate competitive advantage.
“Growth once meant adding headcount at the same pace you're adding doors. That's behind us now. What replaces it is smarter capacity: teams doing more of what actually moves the business forward, while technology handles the rest. This year's report lays out exactly where that shift is showing up across your business, and we hope our research will serve as a guide as you adapt to what 2027 has in store.”
Ben Nadol
Senior Vice President & General Manager,
Buildium & Propertyware
“Property management is evolving rapidly, and this report reinforces that technology alone doesn’t build great companies. People do. As AI and automation create new efficiencies, property managers become even more valuable as trusted advisors. NARPM is committed to equipping our members with the resources they need to lead through this evolution. We appreciate our partners at Buildium for this research that helps us see what’s ahead.”
DD Garzon
President, NARPM®
overview
Read the details on each tab
01
The future belongs to companies that can move work through the business quickly and reliably.
AI's biggest impact won't come from helping employees work faster. It'll come from helping work move more predictably across leasing, maintenance, and accounting, and between owners, residents, and vendors.
02
Sustainable growth no longer depends on adding people at the same rate portfolios grow.
As AI and better processes let each team member handle more, successful companies are increasing capacity per employee and hiring only where judgment, not task volume, is the bottleneck.
03
Maintenance is more than a cost center, it's a leading indicator of business performance.
Maintenance increasingly influences owner satisfaction, resident retention, customer referrals, profitability, and operational efficiency, making it one of the clearest indicators of organizational health.
04
Property managers' evolution from service providers into advisors is deepening.
Owners increasingly expect property managers to reduce risk, provide guidance, and help them make better decisions, beyond simply executing tasks and coordinating vendors.
05
Leasing risk is elevating the importance of resident retention.
As finding qualified applicants has become more challenging, retention is shifting from an operational metric to a business strategy, making communication, maintenance, and follow-through even more critical.
83%
of property management companies are already using AI, planning to adopt it, or actively investigating it.
Alongside insights from our annual surveys of 2,800+ property management professionals, rental property owners, and renters, this year's Industry Report features commentary from 5 industry experts:
Carl Whitaker
Chief Economist,
Realpage
Franklin Spees
Owner/Operator, Neighborhood PM, 850 units, Clovis, CA
Noah Smith
Head of Tech & Ops, Lobos Management, 4200 units, Pittsburgh, PA
Jonathan Coffey
VP of Product,
Buildium, A Realpage Company
Robin Young
Senior Researcher,
Buildium, A Realpage Company
SECTION 1
Technology's biggest opportunity is no longer helping teams complete individual tasks faster, but helping work move more reliably across the business through connected workflows.
Key Terms in This Section
Most AI tools respond to a single prompt: "draft this message," "summarize this document." Agentic AI carries a job forward across multiple steps with less hands-on direction—such as moving an application through screening, approval, and lease signing without anyone pushing it along by hand—while keeping a person in the loop for anything customer-facing or compliance-sensitive.
Most systems connect through one-off, custom integrations, with one connection per pair of tools. A model context protocol (MCP) gives LLMs like ChatGPT or Claude access to your data through one standard connection, allowing you to build automations without a developer bridging systems by hand.
A large language model (LLM) is the technology behind most AI chat tools, trained on large amounts of text to generate natural-sounding responses to a prompt. It's what lets you ask an AI assistant a question and get a coherent answer instead of a rigid, pre-scripted one. On its own, an LLM only responds to what you ask it in the moment.
TREND #1
Early adopters of artificial intelligence (AI) are moving past drafting and communication into more customized workflows, such as reporting, leasing, maintenance coordination, compliance monitoring, and internal process management. The ones getting the most value treat AI as part of a broader operating system, not a collection of standalone tools.
33%
of property management companies already use AI or automation, 18% plan to adopt it in the next year, and 32% are actively investigating it.
Source: Buildium's 2026 PM Industry Survey
From Buildium's Product Team
“Most property managers have already used AI to write a reply. The bigger opportunity is having AI handle the work that comes after the reply: the follow-up, the vendor scheduling, the renewal that would otherwise sit in someone’s inbox. That only works when the conversation, the request, and the record live in the same place. Otherwise, AI just answers faster without finishing anything.”
Jonathan Coffey
VP of Product at Buildium
“I think our competitive success will rely greatly on our ability to translate big-picture strategy into actionable objectives we can reach with AI's help.”
Noah Smith
Head of Tech & Ops, Lobos Management
Turn insight
into action
Start where work gets stuck. Identify the handoffs that need the most follow-up, and look at agentic AI for pieces that are repetitive and low-risk.
Focus on workflows, not just tools. Look for opportunities to connect systems and reduce handoffs rather than optimizing isolated tasks.
TREND #2
The challenge is no longer access to technology; it’s getting a team to use it the same way every time. A missed update or workaround creates duplicate work, gaps in visibility, and statuses that live in someone’s head instead of in the system. AI can help to close that gap by automatically capturing details that once required manual entry. Increasingly, connecting those systems (through integrations, open APIs, or MCPs) matters as much as picking the right tool in the first place. In a sense, this is property management software returning to its roots: one system that everyone actually uses, instead of a patchwork of specialized tools. Except now, AI can help that single platform handle a far more complex portfolio.
63%
of property managers say adopting new tools or better using current ones is their company’s top cost-control tactic this year.
Source: Buildium’s 2026 PM Industry Survey
Respondents were asked to select their top 3 options.
From Buildium’s Product Team
“The technology gap in property management isn’t about access anymore. It’s about consistency. Every work-around and side text is work the system can’t see, and AI can’t help with what it can’t see. But one system isn’t enough on its own. It has to be built for property management and hold your data and history, because that context is what makes AI effective. A generic connection to a general-purpose tool can’t match it. The companies that get the most out of automation will be the ones who commit to running their business in one place that truly understands the business.”
Jonathan Coffey
VP of Product at Buildium
“It seems like each one of my team members is running full tilt, not leaving enough time to learn how to use our current tools efficiently and effectively."
Company owner in San Francisco, CA
Enjoying the preview? Unlock the full report to gain even more helpful insights.
Turn insight
into action
Standardize where work happens. Route resident, owner, and vendor communication through your PM software rather than side texts and calls.
Create one source of truth. Make sure any team member can see a job’s status without relying on manual follow-ups or someone’s institutional memory.
TREND #3
Inconsistent system usage doesn’t just make work harder for internal teams; it shapes the experience owners and renters have with your company. When maintenance updates, task statuses, and communication live in separate places, customers experience the result as a delay in updates or the need to ask for information that should already be visible. This is also part of how many owners evaluate a property manager: whether they get a straight answer to a question, or have to repeat themselves while someone tracks down information spread across disconnected systems.
The #1 criterion
rental owners use to judge property managers is response speed, far ahead of collection rates and service costs.
Source: Buildium’s 2026 Rental Owner Survey
Respondents were asked to select their top 3 options.
“Don’t leave me in the dark. Follow and report issues to their conclusion.”
Rental owner in Manchester, NH
Turn insight
into action
Make status visible before customers have to ask. Identify the moments people most often reach out for an update, and surface progress before they do.
Connect customer-facing updates to one system. Maintenance and communication shouldn’t require manually copying information between platforms, whether through a native integration, an open API, or an MCP.
SECTION 2
As portfolios expand faster than teams, sustainable growth depends on operational efficiency and scalable processes, which will increasingly be supported by AI and automation doing work that used to require another hire.
TREND #4
Many small businesses want to grow, so what stands out this year is how companies plan to staff it: 64% plan to expand their portfolios next year, and 70% will do it with the same size team. That gap is exactly where operational complexity comes from, and rising costs make it harder to close simply by hiring. According to Carl Whitaker, Chief Economist at Realpage, marketing costs are climbing fast as companies compete harder for the same renters, even as overall expense growth has cooled since 2023 and insurance costs are finally easing. With margins already tight, adding headcount is a harder case to make financially, which is why companies are increasingly looking to AI.
70%
of companies will keep their teams the same size in the coming year, even as 64% plan to expand their portfolios—exactly the kind of gap that agentic AI can close when applied to the right processes.
Source: Realpage, 2026
“I see AI as an employee-enabling efficiency multiplier, so I expect we should achieve dramatically better outcomes with the same number of people. From a hiring perspective, my focus is on how applicants use AI to improve efficiency and make an operational impact.”
Noah Smith
Head of Tech & Ops, Lobos Management
Turn insight
into action
Audit your most challenging processes. For each one, compare what's supposed to happen with what actually happens. That gap is where to automate or standardize first.
Measure workload in addition to headcount. Track where time actually goes before deciding whether the answer is a new hire, process, or tool.
TREND #5
For many, sustainable growth depends not just on adding more doors, but on choosing the right business to take on. Some owners and properties create disproportionate strain because their expectations, maintenance philosophy, or investment approach don't match the service model a company is built to deliver. But that's not always a reason to say no. Sometimes, a high-effort client is really pointing at a service your company doesn't yet offer, and if the expertise and margin are there to offer it well, that gap can be an opportunity rather than a reason to offboard.
22%
of property management companies turned away or fired high-effort clients in the past year.
Source: Buildium's 2026 PM Industry Survey
Dive Deeper
6 property management growth strategies for 2026Turn insight
into action
Define your ideal client profile. Decide in advance whether a mismatch means offboarding or building a new service tier.
Measure service cost in addition to revenue. Track ticket volume, calls, and hours by client, so "high effort" is a number rather than a feeling.
TREND #6
While portfolio growth remains a top priority, many companies are generating new business through referrals rather than traditional outbound marketing—a valuable strategy now that competing on price has gotten more expensive. According to Carl Whitaker, the average apartment concession has climbed to its highest level in 16 years. Cheaper units are seeing the steepest discounts as companies fight to fill them, while concessions on pricier units are easing as new supply slows. A company that can fill units through referrals doesn't have to discount as hard to compete, and reputation now travels faster than ever through online reviews and, increasingly, recommendations from LLMs.
The #1 strategy
contributing to property management companies' current growth is cultivating referrals from clients.
Source: Buildium's 2026 PM Industry Survey
Respondents were asked to select their top 3 options.
“One of the things we immediately noticed [after acquiring another portfolio] is that they had invested in positive Google/Yelp reviews, and the phone rings with new business almost daily. That was a big wake up for us. These weren't competitive leads we had to race to call. They'd already chosen us—it was ours to lose.”
Franklin Spees
Owner/Operator, Neighborhood PM
Turn insight
into action
Make review requests a routine step rather than an afterthought. Ask at move-out and after a maintenance job well done, the same way you'd ask for a referral.
Strengthen local relationships deliberately. Real estate agents, lenders, vendors, Chamber of Commerce chapters, landlord groups, and NARPM chapters are where referral relationships start. Put someone on your team in charge of referrals and track them like any other marketing channel.
SECTION 3
Maintenance has become one of the clearest indicators of operational performance, influencing satisfaction, retention, and trust across every stakeholder group.
TREND #7
Maintenance sits at the intersection of owners, residents, vendors, and internal teams, so when communication breaks down or processes rely too heavily on manual coordination, it's often where those issues surface first. As companies grow, the challenge becomes less about individual repairs, and more about keeping work moving smoothly between every team member and system involved in resolving them.
Renters' #1 stressor
is submitting a maintenance request and waiting for a fix.
Source: Buildium's 2026 Renter Survey
Respondents were asked to select their top 3 options.
“Maintenance is the foundation and health indicator of a PM company. Everything else fails or breaks down if it's not done well. It's an art and a science; it's a process and it's relationships; it's the hardest thing to do in management, and very few do it well.”
Franklin Spees
Owner/Operator, Neighborhood PM
Turn insight
into action
Audit handoffs. Identify where maintenance requests change ownership and where communication tends to break down.
Track recurring maintenance issues, such as the same appliance failing across multiple units, or one vendor's jobs consistently needing a follow-up visit. Patterns like these tell you where to standardize first.
TREND #8
Maintenance directly shapes the resident experience. Renters may not see the systems behind the scenes, but they feel the outcomes through response times, communication, and quality of resolution. Because renters vary widely in what they expect, Noah Smith says consistency doesn't mean treating every request identically; some submit maintenance requests continuously, while others, often those who need help most, never submit one at all.
A 57% increase
in renters' intent to renew their lease was observed in residents who were satisfied with maintenance. Rent pricing dominates what would convince undecided renters to renew, but in some cases, maintenance can be an easier lever for property managers to control.
Source: Buildium's 2026 Renter Survey
Respondents were asked to select their top 3 options.
“At the end of the day, the best tool is authentic outreach that demonstrates an understanding of the issue, acknowledges why it is important to the renter, and provides clarity about whether and how we will resolve it.”
Noah Smith
Head of Tech & Ops, Lobos Management
Turn insight
into action
Turn the update itself into a relationship-building opportunity. A quick, personal check-in during a repair helps to establish trust.
Measure satisfaction after repairs. Track resident feedback alongside task completion metrics.
Look beyond speed. Focus on resolution quality and follow-through in addition to response times.
TREND #9
Leading companies are moving away from reactive, one-off repairs toward standardized procedures, stronger vendor coordination, and long-term choices about materials and staffing. This shift shows up in small decisions as much as large ones—for example, choosing a fixture based on how it'll hold up over the years in addition to what it costs today.
11%
of companies plan to bring third-party services in house this year. For many, controlling maintenance costs isn't about spending more or less—it's about deciding what to keep within the team, and what's worth paying someone else to own.
63%
Adopting new tools or better using current ones to improve efficiency
31%
Negotiating better rates with vendors
14%
Consolidating the property types they manage to improve efficiency
12%
Shifting work to global/remote team members
11%
Bringing third-party services in house
Source: Buildium's 2026 PM Industry Survey
“When we have a long enough history with a property, it seems inevitable that we take a longer, more systemic view of how to maintain it. This means we don't always receive the best upfront pricing, but when something breaks, we feel confident in our ability to repair it rather than replace it.”
Noah Smith
Head of Tech & Ops, Lobos Management
From Buildium's Product Team
“Maintenance is where a company’s operating model gets tested in public. Residents, owners, and vendors all feel it when work stalls between handoffs. The real promise of agentic AI here isn’t speed. It’s continuity: keeping every request moving from first report to finished job, with people still making the decisions that matter.”
Jonathan Coffey
VP of Product at Buildium
Turn insight
into action
Invest in prevention over emergencies. Track how much of your maintenance spend is reactive vs. planned, and look for recurring issues.
Track response times, completion rates, and repeat requests by property or vendor. Recurring tasks are where standardization pays off first.
Build incentives into vendor contracts. A bonus for hitting a target turn-around time or a quality rating threshold aligns a vendor's priorities with yours better than an hourly rate does.
SECTION 4
Owners are becoming more diverse in their needs and expectations, creating new opportunities for property managers to differentiate themselves through expertise, guidance, and transparency.
TREND #10
As costs, regulations, and maintenance complexity rise, the value of property management is shifting from convenience toward confidence. Owners want more than day-to-day execution; they expect their manager to anticipate problems and help them stay ahead of costly surprises before those issues land on their desk.
28%
of rental owners prioritize proactiveness and transparency when hiring a property manager.
Source: Buildium's 2026 Rental Owner Survey
Respondents were asked to select their top 3 options.
“I live out of state, so I want to be confident I have a property manager who truly is looking around corners and staying ahead of issues for me.”
Rental owner with properties in Phoenix, AZ
Turn insight
into action
Make expertise visible on a schedule, not just when something goes wrong. Automated monthly reports, customized to what each owner cares about, beat one-off outreach because owners start to expect them.
Flag your higher-risk properties before renewal season: older units, high-turnover tenants, markets with recent regulatory changes. Give those extra attention so the surprise shows up on your radar first.
TREND #11
47% of rental owners today entered the market by circumstance rather than intention, often because they relocated, inherited a property, or couldn't find a buyer in a slow market. These owners typically rely on property managers for context as much as execution, needing help understanding maintenance decisions, regulations, and property performance.
1 in 2
rental owners identifies as an Accidental Landlord or an Unintentional Investor today.
Source: Buildium's 2026 Rental Owner Survey
“[I'm] just getting started in the industry, needing to obtain a better understanding/knowledge of the business process.”
Rental owner in Atlanta, GA
Turn insight
into action
Lead with expertise. An AI chatbot can answer a generic question, but it doesn't know your market, vendors, or this owner's situation. Be the advisor that does.
Explain the "why." Help owners understand the reasoning behind your recommendations and decisions.
TREND #12
Today's owners expect timely updates and easy access to information. When we asked owners where their property manager has the most room to improve, communication and responsiveness topped the list, which suggests the gap isn't about what gets communicated so much as how proactively it happens. For some, that means better reports; for others, self-service access to performance and financial data. Either way, owners want to know their property is on track without having to chase down answers.
The #1 area
where rental owners say property managers can improve is communication and responsiveness.
Source: Buildium's 2026 Rental Owner Survey
Respondents were asked to select their top 3 options.
From Buildium's Product Team
“Owners don’t judge a property manager on effort. They judge on whether things happen when they’re supposed to, without having to ask. Automation lets companies turn reliability into a promise they can keep at scale, and that’s what earns trust, especially from the many owners who never planned to become landlords.”
Jonathan Coffey
VP of Product at Buildium
“Be highly communicative on what you're doing. I want to hear what's happening without having to ask.”
Rental owner in Phoenix, AZ
Turn insight
into action
Share updates before owners ask. Automating recurring owner reports—so that updates go out on a schedule without someone compiling them by hand—is one of the highest-leverage places to apply automation.
Make self-service actually useful. If owners can already see performance and financial information through a portal, point them there first, rather than as a fallback after they've called.
SECTION 5
As tenant quality becomes harder to predict, resident retention is becoming a competitive advantage, making communication, follow-through, and service consistency more important than ever.
TREND #13
Finding qualified residents continues to be one of the industry's biggest challenges, which makes retention more valuable than ever. Resident retention is running near a multi-year high nationally, according to Carl Whitaker, and delayed homeownership is part of why: High home prices and mortgage rates are pushing first-time buyers to wait longer, so renters who might otherwise have moved out to buy are staying put. That's one more reason why retention is one of the most reliable ways to stabilize occupancy as leasing outcomes get harder to predict.
A 58% increase
in renters' intent to renew their lease was observed in residents who were satisfied with their property managers' level of communication.
Source: Buildium's 2026 Renter Survey
Respondents were asked to select their top 3 options.
“Income is not keeping up with rent increases, [it's] harder to find well-qualified applicants.”
Company owner in Orlando, FL
Turn insight
into action
Treat retention like a business strategy. Reducing turnover can be worth as much as improving leasing, and it's usually cheaper.
Measure what drives loyalty. Track satisfaction with communication and maintenance specifically. They're two levers that renters told us matter a great deal when they're considering whether to renew.
TREND #14
Tenant screening has gotten more complex, and it's not just about application volume or fraud. Renters aren't all in the same financial position: Lower-income renters are more likely to be rent-burdened, and renter debt delinquency has climbed, according to Carl Whitaker. That means more applicants are financially stretched before they even sign a lease, so a mistake on income verification carries more risk than before—and it's harder to catch now that the same AI tools that help draft a lease can just as easily forge a pay stub.
The #1 challenge
for property management companies is tenant quality—for the third year in a row.
| Challenge | 2026 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Tenant quality | 33% | 26% |
| Maintenance | 32% | 24% |
| Profitability | 31% | 19% |
| Economic conditions | 29% | 19% |
| Client acquisition | 25% | 18% |
| Efficiency | 24% | 19% |
| Customer expectations | 20% | 14% |
Source: Buildium's 2026 PM Industry Survey
Respondents were asked to select their top 3 options.
From Buildium's Product Team
“Screening has to do more than produce a report, but it shouldn’t make the decision for you. With fraudulent documents easier to create and more applicants financially stretched, the advantage goes to operators who can verify quickly and put clear, trustworthy information in front of their team. The technology does the checking and flags what matters. People make the call. That comes down to trusting your data, not collecting more paperwork.”
Jonathan Coffey
VP of Product at Buildium
“The fraudsters are one step ahead of us—we have to be diligent in staying up to date on [their] techniques.”
Company owner in Dallas, TX
Turn insight
into action
Review your screening standards against today's fraud risks rather than ones from a few years ago. If your process still relies on a single uploaded document, close that gap first.
Use verification tools that cross-reference sources, such as income, employment, and identity.
Reward reliability, don't just screen for risk. Rent reporting to credit bureaus or small perks for on-time payments recognize your best residents, and also give future applicants a reason to build a track record with you.
TREND #15
Renters' increasing expectations around response timeliness might be putting strain on your team, but an even bigger challenge is delivering communication that feels comprehensive and human from first contact through resolution. Frustration is more likely to come from unclear progress or unreliable follow-through than from response time alone.
84%
of renters expect a response within 24 hours, including 61% who expect a response the same day.
Source: Buildium's 2026 Renter Survey
39%
Better maintenance follow-through
27%
Quicker responses to messages
25%
Easier payments
18%
Clearer fees or charges
15%
Easier-to-find information
“[Portal-based communication] seems to embolden some of our renters to communicate with derisive, derogatory language. It tends to hurt morale. The best tool I've seen is the old-fashioned door hanger. It's a physical object that represents our care and responsiveness.”
Noah Smith
Head of Tech & Ops, Lobos Management
Dive Deeper
Renter communication tips for property managersTurn insight
into action
Measure follow-through in addition to speed. A quick reply that goes nowhere frustrates people more than a slower one that resolves the issue. AI can help flag messages still open days later, before the resident has to follow up again.
Protect the human parts of the interaction on purpose. Automate the update, but keep a real person—or at least a real-feeling touch—in the moments that matter most to the resident.
None of the five shifts in this report happen in isolation. A disconnected system doesn't just slow down your maintenance team; it's often the same gap that leaves an owner in the dark and a resident's ticket unresolved. The companies that come out ahead won't be the ones with the most AI. They'll be the ones that use it to build an operating model—with connected systems, clear ownership, and consistent follow-through—that once required a much larger team to deliver.
We conducted our survey of nearly 1,000 U.S.-based property management industry professionals in May of 2026. Our respondents were drawn from the Buildium, NARPM, Propertyware, All Property Management, and Realpage databases. About our property manager respondents:
We conducted our survey of nearly 300 U.S.-based small-portfolio rental property owners in March of 2026, recruiting our respondents from the All Property Management and Buildium databases. About our rental owner respondents:
We conducted our survey of more than 1,500 U.S. adults who rent their homes in April of 2026, recruiting our respondents through the Cint and Buildium databases. About our renter respondents:
Property managers face a wide range of challenges, but many stem from one issue: growing operational complexity. Companies are under pressure to grow their portfolios, control costs, meet rising customer expectations, and navigate regulatory and maintenance demands, often without expanding headcount.
Most AI tools used in property management respond to a single prompt: draft this message, summarize this document. Agentic AI can take a goal, break it into steps, and carry a multi-step task forward with less hands-on direction, following up on a maintenance request or routing an application through screening without someone moving it along at each step. The near-term opportunity is applying it to specific, lower-risk, repetitive processes, while keeping a person in the loop for anything customer-facing, financial, or compliance-sensitive.
Tenant screening has become more challenging as property managers face growing concerns around fraud, verification, and applicant quality, including AI-generated fraudulent documents. In response, they're investing more in screening tools, verification processes, and standardized procedures to make more informed leasing decisions and reduce risk before move-in.
Today's rental owners want more than basic property oversight. Nearly half entered the market unexpectedly, creating a large segment of clients who may need extra support understanding maintenance decisions, regulations, and property performance. Owners increasingly expect their property manager to anticipate problems, provide clear recommendations, and help them avoid costly surprises.
Resident retention is strongly influenced by the day-to-day experience renters have with their property management company. Communication, maintenance, responsiveness, and follow-through all shape satisfaction and renewal decisions, and it's usually more cost-effective to retain current residents than to acquire new ones.
The most successful property management companies are growing through referrals more than traditional marketing. Referrals from owner and investor clients are the most commonly cited contributor to growth, followed by referrals from industry professionals and expanding relationships with existing clients.
Technology is shifting from a productivity tool to an operational foundation for the business. The biggest opportunity today is helping work move more reliably across the business—connecting workflows, reducing manual coordination, and improving visibility—rather than simply completing individual tasks faster.
Property managers are increasingly using AI to improve communication, automate routine work, and make operations more efficient. Common use cases include resident communication, task management, rent collection, maintenance coordination, leasing, and owner reporting. As adoption grows, success will depend on balancing automation with the human judgment and relationship management that remain central to the business.
