What Is the Real Cost Associated with Tenant Rental Turnover?

Rental turnover costs are a serious challenge for property managers and brokers, especially when the turnover rate is high. According to the National Apartment Association, the average tenant turnover rate is around 40%.

So that means if you’re managing 200 units, then 80 units will turnover each year. Those add up, meaning you’ll be turning 6-7 units every month. And the cost of each of those 80 turnovers chips away at the bottom line of your rental income.

Reducing Turnover Rates Can Lower Rental Turnover Costs

SmartMove reports that average vacancy costs are around $1,750 per month. That’s based on a mortgage payment of $950, plus HOA fees, cleaning and maintenance costs, advertising expenses and the property manager’s salary. That’s without the lost rental income, which you forgo each month the property sits empty.

And it doesn’t even begin to take into account the hidden cost of your time spent. Non-hard costs such as lost time that are not as easy to calculate could include a property manager’s time to advertise and generate interest, process incoming tenant leads to determine which are qualified, screen applicants, schedule and hold showings, and, a property management favorite, answer all those incoming phone calls, emails and text messages.

Let’s quickly revisit the 200-unit example. 

If we assume that all 80 units take one month each to turnover, you’re looking at $140,000 a year in tenant turnover costs. Think of the possibilities: that’s money that could otherwise be used to reinvest in growing your business.

Ways to Lower the Cost of Tenant Turnover

Thankfully, there are a few key strategies you can use to reduce turnover costs and maximize your rental income. You’ll want to look for improvements across the entire tenant lead management lifecycle, and here’s how you can do that:

• Ensure that any money you’re spending on advertising your listings is actually giving you a return on your investment in the form of good tenant leads.
• Improve tenant lead quality, so you can weed out the time-wasters and focus on the prospective tenants that are most likely to become actual tenants.
• Delight your tenant leads from day one with a convenient and tech-enhanced rental property search experience.
• Streamline both the showing process and leasing process to get more signed leases with less manual effort.

By following these strategies, you’ll free up the time you need to:

1. Host more showings
2. Foster better relationships with current tenants,  
3. Focus on growing your business, which sets you up to bring down your vacancy rate.

If you’re thinking, “that all sounds great, but easier said than done,” it’s time for you to consider a scheduling software that really works.

Automation is the Key

When you automate the most common and repetitive tasks that eat up time, you’ll enable efficiencies across your entire tenant turnover process. Automation is the only way you’ll actually find the time to focus on those other priorities. Here’s how Tenant Turner scheduling software and automation will help you implement each of the strategies mentioned above.

Ensuring Advertising ROI with Tenant Turner

• Publish your listing faster and more accurately, across channels like Zillow, Trulia and even your own website, without entering data multiple times.
• Always know exactly where your listings are being promoted, and add watermarks to protect listings from being hijacked and used as fakes.
• Aggregate the data and track which tenant leads come from which ad channel, so you can determine where you’re getting the best value for your investment.

Improving Tenant Lead Quality with Tenant Turner

• Pre-screen tenant leads consistently with standardized questions.
• Leverage AI (artificial intelligence) to blocklist tenant leads that are known scammers -- before you waste any valuable time on them.
• Get back to tenant lead inquiries immediately with automated responses sent via email and SMS (text).

Delighting Tenant Leads with Tenant Turner

• Offer a choice of showings: in-person, fully interactive virtual, or self showing (automated showing). Automated showings use a secure and trackable electronic lockbox.
• Let your tenant leads schedule their own showings easily online -- and automatically send confirmations and reminders to help eliminate no-shows.
• Integrate your showings scheduler with popular calendars such as Outlook and Google to make the entire experience seamless.

Streamlining the Showing & Leasing Process with Tenant Turner

• Enable instant delivery of applications after each showing so that your prospective tenants can apply immediately.
• Gather all leasing and tenant lead information in one centralized place, and leverage dashboards to gain useful insight into what’s really happening.
• Collect feedback from every single showing automatically, and even summarize it into owner reports.

Tenant Turner scheduling software helps property managers and brokers reduce turnover costs by streamlining the entire process, even eliminating 70-90% of phone calls and other unnecessary interruptions. It also decreases the time rental properties are on the market, improves the overall experience for prospective tenants, and gives property managers their time back -- typically 10-15 hours per team member, each week.

Learn more about what Tenant Turner can do to lower your turnover costs.