Monday, May 11, 2026

Renters have more leverage than they’ve had in years, and multifamily operators are feeling it. Vacancy rates are elevated, rent growth has softened, and nearly four in ten renters say they expect to move within the next year. In that environment, retention is no longer just an operational metric. It has become one of the clearest drivers of NOI. New data from AppFolio suggests the battle for retention may be won or lost long before a resident decides whether to renew.

The report points to an overlooked reality in multifamily: the move-in experience shapes everything that follows. Residents who are satisfied with management are dramatically more likely to renew and far more likely to recommend the property to others. That means the first few days of residency now carry reputational consequences that extend well beyond a single lease term. A frustrating move-in process does not just create unhappy tenants. It weakens one of the industry’s most valuable leasing channels: referrals from existing residents.

Operators are also discovering that renters increasingly expect more than an apartment and a set of keys. Services like renters insurance, internet discounts, identity protection, and rent reporting are becoming part of the value equation, yet most properties still fail to offer them in a seamless way. The firms gaining traction are the ones pairing transparent pricing, bundled resident benefits, AI-powered support, and human assistance into a unified experience that feels less transactional and more like hospitality. In a market where residents finally have options again, the quality of the move-in experience is starting to look like a competitive advantage rather than a courtesy.

82% of surveyed commercial professionals say AI is critical to CRE, yet 54% have reported having no training in this area. MRI Software’s latest report on industry trends dives into this topic and so much more.

Commercial real estate has spent years investing in dashboards, analytics platforms, and automation tools with the promise that better data would lead to better decisions. But a new report from MRI Software suggests the industry is still struggling with a more basic problem: most operators are drowning in information without turning it into meaningful action. The tools are everywhere. Faster decision-making is not.

The survey reveals a growing disconnect between the industry’s enthusiasm for AI and the realities of its underlying data infrastructure. Most respondents believe AI will become critical to the future of commercial real estate, especially for labor-intensive processes like CAM reconciliation, maintenance analysis, and trend detection. But many operators are still manually stitching together information from disconnected systems before they can even begin analyzing it. That creates a difficult foundation for AI tools that depend on accurate, unified, and accessible data to function reliably.

The result is an industry caught between optimism and operational reality. Property managers want AI to improve workflows, not replace human judgment, but trust in the technology remains fragile when data quality itself is inconsistent. The firms that benefit most from AI may not be the ones adopting tools the fastest. They may be the ones quietly fixing the infrastructure problems that have prevented property management from becoming truly data-driven in the first place.

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