Online Reputation Definitively Linked to Multifamily Financial Performance

When RealPage, multifamily’s chief aggregator of data, partnered with the creator of the ORA (Online Reputation Assessment) score, one hope was to be able to correlate a property’s performance with its reputation as reflected in online reviews and ratings. The assumption was that if two properties were identical, but one had better online reviews, the difference would be reflected in their financial performance. Because who doesn’t consult reviews before making a decision about a product or service these days? But you know what they say about assuming. Well, the numbers are in. And to nobody’s great surprise, they indicate a clear correlation between online reputation and performance as measured by occupancy, rent premiums and length of stay. And that’s when properties are “normalized” to ensure apples are being compared to apples, so the performance boost can’t be attributed to something other than reputation. The good news is there are clear, effective ways to boost your properties’ ORA score and reap the benefits. Unlike, say, capital improvements, these improvements don’t have to be expensive, and they might require few substantive changes from what you’re already doing – other than increasing engagement with your residents and encouraging them to write reviews about the community they like anyway, but simply haven’t thought about reviewing. Here’s a previous blog about leveraging property reviews and how each and every online review a multifamily property gets is precious compared to, for example, a restaurant review. Measuring the impact of online reputation During a recent online reputation webinar, a group of experts in data science and reputation management convened to discuss their pursuit of data that would verify the bottom-line impact of  reviews on the internet. The webinar included Joseph Batdorf, president of J. Turner Research (creator of the ORA score) a...