Council publishes benchmark property management survey

The National Multi Housing Council, www.nmhc.org, has published its first "National Property Management Of-ficers Survey," according to an NMHC press release.

"NMHC completed this survey at the request of the apartment industry's leading firms, which asked us to help them by creating a benchmarking reference tool by which they could track their performance," noted Jay Harris, NMHC's vice president for property management.

The survey, which was conducted with CEL & Associates, asked senior operating officers to describe their firms' policies in key apartment operations areas.

These are some of the findings:

Only 18 percent of firms require residents to have renter's insurance.

Approximately 50 percent of firms spend $150 per unit or less on all forms of marketing and advertising.

For online marketing, 45 percent say they spend less than 10 percent of their per-unit marketing costs for such ads.

Only 30 percent of firms accept resident applications online. Of those that do, the majority of respondents reported that less than 25 percent of all applicants apply through online marketing. How-ever, 5 percent report receiving 50 percent to 74 percent of their applications online.

Of the firms surveyed, 14 percent use yield-management or rent-pricing software to adjust rents and 5 percent use it to set lease terms.

On the other hand, 53 percent of community managers cannot raise their properties' rents without approval from a supervisor or home office.

The survey also found that 34 percent of firms regularly provide data regarding their residents' rent payment history to one of the three national credit bureaus.

According to the organization, which is based in Washington, D.C., more than one-third of Americans rent their housing, and one in five Americans lives in an apartment.