One of the most stressful times in a person’s life is moving. According to a recent survey by North American Van Lines, 64% of respondents said their most recent move was one of the most stressful things they’ve ever experienced, with 43% of those who did the moving on their own saying they would never do it again¹. In fact, many of those surveyed indicated that moving was more stressful than getting a divorce or having kids.

It’s so stressful that people put it off to the last possible minute. On average, residents are only looking for their next apartment for just 2.9 months, with 44% looking less for less than 2 months². Operators can make the process less stressful by being responsive, transparent with their processes and treating all residents fairly and with respect throughout the process. Because moving is so stressful, people want to do it as few times in their lives as possible. 

To make sure residents don’t want to move as soon as their lease is up, put processes in place to make the move in as seamless as possible. One of the best ways to do this is by creating a move-in checklist that is tied to your resident portal that provides them with all the information they need to make their move as easy as possible.

Presently, most move-in checklists are handled manually, with just 33% of renters completing a move-in checklist digitally³. The remainder indicated they did it on a piece of paper. When you build the checklist inside of your resident portal you give residents the control they want to complete the tasks on their own time, while also giving you visibility into what has been accomplished. This also allows you to send nurture messages to move the process along when things get stuck. A digital move-in checklist also lets residents initiate address changes, mail forwarding, and connecting utilities all from one place. Additionally, when it comes time to move out at the end of the lease, these types of tools help residents navigate the move-out process and apartment inspection, which makes the move-out easier for the resident as well as site teams.

Renters Insurance

Another key step of moving into a new place is securing insurance. One way you can make this easier is by offering insurance directly in your resident portal, which eliminates the time associated with contacting an insurance agent to obtain a policy, which ensures you have the right coverage to meet both your property needs and the needs of residents. Beyond that, you could also offer other types of coverage like pet, jewelry, and life insurance. With each policy sold, you can significantly increase the average revenue per unit.

If you’re thinking that residents wouldn’t want to buy insurance products from their property management company, think again. In a recent survey of 2,000 renters, more than half said they would buy renters insurance directly from their property⁴. 

Financial tools

After renters insurance has been acquired, now, it’s time to take care of move-in expenses. Costs to move into a new apartment can be considerable, especially when you take into account rental deposits and security deposits. One way to help reduce those costs is by offering a deposit alternative that is much less expensive than traditional deposits. Deposit insurance increases the coverage for any damage caused to the apartment without breaking the bank for the residents

One of the biggest downsides of renting is that despite rent being one of the, if not the biggest expense for renters, rent payments have typically not been accounted for by the major credit bureaus. What that has meant is that despite exhibiting credit-worthy behavior, renters weren’t able to build the credit they need, and frankly deserve, to help them get better interest rates and terms when purchasing a car or home in the future. Recently, the credit bureaus have partnered with a select number of property management software providers to report on-time rent payments. This is something that 69% of renters said they would be willing to sign up for if it were offered and more than half said they would be willing to pay a small monthly fee to have on-time payments reported⁵.

Ensuring on-time payments

To help ensure that renters are able to take advantage of rent credit reporting, another key component of your resident portal is to make it easy for renters to make payments online and ideally set up automatic payments. It should be no surprise that 60% of renters already make payments online, but only 28% are set up for autopay⁶. Having autopay set up helps to eliminate a lot of potential bad debt your properties could incur and saves site team time that was once spent tracking down late payments or processing rent payments. Not to mention it helps residents avoid costly late fees.

There are several reasons residents don’t sign up for autopay, including fluctuating income or lack of trust that the system will debit the correct amount on the right day⁷, it’s not something they would never do. To learn more about how to provide resident services, download our latest ebook, Unlocking the Power of Resident Services.

¹ Survey about moving being more stressful than divorce or having kids

² 2024 Entrata Resident Report ³ 2024 Entrata Resident Report ⁴ 2024 Entrata Resident Report ⁵2024 Entrata Resident Report ⁶2024 Entrata Resident Report ⁷2024 Entrata Resident Report^‍‍^‍‍