You find tickets for a sporting event for a reasonable $70. Enthusiasm is high. But when you proceed to the final checkout, the price has climbed to $103 a piece due to fees. Buzz kill. 

That’s often how it works for apartment seekers, as well. 

That has put the onus on apartment operators to offer a true “out the door” monthly rate including all fees, but it can be a complicated topic, according to a panel at the 2024 Entrata Summit session Enhancing Leasing Efficiency and Conversion Rates: The Power of Fee Transparency.

“It’s two sides of a pendulum,” said Robert Jones, Principal Product Manager for Entrata. “You can start out with a low price that’s just your base rent, but then later you might see other fees tacked on, which creates something of a bait-and-switch scenario with renters. On the opposite end, if you advertise your all-in price, sometimes you price yourself out of being competitive—even if your overall price is the same as the comps.”

That creates a catch-22 for operators, who often end up somewhere in the middle. Adding ambiguity to the scenario is that many fees often fluctuate—such as monthly utilities—which makes a true all-in price difficult to determine. Additionally, many fees are optional add-ons for residents, such as monthly pet rent or fees for covered parking or additional storage, which further clouds the picture. 

“We’ve always been upfront about our required fees and optional fees,” said Paul Holland, Director of Tier Support and Analysis for AMLI Management Company. “Ultimately, it gives you a better prospect. If you put forth everything they’re going to incur on a monthly basis, you have a prospect who knows what your property is about and what they’ll be paying. When they select you, they know there will be no surprises at the end.”

As in the ticket sales industry, regulatory components are beginning to make fee transparency a requirement at apartment communities—at least to some degree. It will be somewhat convoluted for operators with communities in different regions, however, as these laws will vary by state and jurisdiction. Minnesota, for instance, is an early adopter of fee transparency laws, which has caused operators to make changes to property websites and digital advertising mediums in the state. 

“For us, it’s not just about regulations,” said Stuart Richens, VP of Product for Apartments.com. “The prospective resident at one of your communities wants to understand the all-in cost, and the difference between that base price and the end cost can be significant. Providing that information is not only a benefit to the renter—it’s a benefit to the operator, as well, because it makes the process more seamless and avoids any 11^th-hour surprises.”

Apartments.com is among the sites that have built tools to address fee transparency, enabling prospects to add any of 72 potential fees to their base rent and configure it to their own situation. These potential fees include some that aren’t very common, such as boat slip fees for shoreside communities. Operators are beginning to do the same on their community websites. 

“On our AMLI website, we display upfront costs and required fees,” Holland said. “Then we show rentable items and optional services to get as close as we can to one place of truth. It can be difficult to precisely pinpoint utility costs, but we can show an average.”

More than ever, fee transparency has become a deterministic factor for renters. With fast-moving regulatory components entering the space, operators will have to find ways to be more transparent about all-in costs, even as they can greatly vary by renter.