The multifamily market of 2026 is a renter’s market in ways that are putting real pressure on operators. National vacancy rates have climbed to modern peaks, driven by years of aggressive construction in high-growth markets. Rent growth has remained subdued. And the share of renters planning to move in the next twelve months has risen to 39%, up from 35% just a year ago. In that environment, the economics of retention have never been clearer. Every resident who renews is a leasing cost avoided, a vacancy avoided, and a unit that doesn’t sit idle while the market finds its footing. The question most operators are asking is how to drive retention in a market where residents have more choices and more motivation to use them than they have in years. AppFolio’s 2026 Renter Preferences Report, which surveyed more than 3,000 U.S.-based renters across a diverse cross-section of ages and incomes, offers a pointed answer: it starts on move-in day.

“The biggest ways to drive performance right now is by improving retention,” said Adam Feinstein, SVP of Product at AppFolio. “The question is, how can you set yourself up for that at the beginning of the process?” The report makes clear that the move-in experience is not just a logistical milestone. It is the moment that sets the emotional and relational tone for everything that follows. Residents who are satisfied with their property management company are significantly less likely to plan a move in the next twelve months, with 45% of satisfied residents planning to move compared to 68% of unsatisfied residents, and 55% of satisfied residents planning to renew compared to just 32% of unsatisfied ones. The gap between those two groups is where retention is won or lost, and it begins forming before a resident has unpacked a single box.

The reputational stakes of that first impression extend well beyond any individual resident. Ninety percent of residents state that a property management business’s online reputation is a vital factor in their decision-making process, and satisfied residents are more than five times more likely to recommend their property manager to friends or family. Referrals from friends and family rank among the top three methods renters use to find their next home, which means that a strong move-in experience doesn’t just retain the resident standing in front of you. It generates the next one. “There is clearly an opportunity to have services be a differentiator,” Feinstein said, “but only if done right.” A clumsy, friction-filled move-in process doesn’t just disappoint the incoming resident. It forecloses the referral network that resident could have become.

Doing it right increasingly means offering something more than a clean unit and a key. The report identifies resident benefit packages as one of the largest opportunity gaps in the industry. While 78% of renters consider services like identity protection, discounted internet, pest control, rent reporting, and renters insurance a vital factor when evaluating a new rental, only 33% of residents currently have access to them through their property manager. That 45-point gap between what renters want and what operators provide is the largest disparity in the entire survey, and it represents a meaningful leasing and retention tool that most of the market is not using. Nearly 80% of residents say they are willing to pay for these services, in part because sourcing them independently requires significant time and effort. Bundling them into the move-in experience transforms a transactional lease signing into something that genuinely improves a resident’s quality of life from day one. “The key is to allow people to just opt in,” Feinstein said. “No one wants to feel like they are being forced into a service or being taken advantage of.” The opt-in structure matters as much as the offering itself. When residents feel like they are choosing something valuable rather than being enrolled in something extractive, adoption goes up and resentment stays out.

Transparency is the prerequisite for all of it. Ninety-five percent of residents state that a transparent lease-signing experience, clearly detailing the base rent alongside all amenities, policies, and additional service costs upfront, is essential to building trust. The industry has spent years accumulating a reputation for hidden fees and surprise charges, and residents arrive at the lease-signing table with that history already in mind. Operators who put everything on the table, who show the full cost picture and explain what each service includes before a resident signs, are not just complying with what residents want. They are differentiating themselves from a market that has too often treated move-in as a moment to bury costs rather than build confidence. “95% of residents state that a transparent lease-signing experience, detailing all costs and services upfront, is essential to building trust,” Feinstein noted. That number should be read as both a mandate and an opportunity.

Even with the best digital tools and clearest disclosures, some residents will have questions that a checklist can’t answer. The move-in process involves dozens of decisions and logistics that feel overwhelming when navigating them in a new place for the first time, from utility transfers to parking assignments to understanding how to use the resident portal. “A resident concierge helps the move-in experience a lot,” Feinstein said. “Sometimes people just want to talk to a human and get a particular question answered.” The report supports this with data showing that AI concierges are having a measurable impact as well, with 86% of residents who interact with an AI concierge reporting satisfaction with their property manager’s communication, compared to 77% satisfaction among those without access to automated assistance. The most effective move-in experiences combine the efficiency of digital tools with the availability of a real person when the situation calls for it.

What ties all of these elements together is the platform they live on. Services, communications, benefit packages, maintenance requests, and lease documents that exist across separate systems, different logins, and different email threads create friction that compounds across the residency. “There are independent offerings,” Feinstein said, “but residents are looking for a unified experience. Having to go find multiple emails and use different tools can detract from it.” The value of a well-designed move-in isn’t just in the individual components. It’s in how seamlessly they work together. A resident who can access their lease, enroll in renters insurance, confirm utility setup, and submit their first maintenance request from a single interface has a fundamentally different experience than one who has to navigate five separate systems to accomplish the same things.

The AppFolio report frames all of this under a concept it calls resident impact, the idea that when property managers deliver services that genuinely improve residents’ financial stability and quality of life, the business results follow as a natural consequence. The data shows that the more services a resident uses, the higher they rate their overall quality of life, with residents using five or more services reporting life satisfaction nearly two points higher on a ten-point scale than those using none. That’s not just a satisfaction metric. It’s a retention metric, a reputation metric, and increasingly a revenue metric as operators discover that residents willing to invest in their own wellbeing through bundled services are also the residents most likely to stay. The move-in moment has always mattered. The industry is only now building the tools and the data to understand exactly how much.