Highform, a Phoenix-based real estate technology and marketing firm for multifamily property developers and residential brokerages, recently conducted a survey to gauge renters’ reactions to COVID-19.
Some of the results were shocking, says Tim Harmon, Highform’s director of multifamily.
Coronavirus concerns caused renters to change their mind about renewing a lease or moving. Before the pandemic, renters were separated by less than three percentage points when it came to their plan to renew their current lease or relocate. Now, intent to renew current leases is 11 points higher than intent to move. More than 65 percent said saving money was the main reason they wanted to stay, while nearly 30 percent of renters indicated wanting more space as the main motivator to move.
“There was some new data that I wasn’t expecting, specifically the amount of change between people who were going to renew and now aren’t versus people who weren’t going to move and now they are,” Harmon says.
Nearly 80 percent of respondents expressed concern about the ability to pay rent, while 24 percent reported considering breaking their lease specifically because of the pandemic.
“I was shocked to see that many people were already in panic mode,” Harmon says.
While some of the survey’s statistics came as a surprise, others aligned with the company’s expectations.
“We had a hunch that people who are now working from home for the first time are seeing how difficult it can be if they’re in a constraining environment, and we were right,” Harmon says. “It turns out that a lot of people are putting that near the top of their list of what they’re looking for in their next place.”\
The survey was conducted between March 30 and April 3 with a sample size of 1,021 respondents who rent in the top 30 markets in the country. Harmon says Highform conducted the survey to better comprehend how renters are reacting to COVID-19 and collect raw data required to make informed decisions for its clients in the coming months.
“No one knew what was going on,” he says. “We just wanted better data to inform our recommendations for our clients, what kind of changes they were going to have to make to their marketing strategies to appeal to people in this time where maybe they want to move more now because of the pandemic, maybe they want to move less. Those are the questions we wanted to find out, and if they needed to move, what kind of tools can we give them to help them better make that decision?”
More than 60 percent of renters indicated that a 3D virtual interactive tour would be the most helpful tool in choosing their next apartment.
Highform has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to technology, so they started offering virtual tours early on, but the company wanted to make sure that’s what renters wanted.
“Our mission is basically to bring next-generation technology into an antiquated market,” Harmon says.
He adds that Highform has always been a data-driven company.
“We use analytic tracking that goes well beyond Google Analytics,” Harmon says. “We do a deeper dive using all sorts of data metrics like Experian and Oracle and cell phone data over time. It’s this symphony of data that we’re able to look at.”
Harmon says Highform plans to do a series of surveys in the future, either monthly or biweekly.
“We had already been planning that before the pandemic came along. When it happened, we switched the focus of the first survey to be specific to coronavirus,” he says. “We do intend to do follow-up surveys on all sorts of different topics.”
To view the full survey, visit https://blackbook.highform.com/survey-renters-react-to-the-coronavirus-pandemic/.
