Improving Renter Retention the Old-Fashioned Way: By Addressing Their Needs (Copy)

Rapid turnover in a rental complex is bad for everyone. For tenants, it means too many of them are unhappy enough that they’re willing to go through the expense and hassle of moving in order to find a better situation. For landlords, it adds expense and cuts revenue. Nobody wins.

In February 2025, Communidad Partners tried out a program to reduce turnover at Villas del Solamar, a low-to-moderate-income workforce housing complex in Dallas, Texas. They enlisted Viva to manage a pilot program to address tenant needs and concerns in hopes of improving lease renewals. The results suggest that this represents a model that other property managers should consider copying.

At that time, lease renewal rates at Villas del Solamar were running below both industry and market averages. That amounted to a roughly $4,000 loss for every non renewal, taking into account lost rent along with costs involved in making the unit ready to show to prospective renters and other expenses such as marketing and administrative costs. Rather than just ramping up their marketing to fill vacant units more quickly, Communidad decided to try improving tenant satisfaction in hopes of giving residents more reasons to stay.

That’s where Viva came in, working with a second group, Rainbow Housing, to boost engagement with residents, build relationships with them and connect them to benefits and assistance that would address their needs.1 First, they segmented tenants by lease timelines, enabling them to prioritize those who were closest to renewal.

Then, embedding what they term “Community Success Managers” on-site, they set about systematically contacting tenants, starting with those whose lease was up within 90 days.

That contact focused on what Viva calls “high-touch, trust-building outreach and coordinated follow-through,” using door-knocking, phone calls and text messages to contact tenants and assess their needs and concerns – hundreds of contacts altogether. Door knocks were the most frequent of these, maintaining a personal touch. Community Success Managers asked tenants about their feelings toward renewal and identified concerns like utility costs or a need for services like appliance repairs, pest control, etc.

Solving the Problems In Front of You

Viva and Rainbow Housing ended up providing a variety of assistance to tenants, going well beyond standard landlord-tenant issues like repairs or noise complaints. The Viva team notes that one of the most impactful services they provided involved healthcare: “Our ability to help provide 24/7 telehealth is very impactful, and addresses unmet needs related to care for both adults and children in the community. When a parent can reach a doctor within 10 minutes and send a prescription to a nearby pharmacy, they do not have to miss a work shift, which can cost them a job, or pull a child from school, and can bypass transportation challenges, not to mention time saved from sitting in a waiting room.”

It’s not hard to see how helpful that can be in a community of working families, where parents may have to juggle working more than one job while caring for their children.

Viva reports that another service that tenants especially appreciated involved connecting residents to a monthly food distribution program managed by a local nonprofit, Oak Cliff Veggie Project: “We would market the monthly food distribution event to residents, including by knocking on their doors to make sure they got their 20 pound bag of produce. What’s inspiring is seeing as much as 50% of the entire community population come by in a single day to participate.” Creating happier tenants by saving them money on healthy food seems like a classic win-win.

Community Success Managers also assisted with dispute resolution. Viva’s team comments that “residents will typically tell us things they do not bring up to property management, but that they actually want relayed.”

Residents clearly appreciated the effort. During the first six months, 90% of the contacts with residents were staff initiated, but renters increasingly came to the Community Success Managers for assistance. During the second half of the 12-month pilot, residents initiated one quarter of contacts, suggesting growth in awareness of and trust in the assistance Viva provided.

The benefits became clear in lease renewal rates, which jumped from just 41% before the program began to 65% during the first six months – a whopping 59% improvement.

It Always Helps To Ask

One on one conversations with tenants provided insights into their reasons for renewing or not. Those who renewed cited community comfort and safety, avoiding the hassle of moving, positive staff relationships and the complex’s location as reasons. Those who left mainly cited life changes such as job relocation or financial challenges like loss of a job. In other words, the factors that landlords can reasonably control often became positives in renewal considerations.

There are, of course, costs for providing these services to tenants, depending on the number of units and the suite of services provided. Telehealth, for example, costs $8 per unit per month. Property managers can assess their needs in relation to costs and choose what seems to work best. Viva reports that the program saved Communidad $200,000 in costs by preventing 50 turnovers during 2025.

The Viva team says, “We expect for our owners to see material return on investment of at least $1.50 for each $1.00 spent by month six of our partnership.” While this particular property is now transitioning to new ownership, Viva continues to provide similar services at several other Communidad properties.

What Property Owners Need to Know

That said, Viva urges property owners to put in some serious thought before engaging services such as the ones they offer. Landlords should, for example, establish goals for both resident impacts and performance of the property: Understand where you are now and where you need to get to, wiith clearly defined metrics. Specific advice from Viva for property managers looking to implement such services and evaluate potential contractors includes evaluating their ability to:

• Provide meaningful services responsive to resident needs,
• Measure and achieve outcomes that create a well-defined ROI according to the property performance and impact metrics described above, including meaningful adoption of services in a timely fashion, and
• Partner with other providers.

Every situation, of course, will be somewhat different, but one bottom line is likely to remain constant:

Happy, satisfied tenants are likely to stay. Unhappy ones are likely to leave.

Ultimately, when residents have a more satisfactory experience, both tenants and landlords end up ahead.

Bruce Mirken is a longtime journalist and communications professional whose bylines have appeared in a wide variety of local and national publications. After a lifetime in California, he recently moved to Hilo, Hawaii in a (thus far unsuccessful) effort to slow down a bit.