A huge thank you to Doug Miller and Jen Piccotti from SatisFacts, who led a great conversation about resident retention on last Friday's Apartment Chat. They provided lots of hard-hitting stats about the true costs of resident turnover.

Here are the questions that were discussed:

• Why does controlling resident turnover matter?
• What matters most to residents when considering renewal?
• How does technology impact resident retention?
• When does the resident renewal decision begin?

Check out these interesting stats provided by SatisFacts during the discussion:

• Average cost of turnover = $4500 per move-out (Includes avg. rent, vacancy loss, wages, ads, promo, concessions, repair/replace, etc.)
• The average resident turnover for 2008 at properties nationwide was 59% (According to the NAA).
• If a 5,000-unit portfolio can reduce turnover by 9.5%, that portfolio's NOI can increase over $2 million.
• The same 9.5% improvement in the same 5,000-unit portfolio can increase asset value over $26 million.
• 60+% of turnover is controllable, primarily by improving office staff performance and responsiveness.
• Communication from staff and work order resolution are generally more important to residents than apartment appearance and condition.
• 60% of residents want to communicate via email. That has DOUBLED in the last two years! Yet, on average, property managers only have about 15% of their residents' email addresses.

You can calculate the NOI impact of reducing turnover with the SatisFacts turnover calculator.

Here's the link to the full transcript. (Over 600 tweets!)

What are you doing to improve resident retention at your property and throughout your portfolio? Leave your ideas and share your experiences in the comments.