What can actually reduce this (beyond the 30%)? Is the excessive turnover due to specific differentiation (poor customer support, noise, etc) or simply due to market trends?

Remember, federal fair housing laws apply to all states, but each state also can have their own additional requirements.

In my state (Oregon,) the Fair Housing Bureau does require that we treat every prospect, and resident exactly the same.

Many local fair housing agencies offer training classes. Grace Hill has a class on the Federal Fair housing history and current requirements.

I constantly here "Fair Housing" cited as, "We must treat everyone exactly the same all the time". That is an incorrect application of the law. Fair Housing outlines protected classes. To give all black families large increases and all white families small increases is a violation of FH. To give one unit a $75 increase because they are $85 below market rent and another unit a $25 increase because they are $35 below market rent is not a violation of FH. There is not discrimination there, simply the application of metrics to the differing circumstances of each unit.

The Reasonable Accomodation law bears this out. This law outlines giving certain residents specific accomodations if they meet certain requirements. Not every resident can get these accomodations, but that isn't a FH violation. It's simply that everyone who meets the requirements is qualified to receive the accomodations - it would only be a violation of FH if you selectively "qualified" people based on a protected class (race, color, religion, age, sex, etc) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class.

I've heard someone say, "Oh we can't change the unit prices today because we've already toured someone." This is another misapplication of the FH law. You can change the unit prices whenever you want, they just have to apply to everyone that comes in at that time. If the unit price from 9am-12pm is $1500 and then $1750 from 12pm-6pm, that is ok as long as everyone who comes in during that time is given the same price. Now you can't give one family $1500 at 9:06am, another family $1750 at 10:00am, and then another family $1600 at 10:15am - unless of course you had printed documentation to show that your current unit prices were officially those prices at those times and it was not connected to who came in when.

The only source is the National Apartment Association's annual income and expense survey. If you email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. I will email you a summary we did of 2004-2009.

Does anyone know where I could get turnover statistics that could be cited to in an academic paper?

I can't stay away either. It's a great topic. :)

Yes, Oregon's renters' rights organization is very strong, as is the fair housing bureau. Even though we have a lot of protected status', the Fair Housing recommendation and thus company policy is that we must treat everyone exactly the same.