Instinctively, most of us see the value in a strong “sense of community” at our apartment communities.  It just seems reasonable that if you had to choose between a community where you were surrounded by strangers or one where you had actual friends living close by, you would probably choose the one where you had connections.  But before now, the concept was often too ambiguous to make a firm plan of attack for, beyond simply throwing money at parties and events at the community.  This made placing a priority on a sense of community very difficult for those that were more analytical minded, who wanted statistics to drive operations.  My recent trip to the NMHC OpTech conference made me realize, however, that this soon may no longer be the case.

I attended a session on prioritizing lead channels, and Virginia Love mentioned how they were not just assessing leads upon move-in, but they were assessing leads upon renewal, as well.  What was particularly relevant to the discussion of a sense of community was that Waterton Residential uses RentMineOnline, which is a tool that leverages social media to drive resident referrals to their friends, family, and network.  In other words, this would mean that if someone moved in, they would already have at least one friend or connection right from the very start.  And by analyzing their renewal numbers relative to other lead sources, they should be able to quantify the “value” of that friendship in the renewal process!  Obviously, one would need to look at hundreds of leads to make that statistically relevant, but it should hypothetically give a tangible metric to assess one element of a sense of community.  Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait a few more months for the data to come back on that particular metric.

Another set of data, which may turn out to be even more useful in quantifying a sense of community was briefly touched on by Elaine Williams of UDR.  In her discussion on mobile in multifamily, she made a quick note about how residents who had friends in the community were 8% more likely to renew!  UDR uses a system called ActiveBuilding, and through a separate survey, combined with enrollment in the Active Building service, they were able to assess that there was a decisive difference in the likelihood of renewing based upon connections a resident had within the community.  Through services like ActiveBuilding, which allow residents to interact and connect within the community online, one could potentially dig much deeper.  For example, one could place a social score for each resident based upon connections, interaction on the website, event RSVP’s, and other metrics, and then analyze that score relative to their ultimately renewal decisions and their longevity at that community.

Lastly, one could cull the resident participation data from social networks, such as from the community’s fan page, to determine how involvement in those mediums resulted in direct impacts to resident retention.  I’m a little less optimistic about that option, as fan pages do not tend to inspire resident to resident interaction, but rather resident to community interaction, but it might provide some side data in the equation.

In the end, the value of a sense of community is never going to be understood until we have firm numbers quantifying that fact.  And these metrics offer an exciting opportunity to do just that, allowing us to change our strategies and tactics based upon something measurable rather than a gut feeling.