Community Blog / State of Resident Events 2022: How 760+ Apartments Do Resident Events – From Budgets to ROI to Trends

State of Resident Events 2022: How 760+ Apartments Do Resident Events – From Budgets to ROI to Trends

October 7, 2022

Introduction

Executing resident events is the most common strategy that apartment communities use to build a sense of community. Flamingo’s 2022 State of Resident Events Report looks at how 760+ communities do resident events.

Flamingo’s resident engagement platform is used by over 400,000 units to book and/or manage over 1000 resident events per month. Our resident engagement app drives 1,116 resident-to-resident app interactions per apartment community each month. So you can say Flamingo lives and breaths resident events and resident engagement. So we thought we might be in the best position to complete this study and publish the apartment industry’s first State of Resident Events Report.

Our goal with the State of Resident Events Report is to provide helpful benchmarks for the Multifamily Industry. The data in the State of Resident Events comes from over 760 apartment communities in the United States of America.

Key Findings From How 760+ Apartment Communities Do Resident Events

Resident events impact satisfaction, online reviews, and renewal intent.
While most apartment operators value events, budgets often fail to keep pace – especially as residents increasingly demand community “experiences” that require expert 3rd-party vendors to execute.
The most significant challenges for onsite teams related to events are (1) time and (2) budgets.

And now, onwards to our findings! Or watch the webinar replay!

Why Apartment Communities Do Resident Events

Most apartment operators understand the value of building a strong sense of community via events. But how do you measure the impact?

Top reasons for doing resident events

Build a sense of community, which increases satisfaction & renewals.
Increase Online Reviews, which improves foot traffic, desirability, and interest.
Improve conversions by standing out from comps that focus on amenities, not experiences.

But nothing quite captures the reason to do events more than the quote below from a resident at Elmington Property Management’s Bells Bluff Apartments in Nashville.

The Most Significant Resident Event Challenges For Onsite Teams

If you’ve ever done an event, you know just how challenging they can be to execute successfully. A great resident event includes getting multiple things right including coming up with the right event for your resident demographic, picking the right day and time to do the event, finding the right 3rd-party vendor to do the event, ensuring communication about the event that excites residents enough to attend, and then actually executing the event.

We asked onsite teams what is their biggest event challenge and interestingly, all the responses centered around 4 areas – time, budget, attendance, and event ideas.

40% of onsite teams said finding time to do events or the amount of time it takes to do a resident event was their biggest challenge.
29% of onsite teams said budget was their biggest challenge.
19% said attendance was their biggest challenge.
12% said event ideas was their biggest challenge. This one isn’t surprising – if you have to do 12 to 24 events per year, it’s hard to find something unique to do each month.

Average Monthly Resident Event Budget By Property Type

One of our survey questions was how much apartments have budgeted for their resident events per month. We dug deeper into the data to break the amounts by an overall average and also by property type – 55+ Active Adult, Lease-Ups, High-End Properties, Mid-End Properties, and Low-End Properties.

Here is what the data showed for average resident event by property type:

55+ Active Adult: $2992
Lease-Ups: $1675
High-End Properties: $870
All Properties: $870
Mid-End Properties: $681
Low-End Properties: $387

As expected, 55+ Active Adult communities have the highest monthly resident event budgets followed by lease-up properties.

The most surprising and shocking part of the data is that the average community budgets only $870 per month for resident events. Considering that the average apartment community has about 300 units, this means that the average community budgets less than $3 per unit per month for engaging each of their residents. Said another way, apartments budget the equivalent of a cup of coffee per month per resident for engagement. Considering average rents are $2000+, we think most communities would greatly improve engagement and decrease onsite team stress by increasing their event budgets. It’s no surprise that 29% of onsite teams said event budgets were their biggest challenge when it comes to events.

Average Monthly Resident Event Budget By Property Management Company

We dug into the data a bit more to see how much various property management companies in the NMHC Top 50 Owners and NHMC Top 50 Managers list budget for resident events. We found quite a bit of variance but the data was clear that some property management companies value resident events more than others based on budgets.

Here is what the data showed us for how much different property management companies budget for resident events:

TGM and Berkshire budget about $1000+ per community per month for resident events.
Greystar and Lincoln budget about $900+ per community per month for resident events.
Bozzuto budgets about $800+ per community per month for resident events.
Mill Creek, Brookfield, AvalonBay, and BH budget about $700+ per community per month for resident events.
Bell Partners budgets about $400+ per community per month for resident events.
Avenue5 budgets about $200+ per community per month for resident events.

One thing to note is that these numbers might be skewed because some companies prefer their onsite teams do all events inhouse rather than outsourcing to a 3rd-party company. Additionally, we were limited by a small sample size for some property management companies.

Average Cost of Resident Events & Fitness Classes

Flamingo’s Resident Event Marketplace lets apartments instantly book resident events from 1000s of event host that Flamingo has vetted. Apartments can also use Flamingo’s resident engagement platform to manage all their resident events including tracking event spent. Because of this, we are able to see how much 1000s of different resident events or fitness classes cost. This helped us greatly in compiling the State of Resident Events Report.

Our data showed the following for the average cost of resident events and fitness classes:

Average cost of a resident event: $741 per event.
Average cost of a fitness class: $101 per fitness class.
Average cost of a fitness program (3 fitness classes per week): $1212 per fitness program per month.

With the average resident event budget at $870 and the average resident event cost at $741, apartments are able to do about 1 event per month. And this is also what our data show: the average apartment community does just 1 resident event per month.

The Most Popular & Booked Resident Events

A State of Resident Events Report wouldn’t be complete without mention of the most popular events done by apartments for resident engagement. Happy Hour, Pool Parties, and Outdoor Movies, and Food Truck events were at the top of the list. One surprising event that made it high on the list is a Caricature Sketch Class. This makes sense because this is one of cheapest yet still engaging events available. It simply requires an artist, who brings a few note pads and pencils.

Here are the most popular and most booked resident events:

Happy Hour
Outdoor Movie
Pool Party
DJ
Food Truck
Caricature
Yoga, Brunch, & Mimosas
Sushi Making Class
Pie & Wine Tasting
Cocktail Making Class
Taco Bar & Drinks
Wine & Paint
Magician
Pop-Up Meals

Impact of Resident Events on Online Reviews

Correlation does not equal causation but we found some very telling insights when we looked at how much buildings with the top 10% highest reviews allocate for budgets compared to buildings with the bottom 10% lowest reviews.

Apartment buildings with the top 10% highest online review scores allocate an average of $1121 per month for events. Apartment buildings with the bottom 10 lowest online review scores allocate an average of $693 per month for resident events.

Does this mean that $428 is the difference between being at the bottom 10% of reviews versus being at the top 10%? Probably not.

Again, correlation does not equal causation. So increasing your event budget isn’t going to magically increase online reviews. But the data we found is pretty revealing of how events might impact online reviews.

The Impact of Resident Events on Resident Satisfaction, Number of Online Reviews, Online Reviews Average, and Number of Instagram Followers

To go even deeper, we looked at exactly how resident events impact the other key metrics that apartment operators and marketers care about. This included looking at not just how resident events impact online reviews, but also how resident events impact resident satisfaction, the number of online reviews, and the number of Instagram followers.

Results of the Pearson correlation showed a positive relationship, (r(136) = .218, p = .010), between resident events and resident satisfaction.
Results of the Pearson correlation showed no significant relationship, (r(757) = .048, p = .201), between event budget and number of online reviews.
Results of the Pearson correlation showed a positive relationship, (r(757) = .0741, p = .041), between event budget and online reviews average.
Results of the Pearson correlation showed a positive relationship, (r(629) = .208, p < .001), between resident events and number of Instagram followers.

While the impact of resident events is there based on the above data, it is very small for most communities. Interviews with onsite teams have shown that very few apartments have a strategy or a consistent process in place to maximize the ROI of resident events – for example, by prompting residents that attend events to leave reviews online. Communities that do have a review generation process or a review generation platform like Flamingo are able to generate 3 to 5 reviews from each event like this Greystar community that turned an outdoor movie night resident event into 2 Google reviews.

*A Pearson Correlation measures the relationship between 2 values. In the above, the 1st value is the sample size. 2nd value is the r, which falls between -1 and 1. The further from 0 r is in either direction, the stronger the correlation – either negative or positive correlation. The last number is the p value, which measures statistical significance. A p value of .05 or less means results are statistically significant.

A deeper analysis of resident satisfaction data showed events impact satisfaction for many residents.

This additional analysis involved sifting through 1000s of comments left by residents in Flamingo’s Monthly Resident Happiness Survey where we ask residents to rate their happiness and satisfaction with their community. Residents can respond with Very Happy, Happy, Neutral, Unhappy, or Very Unhappy. And they have the option to provide additional comments for why they made that particular selection. This additional analysis looked at instances where a resident organically mentioned resident events in their comments.

In 89% of cases where a resident mentioned the PRESENCE of events, they rated their Happiness Level with the Building as ‘Happy’ or ‘Very Happy’.
In 87% of cases where a resident mentioned the LACK of events, they rated their Happiness Level with the Building as ‘Neutral,’ ‘Unhappy‘, or ‘Very Unhappy’.

Here is a small sample of those comments:

Happiness with Building: Very Happy

Reason: “I love living here. I have met some great people through the social events and can’t say enough good things about Kierstyn! She’s the best and is always so friendly and helpful!” – Michelle Z, Savannah, GA

Happiness with Building: Very Happy

Reason: “Everything has went just as promised by Sammi when I agreed to my lease based on her information about everything! I have now met all the staff at the Reef & everyone is so nice and friendly. Two “resident” events this month made it extra fun! Love life at the Reef!” – Mary Kay S, Fort Myers, Fl

Happiness with Building: Very Happy

Reason: “great events and staff. lots of oppportunities to meet neighbors and the amenities are top notch!” – Cecilia B, Oakland, CA

Happiness with Building: Very Happy

Reason: “Great events and food trucks!” – Tessa M., Washington, DC

Happiness with Building: Happy

Reason: “Is there a social director? would be nice to see more social events for the entire community. when we toured they mentioned that they had a couple during the holiday’s. how about a social by the pool with possibly a musician playing ? more ways to connect the community and to get to know your neighbors.” – Justine V, Savannah, GA

Happiness with Building: Neutral

Reason: “Events all seem to end earlier. There was no pizza at pizza day after half an hour. There was no beer at happy hour at 5:45 and nothing at all at 5:50. There was almost nothing available for Continental breakfast at 8:45. it’s not a positive trend.” Karen M., Evanston, IL