The Hottest Amenities Hiding in Plain Sight
After reading AppFolio’s 2026 Renter Preferences Report, one thing stood out.
Renters are asking for surprisingly simple things.
Across the report’s seven chapters, a theme emerged: residents value responsive service, quality maintenance, and clear communication.
You may have heard of this concept before. We used to call it… customer service.
The difference today is where the greatest return on investment comes from.
Over the past decade, many of the highest return improvements came from major capital projects (think luxury pet spas and million dollar clubhouse renovations). Today, the highest return opportunities come from investing in technology, process improvement, and people.
For many multifamily owners, that means stepping outside the familiar comfort zone of construction-driven, value-add property improvements.
Here are my favorite report findings to help guide your priorities.
1. (In)convenience is an expectation
Renters want life at home to feel easy.
The irony?
Behind the scenes, delivering “easy” takes sophisticated operational intelligence (and now, artificial intelligence, too).
Consider a routine maintenance request. Interestingly, the AppFolio report shows residents aren’t loyal to any one communication channel.
Emergencies? 66% want a phone call.
Outside of emergencies, communication preferences spread out. Email leads at 51% with phone calls and texting close behind.
Proptech companies market as though AI is everything, but this 2026 report doesn’t support that. Only 10% of renters surveyed preferred a fully online chat experience for maintenance customer service.
Renters still value convenience, just not if it makes them feel generic or disconnected. They’re willing to wait when it makes sense. What they don’t want is uncertainty.
Two trends are overlapping: contextual communication and inconvenience culture.
Contextual communication means delivering the right message, at the right time, through the most appropriate channel. In other words, renters are asking, “Can you communicate with me the way this situation calls for?”
The report suggests residents already do this instinctively, and they increasingly expect management to communicate with the same level of context and judgment.
Inconvenience culture is an emerging counter-movement that challenges the pursuit of constant convenience and instant gratification. It recognizes that some forms of friction, effort, and discomfort are necessary to show up for others, strengthen relationships, build community, and find deeper meaning.
In practice, this trend overlap looks like:
A prospect who voluntarily provided a mobile number when contacting the property should not receive five automated emails asking them to call the office.
When a prospect schedules a tour, confirmation, reminders, and arrival instructions should make the visit easy and predictable.
A lease renewal deserves a personal phone call or conversation, not just a legal document delivered through a portal notification email.
An emergency water shutoff warrants a text message, not an email that may go 50% unread or end up in dozens of spam folders.
A completed, routine work order should be followed by a quick satisfaction check. (For some residents, it may be their only meaningful human interaction all week, or even all month.)
A lost-and-found item at the pool doesn’t justify a community-wide text message to all 280 residents.
These examples are not hypothetical. They’re actual issues I’ve uncovered in recent years during communications audits that ownership had no idea were happening.
What questions should you be asking?
Executive KPI dashboards measure outcomes. Communication audits examine workflows, message timing, system configuration, and staff execution. Utilize both to gain a complete picture of the customer experience.
Start by asking who owns your customer communication strategy, what communication SOPs are documented, and when they were last reviewed. Confirm that Marketing, Operations, Systems, and Legal regularly review customer communications together.
2. “Utilities Included” is the new “Lure ‘em in With Base Rent and Hidden Fees”
According to the report, 95% of renters want a clear lease-signing experience.
Renters now expect clear pricing that outlines monthly base rent, amenities, policies, and additional service costs. That’s a reasonable ask, and one every management company should already be meeting.
Clear pricing is straightforward when costs are fixed. The challenge comes when utilities vary each month or residents must arrange them on their own.
Another new challenge from the marketing side: Variable utilities and required monthly fees affect whether renters ever discover your property.
“Utilities Included” is one of the most popular apartment amenity search filters used nationwide.
Last year, the #1 most searched keyword on Apartments.com* was “No Fees.”
Across ILS platforms like Zillow, Apartments.com, Apartment List, and Zumper, renters narrow their search by applying these filters and keywords. If your property doesn’t qualify, it won’t appear in those filtered search results, and the platform’s AI agent won’t recommend it in its answers.
Translation: You may spend thousands of dollars each month on ILS listings that many renters will never see.
So, if the data overwhelmingly shows that renters are seeking clearer, simpler, all inclusive pricing, why are so many multifamily owners moving in the opposite direction?
More property management companies now use RUBS (Ratio Utility Billing Systems) to help protect Net Operating Income (NOI) from rising utility costs. Instead of including utilities in the rent, utility costs are divided among residents based on factors like apartment size or occupancy.
The result: True “utilities included” apartments are becoming less common.
That makes the properties that do offer all-inclusive pricing stand out and receive significantly more visibility and traffic.
What should executive teams be doing?
There’s a sweet spot between protecting NOI and meeting renter expectations. The communities that find it and deliver the clearest, most transparent lease-signing experience have a meaningful competitive advantage.
3. Responsiveness beats amenities
AppFolio’s 2026 report clearly links management responsiveness with lease renewal intent.
The uncomfortable truth:
Over the last decade, on-site teams took on increasingly complex responsibilities, leaving little capacity for ongoing training, process improvement, and technology optimization.
Change management consulting, customized staff training, and professional development were often treated as afterthoughts or among the first budget cuts when spending tightened, even though these investments directly shape the customer experience.
Renters are feeling the effects.
Customer experience (CX) has become the highest-return amenity hiding in plain sight.
The uncomfortable math:
Imagine a 200-unit community.
Annual turnover: 35%
That’s ~70 move-outs a year
Assume each turnover costs ~$4,000
$280,000 total cost annually
Now imagine a communications audit identifies enough friction to retain just 6 additional households.
Turnover drops from 35% to 32%.
Annual savings: ~$24,000.
Even after paying a consultant 10% of the savings ($2,400)…
Ownership still saves approximately $21,600 every year.
Important to note that this excludes additional gains from higher occupancy, lower concessions, stronger online reputation, and improved staff productivity.
Speaking of reputation…
One last stat from the AppFolio 2026 Renter Preferences Report:
90% of renters say online reputation influences where they lease.
Your reputation is built on responsiveness which encompasses speed, competence, communication, and follow-through. Otherwise known as…
Basic customer service.
What should be on your dashboard?
If you’re ready to measure your “new” hottest amenities, start with these weekly and monthly KPIs:
First response time (prospects and resident comms)
Maintenance completion time
Resident satisfaction survey results (move-in, maintenance, and move-out)
Online reviews
Renewal rate
(If you don’t know where to find these reports, find someone who does. If you can’t find someone who does, message me.)
Interested in all seven chapters of renter preferences? Access the full 2026 AppFolio Report here
*I actually dug through (CoStar) Apartments.com “How Did Renters Search?” reports from 2024 and 2025 to find those two stats so you didn’t have to.