Exclusive Insights From the NMHC and Grace Hill 2024 Renter Preferences Survey!

Hello everybody, and welcome to our webinar. Dive into the future of renting. I'm Sarah Yossi. I'm our VP of Business Strategy, and I'm delighted to be, here with you today. We've got a great panel here for discussion about some of the more interesting takeaways from one of our flagship research products. The NMHC and Grace Hill Renter Preferences study report. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the survey of the report, This is something that we collaborate on and publish every two years. It is the gold standard when it comes to renter insights. It's big, it's very comprehensive, and the result of a massive collaboration between NMHC, Grace Hill, at about a dozen of our leading member firms. But to get us started, I'm just going to ask each of our panelists to do, a quick introduction, tell us who you are and a little bit about your company. Alright. I'll And you're you're first on my screen. So why don't you go first? Alright. Hello, everybody. I'm Quinn Edin's matching director of research and analytics services at Greystar. We are we, you know, we are owners, operators and developers of, multi family rental housing in the US and globally. And I lead up, some of our in in house work on resident preferences, and and running surveys. And I also work closely with the NHC team and with the Grace Hill team as they developed this, this year's, this year's resident preferences surveys in in an advisory capacity. So, I feel like I've got a lot of big loss stakes in this, in this survey, and I and I'm really fascinated by the results, and I'm really happy to be here to discuss them. Thanks so much. Brian, you wanna go next? Yes. I'm Brian Hedge, senior director, customer experience here at Catler, owners, operators, managers, developers as well. Definitely, customer experience is a very new role within the industry, a very new role within Keller. So very excited, kind of, you know, seeing some of this data, and how we're able to use it and kind of, you know, influence some of our decision making. Stephanie Gonzalez. Stephanie Gonzalez with Ventura Realty, and we are owner operators in just started developing properties across the southeastern United States. Hi, Jennifer. I'm Jennifer Cashier. I'm the senior director of product management here at Grace Hill, and I worked very closely with NHC on the runner preference a survey and particularly the interactive dashboard, which we're also gonna look at today. Awesome. Great. So as I mentioned, this is a massive survey. It is the largest of its kind, just to give you a little bit of a sense of scale, this year's survey report includes responses from more than a hundred and seventy two thousand residents nationwide. This represents about four thousand communities in forty four States. One of the really unique things about this report is that given the volume of responses, we are able to also deliverize deliver localized reports. What this means is really in addition to sort of the national report, which a lot of the takeaways we'll get into. We're also able to deliver, resident insights by metro area. And this year, we've got seventy seven metro areas covered. Of course, this survey would definitely not be, possible. We'd be unable to produce a resource like this without significant member support. So I'd like to just recognize the twelve member firms that partnered with NHC in Grace Hill this year to, develop and distribute the survey to their residents, and very lucky to have three of those companies represented here. We appreciate your participation and are always grateful for your input along the way. So just a quick, overview of some of the topics that are covered. The report is really soup to nuts. It it it really touches on all the important milestones in today's customer journey from search to renewal and pretty much everything in between. We've got demographic and psychographic data, as well as perspectives on apartment search and touring, what gets renters to finally sign a lease, the on-site services that matter most, intend to renew, and plus their thoughts on more than eighty apartment features and community amenities. With every iteration of this survey, we're constantly reviewing and improving the questionnaire as, Quinn and a few others can attest so that these data and insights remain relevant, as the renter and the market and, evolve. So here's just a, a quick sampling of some of the, new things that we've got going on, this year. That we're really happy to have. So this year, we have more data that can be cut by property type. We've got, EV ownership and charging preferences, which I think we'll get into a little bit later. Financial tools that support renters, financial health, and services, including, included in rent. So those are some of the things like parking and pets and valet trash and that sort of thing. We've, have some additional questions on connectivity preferences, which has always been a really popular part of the, report and also very new as, factors that drive positive sense of community. It's a really kind of fun part of the survey this year. And then we have also willingness to recommend a property management company, which, is definitely of interest. But probably the biggest thing that we've brought to the report this year is an interactive dashboard tool. It's a data visualization tool that helps users to access the data and pull out insights in ways that they've never been able to do. So I'm gonna turn things over to Jennifer Cashear here for a few minutes talk a little bit more about it. And just so you all know as we're talking through, today's discussion, we'll see if we can't get her to, use her screen to show some of the interactive features and the, and the data that's available. Yeah. So super exciting. As Sarah had mentioned, it's our new interactive dashboard this year. It's a data visualization tool, so it's not just, you know, PDF reports, but you're actually able to log in and slice and dice the metrics however you see, and you can pull it by markets. You can also do it by very various demographics, and I'll log in here in just a second and show you guys that. And then you can also have multi multi user access to it as well. So I'll just give a quick little overview of the dashboard. And then as Sarah mentioned, as we go through, some of the insights that some of the members here have seen, I'll dive into the actual dashboards and show you the data in real time. But to just give you an overview, this is once you're logged in, this is kind of what you see. Kind of an overview of the dashboard. There's a video here that kinda describes how to use the dashboard. It has some of the metrics that Sarah mentioned earlier about participating firms and markets, etcetera. And then it has all of the different topics that was covered earlier as well, from community recommendation, the MPS, to cars and commuting. That's where we were talking about EV earlier remote work, which we all know is very important. Some community amenities and features. Lease decision factors, communication that they prefer, well-being, connectivity, which we know is a big deal now. And several other factors here. We also have an FAQ in here that you can link to that'll just kind of give you some ideas about the how the dashboard forms. And then you can also download the PDF reports from here as well. And so that's just kind of an overview. And then as we kinda start talking through, some of these use cases that some of the members here have, been able to see, then I'll dive into the dashboards and show you in, in real time. Fantastic. Thank you. Yeah. So one of the things that I love about this panel is that not only are all of your companies participating firms, but each of you is approaching the results with a slightly different lens. We've got research innovation and CX all kind of wrapped up in this, in this panel. So I'd love for each of you to talk to me just a little bit about how you're using the data. Because there's a ton in this report, and I just wanna would love to kind of, pull in pull that into relief as to kind of how you how you approach this massive tome of runner insights. Quinn, do you wanna start from a research perspective? Sure. So I mean, we I you know, we report on resident preferences in a in a number of ways. I'd say one of the kind of most common use cases is, we'll get, request for some, you know, some pre development advisory work, one of our, maybe one of our management clients as a developer who may be active, say, in one part of the country and is interested moving into a a new part of the country. Maybe they're active in the Pacific Northwest, but they want to start they're they they wanna look for opportunities to move into, say, Nashville. And then and so and with with the as developers and with the with maybe a regional footprint, they they may not have, like, the the experience that they have in their home market in and moving into another market. So they're really interested to know what renters they're interested in in drilling into specific market level data or maybe market and building type. So, you know, if they're accustomed to building perhaps mid rise and they wanna build high rise and they want to get an idea of how the, how the, you know, renters in the market, are are are feeling that may because we do see, and one of the most interesting things to look at is the regional differences and the difference between market segments and responses. And and so they wanna kind of build on you know, maybe they don't have the expertise in part of the, you know, the history in a given market, so they wanna know, kind of what they should be, you know, what they should be building and how and how they should be thinking about programming their their new developments. Kind of re as one way of saying is gonna reduce the dumb tax of moving into a new market by by using by using the data resources. So that that's that's just one example, but I think that's probably the most common example I have for for using the data when I'm talking to clients. Great. Thank you. Stephanie, from an innovation per perspective, kind of, what are you pulling out or what are you most interested in? Yeah. To piggyback off of Quinn, just speaking to the development aspect specifically, We we are in development and newly in development, and I think that that makes us very green and, very interesting it in in this type of data so that we can, be more informed when we go to build in our markets. Whereas of Eastern United States, we're building mostly in Texas right now. So how we use it is to determine and try to do things that are different in our builds. And this this data helps to conform around the the targeted market specifically in the sub market. What is being seen, what the preferences are, and then we we we track that. So we've we've been setting the surveys, for a number of years, and kind of track that to make sure that we're hitting the targeted target audience in age and and what they're willing to pay for with those, those specific needs. And we also like to get creative Like, if there is something that's emerging, we might throw up a building that, you know, one building in the one building in the building, one building in the community, with those, those things that are emerging just to see, you know, how well it does to get out in front of the market on some of those things. Alright. Thanks. And Brian? Well, yeah, I think to kinda add to both Quinn and Stephanie, when we think kind of the customer experience side, we're really looking for that moment of truth, kind of the what, the when, the where, where a resident makes an apartment decision. And really how they might weigh certain things that happen as they're doing that journey as they're looking for an apartment. And the data gives us an added capability. What allows us to do is we can look at the data and we can think of strategies that might influence that customer to get to a decision that we might want. And it really, you know, as we're able to kinda understand our customer and how we're able to support some of our programs, we can make modifications and whether that is as Quinn and Stephanie and are talking about development side where we can get in kind of the the pre development stage and really make changes whether it's unit mix or amenities, or really just to support the problem solving of the operations. Whether it's an existing asset, we can make changes or we can develop programming. That's really where that data helps us because we have a little amount of data, but having kind of a third party resource having this additional data really gives us a lot more kind of evidence that we can cite for our decision making that data drive where we wanna go. Yep. Great. Thanks. Well, we talked about a lot of different, parts of the survey during our prep calls. So I just, kind of went ahead and pulled out a few that sort of stuck out to me as as some of the more interesting takeaways. If that all sounds good to you, then I will just go ahead. You know, one of the things that popped up for our research team as we always when we get the new results, we always take kind of take a minute to go back and compare them to previous iterations. And one of the things that popped out, for our team this year as we looked from big changes from the twenty twenty two version to the most recent version is just the general increase in interest in parking amenities. You can see the slide here. It's sort of globally seen this shift towards, with stronger interest. And so I'm curious if this was a surprise to you all as well, and then and then how are you kind of balancing this very strong demand that we're seeing against some of the the way the parking regs are going, and the the push to kind of reduce parking. Like, how are you, how are you kind of making sense out of it all? Not sure who wants to take that first, but Well, I'll chime in just to say that this isn't surprising at all. I mean, we're we we've seen this both in in this survey, and we we do our some of our own pre resident preferences survey, and specifically with regard to, EV charging. It's in our in our internal surveys, we've seen EV charging actually increase the most in kind of the in resident prioritization, or since, since, you know, twenty twenty, but as Georgetown says twenty twenty two. You know, which isn't really surprising given the, given the rate of kind of increased adoption of, of of EV of EV electric vehicles and, both fully electric and and and hybrid electric, with that require the charging stations. And and by all accounts, the trajectory is only going to increase. Right? I mean, the the expectations for EVs on American Road or is supposed to increase something like over twenty fold, over in in the neck in the coming just couple of decades. So, again, not not surprising, also not surprising, you know, at at that when you look at, for the, how folks prioritize it. And if you look at it, in the in your your survey data at the number, at the rate at which folks are, saying they won't rent without, and by far, the highest rates are in California markets, not not surprising, but you you are seeing some interesting trends in other markets where that is. Where that also may be the case, which may not come immediately to mind. You know, we're seeing a lot in Greenville, South Carolina. A lot of folks really are, you know, really interested in an EV charging in Greenville. You wouldn't necessarily expect that. So so and so something we're seeing is definitely something where we're, that we are expecting to increase into the future. And that's sort of what Jennifer is showing here through the interactive dashboard is just they you know, those who, said that they anticipate that their next vehicle purchase will be an EV vehicle. But at the same time, you know, one of the questions that we did ask, was just if you owned one, and that that, in our surveys that the EV ownership nationally sits at about four percent, and that's consistent with what we saw in twenty twenty two. So Stephanie, maybe Gavin can throw this to you. Like, how are you guys looking at at the fact that, you know, we still have kind of low adoption broadly, but we do see these kind of geographical differences. And how are you making sure that you're not, either under or over investing in charging? Yeah. I mean, we because we are in the southeastern United States, the adoption is actually behind the national, averages in general. I mean, for example, in Texas, The next, I think it was like fifty percent of the national average were eight percent of people who plan their their next vehicle to be EV. And we really don't take up into, you know, like above thirty percent for three to five years. So we've got some, obviously, we've got some time to figure it out there, but there's also pocketed cases within Texas, Texas It's pretty big and, depending on if you're in more of an urban area or suburban area that that fluctuates quite a bit. But for the most part, in the southeastern United States, you have a little bit more time. Then to make those decisions, it's a real what we've been spending that time doing is really investigating, and researching the options for what is the right charger how to install it properly, the right the right vendor, the right partner. So for us, it's given us more time to plan. Ryan, are you seeing this, you talked a little bit about product differentiation. Are you kind of looking at it through that lens? Yeah. And I would say it's we have a similar footprint to Stephanie. In the Southeast United States, there are some markets that do have that adoption. And based on the location, you might have some. But not always. The option seems a little bit slower. Like, if you're looking on the roads, if you're walking parking lots in nearby grocery stores, you don't see as many electric cars as you might see in the DC area. I think there might be some benefits in that if it If it is slow, like, if it's, you know, one or two owners every few months are coming in the EV, then the properties have an opportunity to kinda add that capability and add that amenity at a low cost. But if it happens all at once, like Quinn was saying, and it it it doubles in a couple of years, then you really have to start starting even from the development side on how you build the infrastructure to support that. But right now it's slow, but, I mean, people cycle through bars pretty quickly. So it could come at us really fast. And I've seen it in new development where we've been a little bit more progressive about it. But still, I mean, if we had to go into a whole parking garage and put EVs and a whole parking garage, that's an incredible expense. And if we think how people use EVs, they're really gonna gravitate to where it's at their home, where it's got a convenience that they can use. They're not gonna wanna drive to Target every time they wanna charge their car or drive. So, like, it's worth thinking about, and I think it will come really quickly. That's where the data really comes in. Because we gotta be ahead of it when we think through some of our development, that we're doing. Another thing to consider that we that I I've noticed when looking at some of our market to to pick up on something that Brian mentioned is that, you know, by and large EV charging is not a priority for most residents at this point, which isn't surprising, right, because adoption, it's still new. The EVs are still relatively new. So, you know, I think in the NMAG survey, something like five percent said they wouldn't rent without, which, you know, five percent is single digit percentages. However, what we've seen is in a number of our markets, the willingness to pay that folks is are that folks are reporting is is is pretty high relative to other other other amenities. And so in my mind, you could be have a situation where EV charging stations might be serving as a bit of a loss leader where they They're not attractive to most residents, but the residents, potential residents who they do are attractive to, are relatively insensitive to price. Right? They're willing to pay a lot for So if you include, EV charging stations in your property, you may attract residents who are in relative incentives of the price, both about each of the charging, but other things. Right? So, you know, that they might be more willing to accept rent increases, for instance, or or or pay more for other amenities in addition to EV charging. So even if you potentially lose money on the EV chargers themselves, I mean, And, you know, the that whether to deploy EB charging is a whole important consideration process you should go through. But setting aside for a moment, in addition to the consideration of does it cover its own cost? You may be in the long run maximizing revenue by including EV charging stations in your property because you're attracting those types of residents that will pay more for other things. And so that's, it it it's, it's a more of a hypothesis than it is a conclusion at this point, but I think it does kind of jump out of some of the data in some markets that, is something to consider. It it could be mandatory. Go back one slide real quick. Just so because when you met mentioned those percentages and This is just to kind of look at how that's changed a little bit and since the twenty twenty, twenty twenty two, and twenty twenty four version. And you you just see exactly what you're saying like those say I won't rent without this feature. I mean, it's not massive, but it has grown. And you see that those were not interested that shares has has shrunk over the last few iterations. If you wanna go to the next slide, then I think that's probably gonna set Brian up pretty well who have been talking about the different markets. Gosh. I wish we were in all of those. But yeah, it's it's definitely I mean, coming from the DC area and realizing as we're kinda coming out and we go to see our properties and stuff like that, it's a stark difference in some cases. And I do what's interesting as well is not only the EVs, but going into the other parking considerations, whether it's covered parking, especially in the south, when you have heat issues, garage parking, especially as you're thinking of an older demographic that might prefer it. It's just really helpful, because it is a big part of planning your community on how many spots, what premiums you can get for those spots, and really what can you kinda go back to the investment group and say, here's a little bit of extra money that we can get for this. And just so, for anybody, like, or attending, this slide, it shows a bunch of different markets, but it it this is a cut of the data that shows the biggest growth in, interest in EV charging. By metro. So it's got the last three iterations, and you can see how they are comparison. Some of them were pretty pretty large, you know, twelve percentage point jumps. So just as just to kind of illustrate that point, a little bit more. But let's switch gears a little bit and and talk about touring You know, I that was a huge as as we talked about twenty twenty, twenty twenty two versions, you know, that, self guided touring and just the the virtual touring in general, was a big topic as we kind of dealt with the realities of of doing business in the COVID era. And so I think there's been a lot of you know, question about how things would settle post COVID with the varying tour types. Jennifer, can you or is that what you're showing? On the screen. Didn't know if you wanted to show that. We can go back. Absolutely. I'm just gonna clear all markets here and apply to all markets. And I'll go back to the main dashboard here and I will go into apartment. Sorry here. Apartment search tour types. The tour type is set already here. And so you'll be able to see in person, self guided tours, versus in person guided tour with property representative versus live video tours, and I have it for all markets set right now. We can also break it down by age and household income and a bunch of different demographics here. If you look, there's a bunch of different demographics you can break the data down to as well. Awesome. Thank you. So when you look at this split, I mean, are are you all seeing similar trends in your portfolios? I mean, it looks pretty kind of what you might expect, but are I mean, but y'all are still investing in different in more than just the in person tours. Yeah. We're I maybe wanna the national average. And, again, we're in the southeastern United States. So we're, like, that southern hospitality and that in person interaction. So we run a little bit higher than the national average for preference of in person tours. But it again, it's it's very pocketed, still or, I mean, with Dallas, for example, is want on the higher end of that, where, somewhere like Houston would be five points lower than than Dallas. So thousand Houston only four hours apart. So it can it can vary quite a bit. Right? It it's interesting. I mean, definitely there is a market tendency that we see quite clearly. Kind of from the customer experience side, it's something we still like refining. Self guided is so hard because you give up a lot of control. You have to really set up a lot of things that if you're thinking if I wanna influence someone, if you don't have someone there, if you don't have that personal connection, it can be really hard. You've also gone into a lot trouble to train your teams and help them and build, part of this process. So while we do see it, and we do see customers and residents that for self guided because they're sensitive to that interaction. It is you it's striking the right balance. Because as we think through in a large discussion, when teams think through centralization, self guided is one of the things that they push out their decentralization. And what we really wanna be careful is how much do we lose on the customer experience side if we make that transition? So we wanna be really sensitive, like, what is the best customer experience. Typically, it's the one that the resident wants. But we wanna make sure that we have kind of that best experience from both, whether it is self guided or whether it is in person. Yeah. That's an interesting, it's an interesting perspective, Brian, because from the customer experience side, it's like, what came first the the car to the horse? And is it because we are in the southeastern, United States for me and some of your footprint and more primarily garden style apartment community. So the physical barriers and the logistics there are quite all figured out yet with the integrations that are required for access and, just, you know, way finding and getting people to the unit. So is it because they've encountered so much friction in it since, you know, the pandemic and the and this has been rolled out that they are less willing than the national average or are we really getting a true representation of their preference? So, basically, has their preference been determined because of previous bad experiences and we still have yet to make it a seamless experience or is it a a true reflection of, of of their preference? Right. I think it's actually What one thing that we we've noticed is there's not a one size fits all solution here, and it really does. You know, the the the asset type that you're that you're, focusing on is really determines kind of what the best course of action is. I mean, we tend to put, self guided tours and virtual tours very forward in some of our attainable housing products, aiming at that at that, have more attainable price point, and by and the efficiencies that come with that come with self guided tour and kind of help reduce the overall operating cost of the property and help us hit some of those more, affordable rents whereas if you're, you know, for other for other asset types and, shooting at another segment of the market, you your your approach may be much more towards a high touch luxury experience case you would be executing it differently. So, again, when it comes to the survey data, being able to segment by, demographics income and and proper type is key to be able to to identify that. That's a really good point. I pulled this slide because one of the things that I thought was super interesting, based on the tour was just this increase in live video tours with a property representative who see it grow from, the last iteration of thirteen percent said that they, they'd, they used this option in their last home search twenty it went up to twenty percent, this time. I just love for you guys to talk a little bit about how you're investing in this. I mean, is this kind of like you're leaving it to the properties to sort of figure out how to do? Are you investing in a platform? Or how are you handling this? I can say we're handling it from our strategy around I would call it specialization versus centralization, but, however, you're generally referring to it. We are tackling that as part of our as part of our specialized teams strategy and that our our teams that work off-site would be trained up and skilled to, handle this, proficiently and efficiently for the customer. As part of as part of our plan for actually twenty twenty four. So I don't have any real much more than that, but that's how we decided to tackle this trend is to leave it with our specialized group. Alright. Thank you. We have a few different questions from the audience. And do we wanna take a little pause here and and maybe answer a couple of them, before we move on. That work for everybody. Okay. So there's a question on whether there is data in the survey report on energy costs and desire for solar backup as well as EV. Jennifer, feel free to jump in as well, but there I do know that as one of the community amenities, alternative, alternative, power source or, the exact phrasing of it is included in one of in the interest questions. And I believe solar is as well. Take a quick look at that. So while she's looking at that up, we could go on to the second one. And this is, one for the panelists here. What do you guys think if, about this? What if any relation might there be to an increased demand vehicle amenities correlating to increase development in non urban markets as well as an increase in BT, BTR options? When I feel like this might be something you've thought about. So, in case they say they could suggest correlation between they increased the ban in, interest in interest in, car or vehicle amenities, and the increase in development in non urban markets and and growth of BTR? Well, it it certainly seems like I it seems like a a valid hypothesis. It seems like probably pretty lucky. It's intuitive to think that, you know, your, to the extent that you're in to in markets and have products that are in, you know, in areas that are conducive to homeownership, the suburbs where you need a car to get around. Built to rent single family rental for single family residences where you have a, you know, you have, you have a garage presumably and and a driveway to park a car, and you're you're probably gonna be in a suburban market area where where you need a car to drive around versus versus, you know, urban. So, and the the the frankly, I haven't I haven't I haven't done the analysis. But it certainly seems like an intuitive, a good intuition. And and so the but, I guess, to answer the question, as far as the survey results, you would really need to look at the the distribution of responses between the two years. Right? You would need to look at see has there been more, responses as a proportion of total responses coming from you know, these, you know, more suburban properties than than in the prior year. Likewise, more BTR in the prior year. So I guess as a as a researcher, the way I would look at it would really to start with looking at, yeah, the the specifics of the responses, which is I don't know if that's something that you've done. Yeah. The so there is a little bit of BTR, based on the companies who, participated. There is a, a little bit of BTR included in there, but it can be separated out. Hopefully, that answers. And then a quick question for Jennifer, on the dashboard, does the does the dashboard allow for advanced statistical analyses like distributed cluster factor, or the export of data for independent analysis? Yeah. I mean, so today we don't, do the export for independent analysis, within the data break, but that is something that we're looking at. Adding in the future. So today, that's that is not an option, but that's great feedback. And we'd love to hear that that's something that everybody's interested in. You do have the ability though, however, to download, some of the charts and graphs in here. So you can print one. You can download it as a PNG, a JPEG, the PDF or as a vector image. And we are looking at adding in that export option in the future. And then with the national package, you also get all the Excel files as well. Yes. Correct. Okay. So moving moving on. I wanna go back to some of the features and amenities. And maybe Jennifer, you can can you maybe show the, like, top ten or so, apartment features? Because I wanna talk a little bit about soundproof walls. This is something that we have included, in the survey, for, I think, since, at least the last four iterations, if not more. And it's always surprising because it consistently ranks in the top five. Like, it was number two in twenty twenty, number three, number twenty twenty two, and I think it's what? Number four in, in this year's iteration. And it's something that, you know, the residents are always saying, like, it's really important to me, But we don't hear a lot of talk about it from the development perspective. And so I I'm just curious as to kind of when you guys see this, like, what what do you think about it? How are you How does it kind of factor into, when you think about future developments? Hey, Stephanie. Do you I think you had said that you kind of went down a down a road towards this this quiet, kind of sanctuary, idea before, so maybe you wanna start there. Yeah. A lot of it is in, you know, transparency and clarity on, you know, what your what your product actually is. So there's a number of ways to go about, noise reducing soundproofing, but the key is is it soundproof or is it noise reducing And I think that, you know, you can get caught in a bad situation if you're promoting soundproof. Apartment or soundproof building, and it's not soundproof. Noise reducing and, you know, it's easier to get to and it can be just as powerful. So from a, if, you know, from a sales perspective, it really does take a trained salesperson to pitch this right and to pitch it to the to know your targeted audience to understand the benefits and how they in in understanding the benefits of, you know, noise pollution, solving noise pollution, maybe people just want a more tranquil or maybe it's because they have pets or maybe it's because they don't wanna be near pets. You really have to be listening for those for those hot, buttons within each conversation to pitch this to the right, prospect that then truly understands what they're getting. Is it soundproof or is it noise reducing and not to over sell there? Because then you have a a bad experience once they move in. So it's not easy actually to execute well. That's great. Does anybody else have anything on sound good? I'll say we we've noticed it also in our in house resident survey is that it's always it's always one of the highest, if not the highest, you know, prioritized. Kind of apartment feature, design feature. And not only that, it's usually associated with a pretty large rent premium, expected rent premium relative to the other, re well, the other features included in the survey. So clearly there's something there. We and I've I've had conversations with our with our development group, and we and we really haven't really been able to come up with kind of a an action item takeaway. I mean, except for to acknowledge, like, this, you know, our residents are telling us something. And And, you know, there are certainly steps we could take. I mean, one hand, it's intuitive. Right? You know, if if we've all been renters at one point, one of the worst experiences of being renter is having noisy neighbors and that you have to, like, enroll the night knock on the door and tell them to be quiet and, you know, take all the risks associated with doing that. So is but so but clearly there's something here, but exactly what to do in addition to kind of best practices and from a development standpoint, it's haven't come up with a good great solution, but I mean, there there there seems to be some consistent through line here. Has anyone been experimenting with any other kind of, like, technologies. I mean, the what we hear from the development side is that, you know, that soundproofing is very expensive. And so even with the rent premiums, it doesn't know pencil out, but there are other technologies, you know, wind window shade technologies that can reduce exterior, like, environmental noise and things like that, but I'm not sure how how far anybody's gone down that road. I I will add to that a little bit because you're right there. A lot of little things you can do, especially if you think of the development, whether it's a door sweep, soft close cabinets, paneling, making sure the door doesn't closing into the frame really loudly. But whether there's tech whether there's white noise. In what's fascinating as maybe Queen knows this, because in Tampa, we're visiting properties in Tampa. We noticed the exterior noise wasn't as loud, and that's because all the windows in Tampa are hard camper. And they're thicker windows, and they can't get knocked on a hurricane. And that's when you really have the benefit of a lot of noise complaints. It's more an interior noise It's not really next year. It's not really coming from community spaces. It's really coming from the units next to them, then you get to below them, the units above them. And then what it really comes down to, your solutions are limited, but a lot of its resident expectations, understanding that they live in an apartment building with four hundred to five hundred other people. And what can everyone do to have kind of a more harmonious environment, is something that we're looking at. But it can be really hard when you have a property and you can't make changes. You know, where the changes you would wanna make are very expensive. Yep. And if you're working on a wood frame building, for instance, I mean, as for folks who do, either, you know, garden or mid rise. You know, that can that's, you know, it's challenging. And there's only so much like you say that you can do from a construction perspective. Yep. Great. That's perfect. I think it's almost out of the it's almost, I would say it's impossible. From what we've seen, it's impossible at this time. Okay. So let's let's go on. We get a lot of questions about smart home technology. And, I just pulled this, slide together. It shows the share of respondents who are interested it or won't rent without various smart home features, across the, the last few versions of the survey. And you can see that we started with smart thermostat blocks and lighting and, like, as the market has sort of evolved, we've added leak detection and smart alarm systems. You know, we've seen, like, some little variations here and there over over time. I'm just kind of curious as to, but it it's relatively study. So curious to hear from you all what your sort of smart home strategy is. Our smart home strategy, I'll I'll go first. We are we're believers. We install Smart Home and every property that we acquire. We, we install the locks, the thermostat, and, the plug. In in every property that we acquire. Our, again, South Eastern United States, not all operators. I think I think it's like five percent have really adopted. Smart home technology, which sounds like a a small amount, but the the industry is very fragmented. We have found that in the pockets where we compete, it is a differentiator because a lot of the the competitors around our local assets just aren't installing them. So for us, we we stand out. So it's a differentiating strategy for us. Well, and I like we touched on it. And your survey was really eye opening on the environmental impact and how residents are really thoughtful about the environmental impact. But if you actually kinda go in the field and walk through properties, it's very hard for them to pick up on it outside what thermostat and apartment or outside of some signage. It's very hard for them to see it. So it doesn't really always enter in the buying decision for them. But I agree. Like, if you have it in there, even if it's you can kind of pitch that it's more environmentally friendly, but you can tell a prospect you'll save an extra hundred dollars a year by having this in here. Or you're a nurse at the local hospital. These shades are automatic. These can come down with a push of a button. Just these things that make life a little bit more convenient and really fit with them. And you're right, like Stephanie's saying, it'll differentiate. If they're comparing the same new apartment, when you're comparing interiors, very hard for residency the difference in two brand new interiors. This allows and be like, well, this one has a difference. I save a little bit of money and it works with my life. Right. I and I think not not all smart home features are are equivalent. I mean, we we tend to I think of them in terms of income, maybe the first tier, like, the the core offering that we, both install in our own asset and and highly recommend to our our the the clients for our third party management business would be, the thermosmart thermostat, kind of keyless smart entry, you know, the lock and and leak detection. And then kind of as a second tier, maybe, less critical would be lighting and shades and stuff. And and that's something that, you know, with the, you know, there's so kind of the way we approach this too would be different. I, for one, have been was surprised by the result that showed that residents are showing such a high purchasing for leak detection. Because in my mind, that was already that was always something that was really more for the property owner than it was for the resident. And for the property owners, clear benefits in that you could you can prevent, you know, catastrophic damage to your asset But I I'm surprised to see it's it's it's really, like, number two, just behind the thermostats in terms of prioritization for the residents themselves, which, is it which is, you know, counterintuitive to me, but, but it but it is, you know, we acknowledge as it is, is the it is a kind of one of the more crucial elements of smart smart homes. Another thing that we notice coming out of our, our internal survey, because in in our internal servers, we can get more of a time series, the look back is that when it comes to alarm systems, Interestingly, you know, interest in alarm systems is correlated with perceptions of crime, which isn't really that surprising. I mean, in twenty twenty two, according to the gallup poll, and you saw a record high number of Americans said that there's been an increase in crime in my area. Interestingly, when you look at crime statistics, like, actually coming from the FBI, a crime was actually had come down in most categories. In that year, but perceptions of crime were quite high. And interest in alarm systems tracked perceptions of crime rather than actual crime stats, which again, suppose that's intuitive. But but it is interesting to note, to the extent that you are seeing kind of an increase in interest, you know, that those that those perceptions, are probably track pretty well, with, with, with crime, perceptions. That's an interesting point. I hadn't thought about it quite that way. We do have a question from the audience, so just to kinda go take a step back real quick, to go back to, some of our conversation about touring. There was a question about how much is this group considering your network infrastructure and quality common area wifi when developing self guided touring and virtual touring plans. You know, I think it's it's essential. Right? Yeah. Well, yeah. We saw early on when we first started doing self guided tours, especially on garden style, a little bit more remote locations. If you had to download an app, and they show up and they don't have the app or the system's not working. It's a pretty bad user experience when that happens. And luckily, systems have gotten a lot better. You'd be able to use the systems. But you really wanna think through communities that are very connected because a lot of the stuff that you're using is connected. I mean, you're using door locks, you're using a lot of virtual systems. You have TVs, the more connectivity you can have, especially for that demographic of people between twenty and forty five that really have grown up with that. The better it works within your community. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a really good point. I mean, one of the things that we is a stat that I just absolutely love, every year is, and, is the share of res we ask residents whether they checked their mobile phone connectivity during a tour, and it's a surprising share, like, higher than you would think. And this year, we did add, whether we did add a question to ask whether they also checked the community Wi Fi. And so, we can the report does have that information too, which kind of, gets a little bit to this point. So the last, topic that I had on our agenda before I was gonna open it up for questions, but I love that people are just throwing their questions in there. Now it's great. It was really about remote work. Again, this is kind of one of those areas where think, you know, our research team was very curious to see how that was going to shake out as, you know, kind of we we got past post COVID and the return to office. And so I think, nationally, the the survey results showed that, fifty two percent of respondents said that they remote work with some frequency. Now it's kind of interesting because, and, Quinn, I'll be kind of interested to hear exactly your perspective because our research team immediately went to Well, that's a smaller share than than last time we did this. So that means there's less people, remote working. But then when we would talk with some of the, some of the participating firms, they were like, that's still half the people more than half half of the respondents saying that they remote work with some frequency when you compare that to before, you know, there's a lot more regularity with it. And and even if it's not as high as shares, you know, twenty, twenty twenty two, or even twenty twenty, it's still a very significant share, and it's it's a lot more. It feels a little bit more like solid. Versus where in previous iterations, a lot of the respondents had said, yeah, remote work sometimes, but it's, like, maybe, like, one Friday a month or something like that where we see a lot stronger, responsive route. I'm working until working two, three days at work. Weeks something like that. How are you guys kind of looking at that? And how are you, responding to, that trend? Well, I'll say it's a big it's a big topic. I mean, I hybrid work to a certain extent is here to stay. I don't think anyone can really debate that. I mean, you you could have some, you know, more or less people different firms and different sectors change to their policies, but certainly kind of throughout the economy, you know, some some sort of hybrid work is is is is here for the long hall. And so I and and, yeah, but it doesn't I I agree with you in the sentiment that as far as the the potential folks that are reporting it, You know, the fact that it decreased from twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three isn't really terribly surprising. I mean, I think you had a coming out of the pandemic, you had a huge amount of it. And now we've gone back to kind of a, you know, if that's come down a little bit, but you still probably you still see, you know, again, relative to the broad sweep of history. I mean, a huge percentage of people who are who are hybrid. You know, when when we look at in terms of the you know, the the responses to, regarding preferences for certain design features, or a community menus that kind of facilitate hybrid work. Kind of an interesting insight that we've seen is that, just curious of, it's we see the impact more actually in terms of perceptions of value or willingness to pay than necessarily how how highly different, items are prioritized. So, you know, we've seen things like perceptions of value for things like, conference conference rooms or or kind of co working space. They're seen as being more valuable to residents. So residents, we we ask the willingness to pay questions similar to the way that you do in your survey, which is kind of the idea of how much additional rent would you pay for a community with this feature than what than without. And we've seen kind of all four of these features, this is the idea of that people perceive that renters in general put more valuable value into these types of features. More so than people reporting that they personally are, you know, are are would be more willing more willing to to rent, which I which is kind of an interesting dynamic. So maybe if if your group kind of digs into the research, you might see more of the Moodle needle move in terms of perception of value, then in terms of, actual kind of, you know, what people say they would, how would you influence their renting decision? That, you know, a lot of ideas here, but I think clearly, you know, kind of hybrid work and and and kind of facilitating that and building the the type of kind of amenity platform, of, platform in your, in your, in your communities that would allow for that is gonna be something that, in in many property types, and many asset types will be, okay, I kind of, I have to have. Not not really, not really a want to have. I know Brian Stephanie. I I see you guys shaking your heads. Well, I definitely agree on that sentiment that it's kind of a half to have for a certain subset of the population. And what is fascinating is for a building that's five years old or three years old in some cases, they don't have those workspaces built out a lot of times because they're pre COVID. They've foreplanned pre COVID They don't have kind of that amenities. So you have this big difference with these properties that are now coming online who have really been thoughtful about whether they have conference rooms or offices or shared space, they've really built in that square footage to do it. And it doesn't really exist in a property that's five years old for the most And we have seen even more interesting in in in certain markets. It's very specific markets, but a lot of people have second jobs. That they're doing, whether they're an influencer, whether they have something that they do on the side, and then that space becomes even more important because they're using it for different capabilities other than just their nine to five job that may or may not be remote. That's a really, on that note, I wanna flag that. One of the new questions that we did ask this year. Demographically is whether people were working on the gig economy, and doing some kind of side hustle. We have about four minutes left and there are questions coming in. So, If we wanna just, Jennifer, for anybody who was interested in learning more about it, the scan the QR code, you can also go to dot org slash residence, and you'll come to the landing page where it has, like, a lot of information about the interactive, what's in the report, what's not. And how to what markets are covered, how to purchase all of that, you know, and all the the resources that if you need to find out more information on whether the methodology or, or, the interactive or, what's included, you know, feel free to reach out to those folks so in the interest of time, you just get to these questions. Because there was that really cute bark, I think from Stephanie's home, we did have a question about Pets and how they, influence resident decision making. Do you wanna take that one, Stephanie? I'm a little biased as a pet owner, but You know, it's interesting that there's more there's an increasing amount of data that it's striking the number of people that are becoming, pet at first, if you will, or definite are more concerned about the number of communities and if the community takes pets, how many pets, the community takes And the biggest concern, around that is is poop and noise, poop and noise. And those are the biggest challenge is in our industry. For the most part, noise for sure, and then keeping keeping properties clean in general is is is is a big factor of, the experience and if people want to renew. So It's just interesting to me how that has ticked up as a concern and and, you know, The reason is unlikely to choose a pet friendly community. It's definitely given us. So at Ventura, we we accept three pets. As a standard across all of our communities, but it is something that we discuss every year as if it's still the right thing to do. That's right. And, one of the things that we found in the survey results also is that when you talk about resident well-being, and that's just like how how I call it their happiness factor, like, how they feel about their community, neighbors not respecting the rules, and then it includes things like not picking up after your pet you know, not respecting the trash and recycling rules. That really does degrade their experience, and it was kind of interesting to see that kind of play out across these different different areas like pets. So maybe Quinn this one for you, since we were talking a little bit about the premiums associated with smart home packages. The the question is what is the typical rent premium you chief for smart home packages? Well, I can we I think that's directly addressed. I mean, in the in the survey data. I'd I don't know. I don't know off the top of my head what what the results for the NMG servers are for those. Yeah. In the in For the cells? Yeah. I don't know if Jennifer, you can quickly pull it up with a minute left. It's like speed. That's good. Yeah. I think the the the the way we've always looked at it is, like, we do ask, like, rent premium, like, the what what the respondent would expect to pay more to pay for these things. And I think some of it is it's not it's not I don't know. It's not a sum. Right? Like, if you have it seems as though there's, like, a a range for, like, a package. Right? It's not thirty bucks for this and thirty bucks for that and thirty, then all of a sudden, you're at two hundred dollars. It's it's, you know, kind of looking at sort of where as a pat smart package, it kind of comes in, and and the survey data does kind of show that there's a bit of a range. And it does fluctuate by market as, Jennifer is showing here. And that is time, guys. It went really fast. Thank you everybody, and I appreciate all the attendee questions, and, feel free to reach out with us, to Jennifer me or anyone with, questions. And thanks so much, Quinn, Brian and Stephanie. You guys were great. Really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks for the dashboard this year. It's fantastic. Yeah. That's right. Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you.