Multifamily Pricing: The Danger of “Doing Fine”

by Dom Beveridge | Jun 25, 2019 12:00:00 AM

A couple of weeks ago, we published a post about the risk to multifamily operators of complacency in their approach to pricing and revenue management (PRM). Frequent readers of this blog will be familiar with this theme, which was a major finding of our 20 for '20 white paper. To summarize, PRM seems to have slipped from the senior management agenda, resulting in a pervasive view that "PRM is doing fine." PRM has been doing fine in multifamily for a number of years - in fact, it's been doing exceptionally well, delivering outsized returns for operators and investors alike. Looking forward, however, our concern is not so much with the current business practice, but its future evolution. With reduced senior management attention and technical innovation delegated to a highly consolidated vendor community, several of the drivers for big change appear to be missing. To put it another way, the source of the next big thing in PRM is far from clear.