The factors that calculate your reputation are numerous—a bad encounter with management, a loud neighbor, rent increases—but one of the biggest items that can sink your overall score is parking. This amenity drives more negativity in online reviews than affordability, rent increases, noisy neighbors, and unit condition.
Owners and operators also cannot afford to have a low reputation score to harm lead generation, particularly in the face of increasing competition. In order to remain competitive, multifamily communities need solutions to manage the parking they possess efficiently.
Bad Parking Drives Bad Reputation (and Reversing Course Can Be a Challenge)
When it comes to parking, bad experiences dominate the review landscape, showing up in more than 11% of negative reviews. A good parking experience, in contrast, appears in barely over 1% of positive reviews, according to a new study by Widewail, a reputation management company. This is significant since the amount of effort to counter that negativity means a community will need an average of 12 reviews for every one-star review, depending on the starting score.
“Residents seek consistency in their experience. They want to know that their parking spot is open when they return from a long workday,” explains Katie Ritter, national director for multifamily at Widewail. “What amazes me is the impact parking has on resident experience. It's the No. 6 driver of negative reviews, mentioned more than notable topics: billing, rent, neighbors, noise, amenities, and the pool. A bad parking experience is right in line with a negative security experience in the mind of the resident."
Ratings are not simply the number of stars divided by the number of reviews, and the algorithms to calculate can be complicated. Google, as an example, considers age, quality, and length of reviews when deciding overall rating. Even with the minimum amount of positive reviews needed to counteract a single negative review, it doesn’t mean a community’s rating will rise to the target goal.
Consider the reviews of just one of the communities in your portfolio. How many one-star reviews are dozens of words in length, detailing any issue they can find with the property? How many five-star reviews have no comments at all or have just one or two sentences? Google gives more weight to the one-star reviews if the algorithm determines the review is a quality one and drops the value of the five-star reviews.
“If you were to look at reviews before we implemented an automated parking solution, almost every single one talked about how bad parking was,” says Carrissa Rose, senior regional manager at Keller Investment Properties, a manager of multifamily housing in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. “Those reviews were dragging our score by more than a point.”
When residents find someone else in their designated space—usually another resident or their guests—this can create friction. Complaints to the office increase, and oftentimes the hands of on-site teams are tied. It may appear to unhappy residents that management is indifferent, but they simply don’t have any other solution available. This can lead to a new set of complaints in a review, exacerbating the negative reputation situation.
Stop the Problem From Becoming One
Dealing with a parking situation is unlike almost any other amenity. A poor fitness center or pool area can be addressed with a makeover or adjustments, but most communities don’t have the real estate available to expand parking. In the very rare cases where expansion is possible, it can be cost-prohibitive. In addition, hundreds of cities across the nation are reversing course on parking to reduce the number of lots blanketing their cities and promoting walkability more, particularly in densely populated areas.
When a resident vacates their unit and their parking along with it, those spaces can sit unused for weeks during the turnover period. This spot could easily be provided to other residents or their guests on a temporary basis. Keeping track of which spaces are available can be a monumental task for leasing teams, who already have enough on their plates and should have their attention directed toward revenue-generating tasks.
Parking management platforms can handle parking challenges and reduce the one-star reviews. These systems integrate with a community’s existing management system, working in the background to track available spaces and utilizing a user-friendly app to provide space rental to residents and guests. In addition, parking automation provides insights into a community’s parking situation and handles other tasks, such as towing, with little intervention. For some properties, they can even provide a source of ancillary income with revenue share.
“An automated parking solution was a great addition to our community,” says Silvia Garcia, an area manager at MG Properties, a San Diego-based fully integrated real estate company specializing in the investment, redevelopment, and management of multifamily assets. “One of our biggest complaints is regarding insufficient parking. This has helped us overcome that objection when residents and/or prospective residents are asking about that specific issue.”
With reputation being a major contributor to whether a prospect rents an apartment, owners and operators need to ensure that a good reputation is in place and to keep it high by never giving residents a reason to leave negative reviews. Prevention will always be the optimal course—and the most cost-effective one.
