The fourth issue of ORA™ Power Rankings features the top 10 of the recently released 2016 NMHC 50 Largest Apartment Managers with regard to their online reputation. We first assessed the online reputation of the NMHC 50 portfolio in April 2015.

The Bozzuto Group has bagged the coveted spot as the No.1 management company with the best online reputation in the nation for the second consecutive year. Bozzuto registered the highest ORA™ score of 77 among all companies. The firm upped its ORA™ score by 13% from 2015, having registered a 68 last year.

One of the biggest gainers since April 2015, AvalonBay, moved from outside the ORA™ top 10 to rank second this year. In so doing, the firm bettered its ORA™ score by 58%, from 48 to 76.

Some other notable trends of this issue of the rankings:

  • There are four new entrants in the top 10 list —in addition to AvalonBay, Gables Residential, Aimco, and Cortland Partners join the ranks. Gables ranked third, Aimco fifth, and Cortland 10th.
  • Overall, the ORA™ scores of the NMHC 50 Managers have improved since April 2015. The top 10 companies are performing well above the national average ORA™ score of 56.
  • Size isn't an influential factor in gaining a foothold in the top 10: Five of the companies in the top 10 manage fewer units than other managers that aren't on the list. In contrast, only two companies with the top ORA™ scores manage more units than their peers in the remainder of the NMHC 50 Managers list.
  • The competition to land on the top 10 is heating up: The average top 10 ORA™ score last year was 64; this year, it's increased more than 9%, to 70.
ORA Rank Company
2016 ORA Score 2015 ORA Score % Change (Y-O-Y) NMHC 50 Rank
1 Bozzuto 77 68 13% 20
2 AvalonBay Communities, Inc 76 48 58% 10
3 Gables Residential 72 49 46% 43
4 MAA 71 68 5% 9
4 AIMCO 71 48 48% 19
6 RAM Partners, LLC 69 61 14% 35
7 Camden Property Trust 68 65 4% 15
8 Drucker & Falk Real Estate 67 65 3% 49
8 Morgan Properties 67 65 3% 38
10 Cortland Partners 66 58 14% 41

Note: For the top 10 ranking, all companies in the 2016 NMHC 50 Managers list were considered, with the exception of Balfour Beatty Communities, Capstone Real Estate Services, and Sentinel Real Estate Corp. Property data on these three companies was not readily available.

For more information on the ORA™ Power Rankings, please visit http://www.jturnerresearch.com/orarankings

Methodology

In an ongoing series of ORA™ Power Rankings, MFE periodically publishes a new ranking of apartment properties and management companies based on different parameters. ORA™ Power Rankings is powered by J Turner Research. To arrive at the aggregated score, J Turner Research tracks and analyzes the online reputation of more than 14 million units at 57,000-plus apartment properties across all ratings websites and ILSs on a monthly basis. To overcome the challenge of multiple ratings scales, the company has devised a statistical model to establish a single score for each property. This score, based on a 0 to 100 scale, serves as a benchmark to compare and contrast individual properties—and portfolios—nationally.

Questions:

Please contact the J Turner Research team at [email protected].