Reputation.com analyzed over 400,000 tenant reviews of over 9000 locations in order to determine what factors figure most prominently in positive reviews and in negative reviews. Here’s an overview of what they found influenced an apartment property’s reputation.
Gathering the data
Reputation.com scraped the text of reviews of “apartment-style residential locations” from sites one would expect, like Apartments.com and ApartmentRatings.com, but also from Google and Facebook. They used computer algorithms to analyze the text, to sort comments into 25 categories and to correlate positive and negative statements in each of these categories with the numerical rating the reviewer gave to the property.
What did they find?
Reputation.com found that people commented most often on service related categories with Customer Service drawing comments in 60 percent of the reviews analyzed. Other service-related categories such as Rental Office and Maintenance also figured prominently in the reviews.
Building Amenities was the third most commented upon category and Unit Amenities was number 7. In spite of this, the report noted that comments about the top rated properties centered more around service and community than around the facilities.
Categories where positive comments greatly outnumbered negative comments included Customer Service (1), Speed (12) and Location (16). Categories where negative comments greatly outnumbered positive comments included Rent (11), Surcharges (14), Pest Control (17) and Policies and Procedures (21). The numbers in parentheses indicate where that category fell in the list of 25 in terms of frequency of comments with (1) being the category drawing the most comments.
And in conclusion …
The Reputation.com report concludes with three take-aways that can be used by any apartment community. They are: provide fast, friendly service; develop a sense of community among residents using activities and events; and get rid of pests of the four or more legged variety.
The report also notes that Google is gaining in relative importance as a repository of customer reviews in comparison to the more apartment-industry-specific web sites. Google reviews may become more important in determining an apartment property’s reputation if this trend continues.
The complete report can be found here.
