Over the last few years, you haven’t been able to attend a multifamily event without hearing the mantra “survive until 25.” Multifamily operators have anticipated interest rate drops that would reinvigorate dealmaking activity and relieve some of the financial pressure they were facing as a result of the prohibitive cost of borrowing money. However, market trends from the first few months of the year have made one thing clear—multifamily operators might need to “survive ‘25” rather than “survive until ‘25.”
With these macroeconomic factors in mind, we’ve been asking multifamily leaders from real estate companies including Bozzuto, AvalonBay Communities, GoldOller Real Estate Investments, Windsor Communities, and more what they’re doing to combat rising operating costs during guided breakout sessions at EliseAI’s Executive Leadership Conferences. Those conversations have delivered a ton of valuable, actionable insights for our attendees—so today we’re sharing them with the multifamily community at large. Here are 6 real strategies leading operators are adopting to combat rising operating costs in 2025 and beyond.
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Strategy 1: Practice Improved Vendor and Cost Management
Several multifamily leaders at our conferences emphasized the importance of consistently reevaluating vendor relationships, continually scrutinizing invoices and not taking anything for granted. This isn’t to say they recommended taking a sledgehammer to all your existing relationships, but rather to have educated, rational conversations with vendors about billing to look for new efficiencies and opportunities for cost savings.
Some operators shared strategies they use to optimize their spending and generate better leverage during the negotiation process. For one, soliciting multiple bids for any onsite contract—whether painting, waste management, landscaping, or more—ensures you’re receiving competitive rates whenever you sign a new contract. The multifamily professionals we heard from at the conference didn’t recommend only opting for the cheapest option, but rather to have an educated and comprehensive view of the market rate for goods and services before signing any deals.
On the vendor management note, several operators mentioned that leveraging bulk pricing and signing exclusive, portfolio-wide deals with vendors who can manage work at scale is an effective tool to keep costs down. A bulk pricing model, rather than a ton of individual contracts, can lower expenses and also make vendor relationship management a more seamless process. That goes for technology too, like the operators that use EliseCRM to consolidate their tech stack by cutting expensive point solutions like call centers, mass messaging, and survey tools with EliseCRM’s built-in features.
Strategy 2: Use Gamification to Drive Results
We’ve heard from tons of leaders at our conferences that getting onsite teams to buy into new initiatives is one of the toughest challenges faced by property management teams. Asking your onsite staff to add another responsibility to their day to day responsibilities or another tool to their tech stack can be difficult in the best of situations and downright impossible in some cases. Several leaders have turned to gamification in order to get their teams bought in with some healthy, good natured competition.
There were a few different successful examples of gamification shared during our breakout sessions. One that stood out was a multifamily leader at a nationwide owner/operator who created a region vs. region contest where teams in certain markets competed for the highest amount of new leases on a monthly basis. This allowed them to not only motivate their onsite teams to lease more units, but also allowed them to identify leasing regional trends and strategically deploy marketing budget to certain localities based on performance.
Gamification is a strong strategy for getting the most out of your AI deployment as well. Jacob Kosior, VP of Client Services at EliseAI, ran an AI naming contest during his time standing up the Centralized Services team at Cardinal Group Management in order to humanize the AI and drive buy-in for the onsite teams. Whether it’s running a contest for deciding your new AI’s name, creating a leaderboard for what teams have the fewest outstanding AI handoffs, or giving out gift cards to onsite teams at the communities that drive the best results with AI, creatively incentivizing your staff with healthy competition can go a long way towards getting team members to commit to AI.
Strategy 3: Improve Your PPC Strategy and Marketing Budgeting
One sentiment that a lot of multifamily marketing professionals shared was that the cost to advertise on common ILS platforms has become prohibitively expensive over the last few years. It’s getting harder and harder for them to justify the huge sums of money they’re forking over to big players in the space for the low-quality leads they receive in return. Fortunately, the marketing contingent at our leadership conferences has been full of new, innovative ideas for marketing their communities without relying heavily on ILS platforms.
This drove an increased focus on improved pay per click, or PPC, marketing strategies across platforms like Instagram, Google Ads, TikTok, and Snapchat. In general, the marketing community is showing itself to be very tech savvy. Multifamily marketers are trying anything and everything to keep costs down and conversions up in 2025, including building custom code to help with multi-touch attribution, increasing usage of UTM links for better customer journey mapping, and using AI to optimize advertising copy.
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For marketers trying to get the most out of their budget, EliseCRM has new and improved marketing reporting tools to help you measure the impact of your spend across different channels and campaigns. In a tight fiscal environment marketers are finding themselves having to justify every dollar they spend, which is easier said than done in most cases. Fortunately, EliseCRM gives you unprecedented visibility into what isn’t and isn’t working, allowing multifamily marketers to adjust their budgets on the fly and recognize ROI on their spend.
Strategy 4: Introduce Cost Efficiencies with AI and Centralization
One of the key themes of our conferences has (unsurprisingly) been how AI and centralization are helping multifamily operators cut costs while still delivering the level of service that their residents and prospects have come to expect. By automating low-value, repetitive tasks with AI and moving certain responsibilities offsite to dedicated corporate teams, operators are enabling onsite teams to focus on high-value, in-person tasks while also reducing staffing costs by eliminating floating roles. Several operators at our leader called out floating staff as an particularly expensive and underwhelming resource, recognizing that AI and corporate teams are often better equipped to handle the work of temporary staff.
Beyond all the staffing hours saved with automation, multifamily leaders also cited the conversion rate improvements driven by AI as key factors in rolling out this technology. AI and centralized services can drive down delinquency rates and increase leasing velocity, improving NOI and increasing free cash flow. In a macroeconomic environment where strong renter protections have been put in place, particularly in certain jurisdictions like DC and Philadelphia (where two of our recent leadership conferences have been held), anything to improve the collections process has been well received by the multifamily leaders who have attended our events.
Strategy 5: Build Better Self-Service Options for Renters
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A lot of the conversation at our leadership conferences centers around changing renter expectations and the effect that the “on-demand economy” is having on the way people look for new places to live. Conditioned by apps and services like DoorDash, Netflix, and Amazon, residents have come to expect fast answers to their questions around the clock. With that in mind, more and more operators are looking to build “self-serve” options for prospective residents, making it frictionless for them to book tours when, say, the leasing office is closed.
Pratik Dhebri, Vice President, Head of Product Management at AvalonBay Communities shared his insights on self-serve leasing workflows during our panel at the Executive Leadership Conference in Washington DC, discussing how AVB’s strategic focus on deploying AI as a “first line of defense” has helped them ensure prospects can get what they need quickly at any time of the day. As more operators incorporate AI into their leasing processes it’s worth keeping an eye on how the self-service journey continues to develop, and how that differentiates early-movers from operators that take a while to deploy AI.
Strategy 6: Leverage Grants, Rebates, and Subsidies for CapEx
With the tight macroeconomic circumstances at play, getting as much juice as they can get from the squeeze has been a focus for multifamily leaders as they deploy capital for community improvements. Several multifamily leaders shared that leveraging grants, rebates, and subsidies from the government has been a key strategy they’ve used to unlock funds for programs like solar panel installation and energy-efficient renovations. Lots of the conversation focused specifically on sustainability and the incentives the government is providing for developers to reduce their environmental footprint, but there’s also room for multifamily leaders to leverage development subsidies for projects like office-to-residential conversions that take advantage of existing real estate supply to revitalize downtown areas around the country.
Here’s a few key tactics we heard shared for identifying and leveraging subsidies to reduce the financial cost of community improvements:
- Consult local government officials and development boards to identify opportunities for rebates and grants
- Partner with local suppliers who know region legislative processes (like how to apply for solar rebates)
- Work with NGOs, nonprofit organizations, and charities to both build strong community relationships and create opportunities for tax deductions
With ownership groups and equity partners laser focused on operational efficiency and cost reduction in 2025, doing something good for the local community or the environment and getting a financial incentive to do so drives positive results on multiple levels.
More Great Sessions and Insights to Come
The EliseAI Executive Leadership Conference has quickly established itself as the must-attend event of the multifamily world. Over 500 multifamily leaders have joined EliseAI for intimate and interactive panels with some of the biggest operators in the country, strategic breakout sessions for knowledge sharing, plus great food, drinks and conversation in cities including Washington DC, Seattle, Huntington Beach, Miami, Austin, Dallas, New York City, and more. Want to join us at one of our upcoming conferences? Check out the full list here.
And in the meantime, if you’re looking to introduce more self-service options for prospects or to improve your operating efficiency with AI and automation, get in touch with the EliseAI team to learn more about our full suite of multifamily AI products.