Modernizing lease renewals using resident data, automation, and strategic alignment to enhance the resident experience and drive long-term value.

The lease renewal moment is often undervalued, despite its significant impact on revenue and retention. This session challenges the status quo and explores how data, technology, and team alignment can transform renewals from a reactive task into a proactive, personalized strategy that strengthens the resident relationship.

The Renewal Blind Spot

How well do you understand your own renewal process? Who owns it?

  • Problem: Renewals lack clear ownership—Marketing? Ops? Asset Management?— often treated reactively instead of strategically.
  • Challenge: PMS systems make it difficult to get meaningful, timely insights.

2. Data-Driven Personalization

  • Example: KETTLER used Renew to personalize communications based on resident behavior, functioning similarly to abandoned cart logic in e-commerce.
  • Residents navigate a customized hub, not static PDFs, that provides context-sensitive renewal options.
  • The “Need Something Else” feature uncovers blockers so teams can proactively resolve concerns.
  • Insight: Faster decisions correlate with renewal likelihood,  and lagging responses signal a need for human intervention or adjusted terms.

3. Reducing Friction with Automation

  • Centralization (e.g., KETTLER's Central Business Operations team) paired with automation reduces manual work like drafting letters.
  • Impact: Teams using Renew manage six properties vs. four without it.
  • Time saved: One property could take five hours/month just for one batch of renewal letters alone. This does not account for the additional hours spent on follow-up emails or calls for multiple open batches. All of this is now eliminated.

4. Aligning Teams for Retention

  • Renew enables early decision-making (70 days out), giving asset and revenue management time to adjust pricing strategies. On average, 50% of decisions are made within 15 days of sending the renewal.
  • Teams now track renewal timelines and outcomes in real time, more effectively, which informs pricing and marketing strategies.
  • Adjusting aggressive rent increases after noticing high terminations yields better balance, still with strong trade-outs.

5. Driving Long-Term Value

  • Renewals are more than a binary decision. It’s about renewing the customer, not just the lease.
  • KETTLER upsells other available units at renewal in case the resident’s lifestyle has changed and they need a different apartment size. They use Renew’s proprietary marketplace to cross-sell offers at sister properties as an additional option at renewal.
  • Retention Impact on Marketing Spend: By using Renew’s marketplace, they were able to retain 2% of residents within their portfolio, equating to 400 units and adding approximately $200K in value based on the current portfolio size. This strategy effectively extends the lifetime value of their residents.

Turning Renewals from Oversight to Opportunity

For too long, lease renewals have lived in the blind spot of multifamily operations—fragmented across teams, treated as an afterthought, and powered by outdated tools. But that’s changing!

Operators like KETTLER are transforming the renewal experience with the right blend of strategy, technology, and collaboration. By identifying ownership, leveraging real-time data, and automating routine tasks, they're turning renewals into a proactive, personalized, high-impact moment in the resident lifecycle.

This isn’t just about sending renewal notices earlier or making the process faster. It’s about creating a seamless experience that aligns with how today’s residents think, decide, and live. From uncovering  blockers before they become reasons to leave, to offering alternative floorplans or sister properties, the opportunity is not simply to retain a lease, but to retain a relationship.

Renewals aren’t a box to check. They’re a strategic lever to unlock long-term value. It’s time we start treating them that way.