Residency Reshaped
A Changing Market
The multifamily housing market is undergoing a transformation. With hybrid work reshaping lifestyles, affordability challenges redefining priorities, and renters seeking more value from their living spaces, developers and property managers are navigating a landscape that looks vastly different than a decade ago. It is important to revisit traditional assumptions about what drives renters' decisions—like location or luxury amenities—to understand what remains true and how renters’ needs and values are shifting.
Residency Reshaped
Amid these significant shifts, understanding what today’s renters truly want presents both a challenge and an opportunity. What attracts a renter to an apartment? What makes them stay? What makes them leave? And ultimately: do developers truly understand what renters want?
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Methodology
New Perspectives
The Residency Reshaped report—a joint effort by Corgan’s research and innovation team, Hugo, and its multifamily practice—provides a data-driven framework to help stakeholders navigate this evolving landscape. Uncovering what renters value requires looking beyond conventional wisdom and diving into the realities of their daily lives, bridging the gap between industry expectations and renter experiences. Developers and property managers often rely on trends and standards to guide decisions, but renters’ needs and priorities are rarely one-size-fits-all. This gap can lead to mismatches in amenities, technologies, and living experiences, leaving renters feeling unheard and opportunities for connection untapped.
Our research explores trends in the post-pandemic multifamily rental market through a mixed-methods research study. Secondary research and 30 interviews with property managers and developers were used to uncover key industry trends and perspectives, shedding light on broader market dynamics and assumptions. Building on these insights, a survey of 1,480 renters across six key Sun Belt markets — Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Denver, Nashville and Phoenix — captured renters' lived experiences and preferences. By combining quantitative data and lived experiences, the research uncovered how renters navigate their living situations, prioritize their needs, and adapt to challenges like remote work and evolving technologies.
Expectation vs. Reality
Our research aimed to validate or debunk industry assumptions about renter preferences through data-driven insights. By comparing professional perceptions with renters' actual experiences, we took a “myth-busting” approach to identify gaps and alignments in expectations. The findings reveal important insights into the rental landscape and offer actionable design strategies to enhance property appeal, improve resident retention, and ensure industry practices align with renter realities and preferences.
What Matters Most?
By exploring topics such as remote work, the role and importance of community, and the desire versus actual use of amenities, the research aimed to provide insights into renter decision-making, the desirability of residential design, and the impact of current economic conditions on renting versus owning.
Affordability and amenities have surpassed location as the most important driving factors for renters. Notably, while apartment design does not drive a renter’s choice of where to live, its ability to meet their needs ultimately determines whether they stay.
Developers have an opportunity to delight and attract renters through innovation in their shared amenity offerings. Emerging technologies are quickly becoming an expectation, too, with a growing interest in features like EV parking and smart home devices. Our surveys showed that the future is closer than we think.
With more renters working remotely full- or part-time, what they value in a location has shifted. Location is still important, but proximity to work or urban centers is not the only factor — comfort, space, and health are now more important than convenience.
In the long run, I think location and amenities are going to be very closely related. If you build the world’s best building in the middle of the desert, no one’s going to care. They don’t want to go there. Amenities are very important to a lot of people, especially when they’re paying top dollar to rent.
Personally, I think design is also very important because you need to have a nicely appointed building that people are comfortable in.
Work with Us
Ready to reshape the future of multifamily housing?
Hugo’s Residency Reshaped report offers a scalable, repeatable framework for understanding and strategizing renter experiences—designed to be adaptable to other locations and property types.
This methodology provides a tool for benchmarking and decision-making, providing insights tailored to unique markets. Whether you're looking to explore new markets or refine strategies for existing ones, we can help you uncover actionable insights to guide informed design and development decisions.
Contact Melissa Hoelting at melissa.hoelting [at] corgan.com (melissa[dot]hoelting[at]corgan[dot]com) to learn how you can collaborate with Hugo to bring this research to your market.
To learn more about our multifamily practice and our work navigating the complexities of adaptive reuse and urban infill projects, shaping new mixed-use developments, and designing new wrap, podium, and tower projects, contact Stephen Lohr at stephen.lohr [at] corgan.com (stephen[dot]lohr[at]corgan[dot]com).
Download the Residency Reshaped Report
More information on the methodology, market trends, key findings and design solutions are available in the full report. Download here.
