It’s pretty common—and backed by science— that someone’s first experience dictates how they’ll feel about the rest of their experience. That’s why the move-in experience is so important for property managers, because if you can nail onboarding, you’re likely to have a customer who loves you for life.
Now, obviously, this isn’t 100% foolproof, but if you miss the move-in experience, you have a steep mountain to climb to rebuild that relationship. We’ve seen this in our own data at JWB, too. When we get a negative review from a resident within a month of move-in, the chances of that resident renewing go down. If they put in a maintenance request within the first seven days, their resident NPS is lower for the full duration of their lease.
The move-in is the tone setter, and there are lots of important business metrics tied to these experiences.
Obviously, some things during the move-in process are out of your control. For example, we’ve had residents show up to move in, and it turns out there’s been a break-in at the property since we did our last walkthrough.
The key is to control what you can. That might mean timely communications, clear instructions about key pickup, or a nice move-in gift waiting for them when they arrive. For us it includes a detailed walkthrough prior to move-in. We choose not to do this alongside the resident, because getting in there early gives us the chance to get in front of any issues before the resident is exposed to them. It keeps their first impression positive and makes things appear seamless.
A huge part of a good resident move-in and onboarding experience is setting clear expectations up front. You want your residents to know exactly what they can expect from your team, the process, and the condition of the home before they ever set food in the property.
As part of our process, we talk through what’s in the lease with approved applicants. We note things like elective vs. included items, what “as-is condition” really means, and more. We’re not just sending them a long PDF lease and asking them to sign it. Our philosophy is, if you’re going to pay us a bunch of money, first we want you to know what you’re getting so that there’s no confusion later.
We’ve also created a simple move-in walkthrough video that covers some of the most important things our residents need to know, like:
In the era of Tiktoks and Instagram Reels, residents don’t want dense handbooks that they’re never going to read. By giving them a simple, digestible video, we’re increasing the chances that they’ll pay attention and actually understand it.
Beyond expectation setting, one of the core ways we try to create a great move-in experience is by truly connecting with our residents. We do that by making them feel heard, and by providing a dedicated, private place where they can provide feedback on their experience. (As a side benefit, this keeps them from voicing any negative comments publicly.)
As part of this process, we established post-move-in check-in calls, and put a particularly heavy emphasis on these in 2025. All of the property managers on our team are responsible for calling the residents in their portfolio about two weeks after move-in. They’re basically just saying, “Hey, how’s it going?” But they’re also specifically asking about:
Since we’ve implemented these calls, we’ve seen a direct boost in our 30-day post-move-in NPS, so it’s clearly having an impact.
These check-in calls also have the impact of giving us clear areas of focus. One area where we received a lot of feedback was our move-in cleaning. As part of our turnover process, we do a final cleaning and a final mowing to make sure that the properties are ready for our new residents on day one.
Unfortunately, we received some critical feedback about the quality of our cleanings, with some residents saying that their home wasn’t clean enough when they moved in. That caused us to step back and look at our process more closely. Typically, we do a deep cleaning during the property turn, after any maintenance is done and before we start showings. That’s fully paid for by the owner. Then, if the property is vacant for a while, we’ll do a touch-up cleaning every couple of weeks, and one final touch-up before move-in. That typically consists of a simple dusting and sweeping, but from time to time, when a property is vacant for a long time, there could be bigger dirt build-ups that get missed.
Ultimately, we got together and decided that we wanted to give people the option of a deeper move-in cleaning. Basically, new residents could choose to either have our standard wipe-down cleaning for free, or opt into a move-in deep cleaning, for an extra fee. We partnered with a vendor to get this at a flat cost and make it as affordable as we could for our residents.
This way, if a deep cleaning is important to a new resident, they can choose to have it done and it eliminates a potential future complaint. If the resident feels it’s too expensive, or if it isn’t that important to them, they can decline it, but it still eliminates a future complaint because they made that decision. Now our residents feel empowered by choice and they have a sense of agency in the move-in process.
Make sure that, as you’re making changes to your onboarding process, you’re tracking the impact of those changes. In our case, our resident experience coordinator monitors all of our NPS data and meets regularly with the team to address any feedback we’ve gotten. We can see changes in both short-term (30-day) NPS and long-term NPS as those residents move through the rest of their lease term.
Data can be a powerful tool to help you improve resident experience, but the most important thing is to put yourself in the shoes of the resident, and to keep striving for a better and better experience.