Insights from Turner: The Most Important Trends Within Reviews in 2025

I just wrote our big, yearly article for Multifamily Executive (see below)! I love getting to do this piece each year because it is essentially J Turner’s state of the industry for online reputation from a qualitative standpoint.

This year, before I went into some of the biggest trends, I broke down the urgent need for multifamily to analyze the content of reviews instead of just star ratings. This is because I believe that many companies within multifamily are stuck in the 2010’s in their approach to reputation management, and, therefore, have a jaded sense of how well they are doing. Based on my research, many industries have moved beyond just looking at how high they can get their Google rating, and they are now using advanced customer sentiment analysis tools to understand operational strengths and weaknesses. I don’t believe that that has been a widespread approach in multifamily. Consequently, this means there is an inherent competitive advantage for any of you that actively focus on this data!

I highly encourage you to read the full article, which details a lot of the supporting evidence behind why you should care about the qualitative over just the quantitative. However, I wanted to provide, you, the regular readers of this blog, a cliff notes version to the biggest trends I discussed from our analysis of the content. Enjoy!

Full Article Can Be Read Here

The 8 Trends to Know

1. Reading reviews and not just blindly trusting the star rating was a logical shift in prospects’ process to meet their desire for verification – now it is multifamily’s turn to adapt.

2. This starts with understanding what residents are saying about The Apex Threats, which are the three most influential categories to prospects (Pests, Security, and Financial Clarity). J Turner statistically proved that a complaint about Pests is 18x more damaging to a property’s reputation and business than one about lesser deterring areas like Amenities.

3. By all indications, Pests is a growing concern. Global warming and increased resistance to common pesticides have made previous solutions less effective. While the pest control industry has innovated with new types of solutions, there is hesitancy for implementation due to cost. In J Turner Research’s opinion, this is shortsighted, as the business implications for failure in pest management make it innately worth the cost to implement what works best. Pest complaints rose 17% just last year, hitting their highest mark since 2018. In fact, since 2021, Pest complaints have risen 41% and were mentioned as a driving force of 18.43% of negative reviews. This data indicates that residents are noticing what pest experts are reporting, creating an urgent need for multifamily to look outside of the most affordable or common vendors to find solutions that can have meaningful success.

4. While still a common complaint in 1- and 2-star reviews in 2025 (24.09%), there is optimism for the industry in seeing Security complaints reducing. Security performance is largely a by-product of what you do to ensure the property is well-kempt. Since the peak of Covid-19, complaints about operational areas like General Cleanliness, Landscaping & Grounds, Exterior Lighting, and Trash Management have followed similar patterns to Security. This was very evident when Security complaints hit their nine-year high in 2023; as Security complaints went up to their apex, complaints about the property’s care followed the exact same pattern. As complaints in these operational areas have mostly ticked back down the last two years, Security has trended accordingly.

5. Complaints in understanding charges and fees trended up 7% in 2025 in comparison to 2024 and were featured within 33.76% of 1- and 2-star reviews. J Turner Research predicted this in last year’s article, specifying that the FTC’s ruling on “junk fees” for the multifamily industry did not absolve properties from needing to be transparent. The trend within Financial Clarity is largely a consequence of increased sensitivity to service and communication. Since the height of the pandemic, complaints in Communication, Customer Service, and Financial Clarity have gone up, especially skyrocketing amongst student renters. Despite some minor improvement between 2023 and 2024, this is still an area that multifamily needs to work to address.

6. Despite the increases in complaint rates for two of the three Apex Threats, sentiment improved for the second year in a row, reaching its highest level since 2021. Outside of the successes noted with Security and care of the property, the biggest reductions in complaints were in regard to Noise, Parking, and Amenities.

7. The Amenities improvement is less about quality of service and more about resident perception. The data suggests that amenities are continuing to become less of a driver of satisfaction. In fact, compliments about Amenities reached its lowest mark since 2009, only being featured in 10.95% of reviews. Moreover, Amenities was featured in only 15.25% of reviews overall, well down from its 21.80% lifetime rate and pre-Covid rate of 23.79%.

8. In contrast, the importance of service continues to be alarmingly clear. An incredible 77.30% of all reviews in 2025 discussed Customer Service in some way. In fact, 62% of all reviews featured a compliment about the staff, which is basically double 2011’s mark of 33%. While a large portion of that could be a result of review gamification and the increase in fake reviews, the fact that 66.20% of 1- and 2-star reviews feature a complaint about Customer Service suggests that the resident relationship with the staff continues to be the ultimate determinant of how satisfied a resident is overall.

Conclusion

This new era in online reputation, focused on the content over the stars, is a big story for multifamily in 2026. Starting in April 2026, the ORA Power Rankings, published in partnership between J Turner Research and Multifamily Executive (MFE), will reflect J Turner Research’s enhanced proprietary algorithm that now factors in the content of reviews.

For a list of all power rankings coming out between J Turner Research and MFE, please visit the J Turner Research website here.

ABOUT THIS BLOG: 

The insights in this blog came from utilizing J Turner Research’s text categorization tool, Einstein. Einstein uses Thought Analysis, a proprietary Ai software, to objectively show you your operational strengths and weaknesses based on anything anyone has ever said about you online in reviews. What is being said is incredibly valuable because it is essentially the "why" behind your scores. Reviews are unprompted descriptions of why a resident is satisfied (left a high star rating) or dissatisfied (left a low star rating). This means that what is being complimented and complained about can be seen by owners and operators as drivers of satisfaction/dissatisfaction.