Across this year’s LeaseCon/TurnCon conference, a single truth echoed through every session: the modern student renter is operating with more information, more caution, and more choice than ever before. Leasing success is no longer about the most significant concession or the flashiest amenity; it’s about trust, digital presence, and data discipline.
A Market That’s Slowing... But Not Weakening
Pre-leasing is slower than last year, even as national per-bed pricing remains above $1,000. New supply and competitive shadow markets continue to pressure purpose-built student housing. Rising floating-rate debt is heightening the urgency to hit 100% occupancy, but the more important shift is psychological: the days of effortless rent growth have faded. A healthy 3% now feels like a win again.
Students are waiting longer to commit, comparing more options, and looking for authentic community fit, especially after years of lost connection during the pandemic. Purpose-built housing must now compete not only on features but on belonging.
Reputation and Data: The Real Levers in a Noisier Cycle
Operators repeatedly signaled two themes:
From AI search behavior to pricing confidence, reputation plays an outsized role in whether students place a community on their short list. Our own industry research reinforces this:
Reputation is now a digital infrastructure and part of your SEO essentials. It determines how AI models, search engines, and renters describe you.
AI as the New Discovery Layer
More than half of renters (51.6%) are already using or willing to use AI to summarize reviews. That means your review footprint, sentiment patterns, and content quality become the training data for how you show up in generative search.
Google’s dominance (capturing 64–74% of review volume) makes it the primary source feeding these models. Strong content signals equal stronger visibility: weak content becomes a liability.
This is why we continue refining the ORA algorithm, with the next update arriving in February. It reflects how renters, and now AI, interpret apartments with more nuance and context than star ratings can capture.
Data Discipline: Stop Benchmarking Against Outlier Years
A recurring theme from operators was the anxiety of being “behind.” But the last two years were outliers. Review baselines have normalized (dropping from 143 to 137 per property entirely due to platform behavior, not performance declines), and renter engagement remains stable with nearly a million new reviews in the first half of 2025.
Internal benchmarks tell the real story. Internal sentiment reveals emerging retention drivers, including the growing importance of financial clarity among long-term residents. ORA trajectories show where momentum is building or fading. External comps cannot capture this.
Onsite Teams: Still the Difference-Makers
The most polarized sentiment categories today are customer service and communication. These human interactions create both the best and worst moments in a student’s experience. They also shape review volume, tone, and conversion outcomes.
Staff wellness is a quiet crisis. In our mental health survey, leasing teams reported 50% distress, with 24% at severe levels. Burnout bleeds directly into online reputation.
We can’t separate student belonging from onsite staff experience… they are two sides of the same coin.
Total Visibility Is Impossible Alone, Even for In-House Teams
Even the most sophisticated internal reputation teams struggle to scale manual monitoring. Review ecosystems remain volatile: 1.28M reviews were removed this year due to platform shifts, and properties continue receiving reviews across four or more platforms. Nearly a million new reviews appear every six months.
Patterns like the Reputation Tax, where specific issues influence decisions far more heavily than others, require AI-level analysis. Manual responders can’t consistently track this.
Why These Takeaways Matter for 2026
Operators aren’t just competing on price. They’re competing on narrative. The story renters absorb from reviews, search engines, AI tools, social content, and peers.
This is where reputation becomes revenue. And where data becomes strategy.
We’ll be sharing more in the coming weeks as we break down the most actionable insights from LeaseCon and connect them directly to the tools and intelligence we provide at J Turner.