Online reputation is not meant to only be a game or contest; it is also supposed to be meaningful data that promotes better operational decision making. When used correctly, the data is like looking through a keyhole at what is happening on-site at each property.
In order to be meaningful, the data must correlate to financial performance. Good online reputation performance should predict more leasing traffic due to strong prospect perception and more renewals via high resident satisfaction. If it is not, then what are you working toward? Just being able to brag to your competitors or owners/investors?
As discussed in our January article on Multifamily Executive, we are in a new era of online reputation within multifamily that requires a change in approach. It is common knowledge that having a decently high rating (3.7 or above) on sites like Google is important to ensure that you are not crossed off prospects’ shortlists before they look further. However, high star ratings cannot be your end goal. Prospects are digging deeper than they used to. They no longer blindly assume that a high star rating equals good service; it is simply an indication that you are worth investigating further.
Instead, the determining factor of your prospect perception and resident satisfaction levels is found in the quality of your review content. This is where you should be measuring yourself for online reputation success.
Have We Been Chasing the Wrong Metric?
For most operators in multifamily, the Google star rating is a primary online reputation management (ORM) KPI they have sought to improve and report on over the last 10 years. While Google is certainly the main review depot, its calculation logic has major issues that prohibit it from being a north star.
Google’s star rating formula is overly simplistic. While Google has detailed that it does not treat every review exactly the same, the consensus opinion is that Google operates close to a straight average. This comes with a number of major consequences:
- Recency of review: Reviews left years ago carry similar weights to reviews left recently. This dilutes the assessment of how well a business is doing right now.
- No consideration of management change: Google is typically unwilling to allow a new management company to reset the deck when they acquire a stabilized asset. Consequently, reviews left for prior management companies stain or overly inflate how well the current managers are doing.
- Content withstanding: Google pays very little attention to what is being said within a review. Thus, a review complaining about the plate on the loading dock being broken carries the same weight as a review complaining about mold, rats, or robberies occurring on-site.
Taking a step back, it is obvious that each of these things would carry water in how most of us would assess a property to be performing. It is a disservice to both the renter and business to have the reported score oversimplified.
Google’s lack of dynamism makes it hard to trust at face value; prospects have noticed, so we must take notice, too.
Prospects Do Not Trust High Ratings: They Read Reviews
In the January article we noted that rising skepticism is a primary driver of why ratings matter less and review content matters more. Consumers have gained experience using reviews, and this matters. According to Fayez Ahmad and Francisco Guzmán’s article in Journal of Consumer Marketing, the more experienced someone becomes with using reviews (increasing their “review literacy”), the less likely they are to trust ratings at face value and the more likely they are to be analytical in assessing the reviews themselves.
But it does not stop with general experience; it is prospects’ negative experiences that are having lasting impact on your business.
J Turner Research conducted a 2026 study and found that 50.3% of renters claim to have purchased a product or service with a 4.5 or higher rating only to find the quality to be poor. The result of those experiences is seismic. Nearly a third of those renters, 31.2%, said they can no longer trust star ratings at all. This was on top of the 44.7% of those renters that said they now trust star ratings less. But that was not the most extreme group: An additional 12.3% of renters assume all high ratings must have been gamified.
So, in total, roughly 88% of people will never trust ratings the same after as little as one poor experience.
Multifamily sells a product that is related to someone’s well-being, is incredibly expensive, and requires a long-term commitment—these behavioral shifts matter. J Turner Research found that 64.8% of renters will spend even more time reading reviews for apartments than they do for everyday purchases.
These efforts tend to be focused on negative content, and the wrong negative content moves people off your property. J Turner Research measured the effect on perception and found that prospects were not willing to lease at even 4.9-rated Google properties if they believed/knew certain issues existed. There were two ways we tested this:
1. Prospects were told to “rate your willingness to lease at a 4.9 Google-rated property with two complaints about pests” (followed by similarly worded questions for other sensitive topics). Willingness to lease plummeted from the high level that we would normally perceive from a 4.9.
2. To verify the findings, we allowed prospects to simulate a Google search like what you see below. Participants viewed a property with:
- A 4.9 rating
- 547 reviews
- Numerous recent five-star reviews
- One negative review in a sensitive category
Then rated willingness to lease.
Sample of Google search:
Simply put, if prospects are aware of or see a negative review about the wrong type of content, it is over. The best-case scenario was a 53% chance to gain a lease—the high rating may as well not have been there.
Why You Must Also Focus on Review Content … Especially the Negative
According to Laura Kegley’s article in Forbes, consumers’ focus on negative information “aligns with negativity bias theory, which suggests that individuals are more sensitive to losses (negative sentiments) than gains (positive sentiments), leading them to weigh negative information more heavily in their evaluations.” This manifests itself in how prospective renters navigate reputation data.
In J Turner Research’s 2025 study, we identified that 45.1% of renters are complete “skeptics.” These are people living with low hope and high fear, not caring about positive reviews and actively looking to avoid negative outcomes and find reasons to disqualify a property. While filtering low scoring reviews only takes two clicks and is a viable option (especially when prospects are so willing to read reviews), artificial intelligence (AI) brings this information right to the surface.
Almost half of prospective renters, 49.3%, are using AI already, and they want to know what could go wrong. According to J Turner Research’s 2026 research, satisfaction information and prompts dominate how prospects leverage AI.
While not all operational complaints are going to deter prospects to the same extent as complaints about pests, security, or financial clarity, the point is that this information is desired by prospects and there are tools they can use to make “the underbelly” of a property easier to find. Consequently, your reputation strategy must go beyond the quantitative to include the qualitative.
Kegley articulated it best in her Forbes article: “User ratings offer a convenient snapshot of consumer satisfaction and influence purchasing decisions significantly. However, they fall short of capturing the nuanced aspects of customer experiences. This underscores the need to embrace qualitative customer sentiment analysis as a way to complement quantitative user rating data and gain a more nuanced understanding of consumer opinions for better decision making.”
What You Should Do
A content-focused ORM strategy sounds daunting but is meaningful, and it may not be as difficult as you think. According to Ariel Baranauckas, vice president of marketing and recruiting at Carter-Haston, operators should do the following things:
- Make an assessment: Whether you have access to a paid platform or not, use AI or your vendor’s resources to assess what type of negative content is out there and how that compares with your competitors.
- Use a cross-departmental strategy: Do not leave online reputation management to just the marketing department. Involve operations, training, asset management, revenue management, and on-site teams to assess/drive performance.
- Prioritize the right metrics: As opposed to showcasing star ratings and incentivizing team members on positive reviews, be goal oriented around reducing complaints instead.
- Service first: It is all about providing a home, and each department has control over various aspects of the resident experience. It not only helps attract prospects, but it keeps residents happy and renewing.
Looking Ahead
The ORA Power Rankings J Turner Research publishes in partnership with MFE are not designed to showcase the companies/properties pushing the most reviews but, rather, who is the best at servicing their residents. In 2026, that required a major change in approach both with scorekeeping and how management companies compete for the top spots.
J Turner Research made an adjustment to its ORA score in January to factor in the content of reviews, taking into account specifics like recency of review and influence on prospect/renter behavior. Consequently, RealPage found in its independent study that the new ORA is 2.38x more predictive of financial performance than the ORA model J Turner just sunset, which used ratings alone. Rich Hughes, the head of data science at RealPage, said the new ORA unequivocally better “identifies properties that are ‘accelerating’ past their peers.” Moreover, Hughes said this correlation “is 100% not by accident.” He even noted the approach of using star ratings alone was no longer predictive of future financial performance.
While the score is undoubtedly more meaningful, major change, including but not limited to the steps Baranauckas outlined above, take time. Therefore, the ORA Power Rankings calendar, including the prestigious company rankings, will be modified to allow operators the opportunity to put their best foot forward. Please stay tuned to Multifamily Executive and jturnerresearch.com for updates on release dates.
The truth is that it is a lot simpler to focus on ratings alone, and it is a lot easier to work on getting five-star reviews. But that is not what drives prospects, retains residents, and improves your bottom line.
The question is what do you want to be good at: getting reviews or delivering great service?
We wish you the best of luck as you compete for the top.