What Good Operators Do in Rough Times Like These

July 28, 2026 by Donald Davidoff

The end of July…the “dog days” of summer. And with the recent East Coast “Heat Dome” and the smoke from the Canadian fires, it’s been a particularly challenging past couple of weeks. 

And more to the point of running our businesses, I keep focusing on the ongoing news that rent growth will likely remain anemic at least through the end of this year and likely at least until mid-2027. The recent escalation in the Iranian conflict, and the increase in inflation almost certainly to come from the renewed shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, keeps me focused on what good operators do in rough times like these. Here’s my “Top 10”: 

1. The most important thing you can do is make sure you have an explicit pricing strategy that is appropriate at the Pricing Group, not just the market or sub-market level (e.g. 3BRs may need a different strategy than 1BRs). Once you have that strategy, check that your REBA Rent parameters match that strategy. REBA Rent offers more ability to configure the algorithm to your strategies than any other offering out there. If you’re a REBA Rent customer and unsure how to do this, talk with your CSM; if you’re not a REBA Rent customer, let me know and we’ll be happy to show you how we can help you outperform competitors on other systems. 
2. Once you have your strategy defined, communicate said strategy to your operators in the field. During my consulting years, the number one challenge I found was operators not having an explicit strategy (hence, #1 above); a close second was operators whose executives have a strategy but have not communicated it down to the community level. If community and regional managers are pursuing one strategy while the COO or head of operations is thinking of a different approach, results will suffer. 
3. Speed up tech innovation, don’t slow it down. Rental housing is a somewhat naturally conservative enterprise, but sometimes we go too far. While we obviously should care about not overloading our teams, we should also remember how much capacity for change they proved they could handle during the Covid years. I still remember someone blogging back then that we had turned a corner in speeding up the pace of innovation. I commented that I feared once the existential risk from Covid subsided, we would go back to our slower-paced ways. Now that we’re feeling NOI pressure again, perhaps it’s time to speed up tech and project innovation. I, for one, believe in our teams’ ability to handle, even embrace, it! 
4. Democratize the data. Over the course of 70+ BI implementations, we’ve seen a definite bias towards executives wanting to understand and implement dashboards and reporting before rolling it out down the chain of command. We get it…it’s more comfortable to be an expert on something before subordinates are. However, the whole idea of “better decisions, faster” is that the field makes more decisions affecting NOI than executives do. The more you influence them through reporting, the better the performance. That’s why we advocate democratizing the data. Get it in the hands of the most people possible, and you’ll be amazed at how they use it in ways you never even thought of! 
5. Focus your limited resources. The advent of Claude Code has spawned a new DIY mentality. However, just because we “can” do something doesn’t mean we “should.” With limited IT and Data Science resources, I think it’s important to apply them where they will have the most impact. That’s why buying the REBA foundation and then using those resources to build your advantage is the highest and best use of those resources. 
6. Find the dimes and quarters in the couch with REBA Amenities. We know from looking at thousands of properties that unit amenity configurations are almost always costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars in lost revenue, straight to the bottom line. On top of that, the value renters place on amenities changes cyclically, so pricing that made sense last year might be leaving money on the table today. With REBA Amenities, you can easily audit your amenities and regularly check the market’s response to your amenity pricing. It’s the cheapest “new revenue” you can find in flat markets. 
7. Make appropriate and realistic budget assumptions. (For the past two years, we thought improvements were coming that didn’t.) 
8. Implement Longstanding Vacant (LSV) best practices. Click here for a white paper on exactly how you should approach longstanding vacant homes 
9. Get your Lease Expiration Management (LEM) in place. If you have good LEM, you won’t be as pressured to lower rents in the low season. If you don’t, it will take 1-2 years to get a good LEM profile, so you might as well start now. If you’re not certain how REBA Rent makes that easy, please talk to your CSM. 
10. Hold times. One of the most effective ways to burn off vacancy is to increase free hold days. Click here for a white paper on exactly how you should approach Hold Times. Spoiler alert: REBA Rent makes it easy!