With rent growth stalling across Sunbelt workforce housing in 2026, owners are confronting an uncomfortable question: if revenue is flat, where does NOI actually come from? For Ron Kutas, CEO of OneWall Communities, the answer is the part of the business most 3rd party managers overlook.
“NOI growth comes from retaining your paying residents, so you don’t have to turn units and pay more marketing costs to refill,” Kutas says. “And it comes from proactively managing your expense line items, vendor contracts, repair, don’t replace. That’s the name of the game.”
A flat-rent year also exposes a structural problem. Because fee managers are paid on collections, their attention points at revenue, and when revenue stops growing, hidden expenses do not.
Kutas estimates the cost: “You’re losing about 50% of what your previous rent growth was, because that’s your opex portion.” The expense side keeps rising while the rent increases that used to mask it are gone.
OneWall Communities aligns its incentives differently. “We actually bonus our maintenance teams and our leasing teams on renewals, and we bonus them more than we do on new leases,” Kutas explains.
A renewal signals maintenance is doing its job, so no one is penalized for keeping a resident in place. “Everybody needs to be rowing in the same direction.”
That mindset shows up in expenses a revenue-focused manager would never touch. Across the Sunbelt, nearly every property has a pool. “Getting our maintenance technicians certified to treat pools was a proactive approach we took to reduce the cost of a third-party vendor having to maintain the pools.”
It is a small, unglamorous move, and exactly the kind of value-add that a vertically integrated operator delivers. Asked for the single highest-leverage move in a soft market, Kutas keeps it simple: “Keep your residents happy.”
Property management is complex, and the best solutions come from shared incentives. Whether you’re exploring new approaches or facing specific challenges, we’re here to talk. Visit us at onewallcommunities.com or call us at (646) 596-7068.