What if the best value-add isn't a renovation?
248 properties. 5 years of data. One finding that changes how you underwrite.
I’ve been saying the same thing for years.
Residents are the real customers.
Not investors. Not lenders. Not the spreadsheet.
The people living in your building pay the rent that pays the mortgage that pays the returns. If they leave, everything gets expensive. If they stay, everything works.
I built my investing thesis around this idea. It’s why I left Apple.
And for years, the response has been: “That sounds nice, Jon. But show me the numbers.”
Fair enough.
In January 2026, Abt Global published the most comprehensive study of resident services in affordable housing ever conducted.
248 properties. 19 organizations. Five years of pre-COVID financial data. Quasi-experimental regression analysis. Read the full study here.
Properties that invest in resident services earn $1,183 more in NOI per unit per year. A 26% NOI advantage. At 99% statistical confidence.
On a 100-unit building, that’s $118,300 per year. On a 200-unit property, $236,600. Not from raising rents. Not from cutting corners. From keeping residents stable.
Every $100 per unit invested generates $259 in additional NOI the following year. That’s a 2.6x return. On treating people well.
Arrears dropped 38%. Bad debt dropped 24%.
The services aren’t exotic. Community engagement. Financial literacy. Housing stability support. These aren’t charity programs. They’re operating strategies that show up in the financials.
Resident stability leads to on-time payment. On-time payment leads to lower turnover. Lower turnover leads to lower vacancy loss. Lower costs lead to higher NOI.
That’s not my theory. That’s their regression model.
Here’s the part that surprised even me.
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Service-enriched properties spent more on maintenance. $222 more per unit per year. The researchers expected cost-cutting. What they found was financial capacity. Properties earning more NOI reinvested into the asset.
That’s the flywheel. Invest in residents. Earn more. Reinvest in the building. Residents stay longer. Earn more again.
The Abt study looked at 2015-2019 data. Before real-time arrears tracking and tighter property management integration. The researchers said it explicitly: the impact today is likely stronger.
$1,183 per unit is the floor. Not the ceiling.
These words got so politicized that people stopped listening. And they missed the math entirely. Impact-focused ownership isn’t a charity play. It’s value creation that shows up in your NOI, your cap rate, and your hold period returns.
The building is just the container. The people inside it are the asset.
What would change about your strategy if you treated resident services as an investment line item instead of an expense?
Hit reply. I read every response.
—Jon
P.S. If you want to see how I apply this thinking to my own portfolio, reply and I’ll share more.