— Written by Liz Greenway, Head of Partnerships
2025 wasn’t just another year in property management; it truly was a wake-up call. As we analyzed Property Meld’s benchmarking data from thousands of property management companies nationwide combined with 15+ operator conversations around vendor management, areas of opportunity emerged that changed how we think about vendor management entirely.
Here’s what the data revealed.
Speed of Repair Got Worse, Not Better
Target Range: 3.4 – 6.8 days // 2025 Average Operator: 6.9 days
According to Property Meld’s KPI Cheat Sheet, speed of repair is the best lagging indicator of resident satisfaction and renewals. When this metric slips, the probability of churn skyrockets.
While the full-year average landed just outside the 6.8-day target, most operators spent 2025 hovering at the edge of acceptable performance, with many slipping outside target by year’s end.
Why This Target Range Exists
The 3.4-6.8 day range represents the threshold where:
- Residents remain satisfied with response time
- Issues don’t escalate into emergencies
- Renewal decisions stay positive
- Online reviews remain constructive
Cross the 7-day threshold? You’re in dangerous territory.
What world-class operators do differently:
- Maintain 2-3 qualified vendors per major category
- Pre-schedule preventive maintenance during slow seasons
- Use digital-first vendor communication (no phone tag)
- Ruthlessly remove slow vendors from rotation
- Pay premium rates for guaranteed response times
For a 500-unit portfolio, moving from 13.3 days to within target range (3.4-6.8 days) eliminates 34,000+ resident-days of waiting annually.
That’s not a metric. That’s the difference between renewals and vacancies.
Loyalty without accountability is just expensive hope.
A maintenance manager shared, “We keep using them so they prioritize our work orders… I would call it loyalty.”
The reality: That “loyal” vendor was taking 32 days to complete jobs.
The opportunity cost: Better options in her market were completing the same work in 8 days.
The hidden cost: That 24-day difference per repair, multiplied across hundreds of jobs, represented massive satisfaction hits and potential turnover risk.
Consider this:
The Fear: “If I don’t give them enough work, they won’t prioritize me when I really need them.”
The Reality: You’re prioritizing them while they’re deprioritizing you.
The 2025 Data on Loyalty
Properties using the same 3 vendors for a major category across all of 2025:
- Average speed of repair: 8.2 days
- Average satisfaction: 4.3
Properties that rotated vendors quarterly based on performance:
- Average speed of repair: 5.1 days
- Average satisfaction: 4.6
Accountability drives performance. Loyalty without accountability creates complacency.
Consider using the “Challenger Vendor Program” by maintaining your “loyal” vendor but constantly challenging them with alternatives.
What to do:
- Identify top 3 work categories by volume
- Source 1 alternative “challenger” vendor per category
- Give challenger 10% of volume, track performance head-to-head
- If challenger outperforms on 2 of 3 metrics (speed, cost, satisfaction): increase volume
- Best performer gets majority volume, process repeats quarterly
From there, your “loyal” vendor either performs to keep volume, or gets naturally phased out based on data—not difficult conversations.
The Breakthrough: Data-Driven Owner Conversations
During one of my conversations with an operator, I asked, “If an owner could see data on resident satisfaction, speed, and renewal impact… do you think they’d listen?”
With Property Meld’s benchmarking data, property managers can have an at-bat to win the quality-over-cost argument. Here is an example of how you can arm your team in the objection.
The Owner Objection
Owner: “Why are we paying $250 for this repair when I found someone for you to use on Google for $100?”
New Response (Wins with data):
“I understand the cost concern. Let me show you what Property Meld’s 2025 industry data revealed.
Our $250 vendor:
- First-time fix rate: 90% (Property Meld benchmark: 85%+)
- Resident satisfaction: 4.7/5.0 (Target range: 4.2-4.6)
- Speed of repair: 3.2 days (Target range: 3.4-6.8 days)
- Callbacks: <10%
The $100 vendor you found typically shows:
- First-time fix rate: 60% (below benchmark)
- Resident satisfaction: 3.8/5.0 (below 4.2 target)
- Speed of repair: 8+ days (outside target range)
- Callbacks: 40%+
When we use lower-cost vendors, callbacks happen 40% of the time—meaning we pay twice ($200 total) and frustrate the resident. That frustration shows up in satisfaction scores, which correlates directly with renewals.
Property Meld’s target for annual spend is $1,680-$2,592 per unit. We’re at $1,890, well within target and under the 12% rent roll threshold.”
The Three Data Points That Win
1. Speed of Repair (Target: 3.4-6.8 days)
- Show where your vendor performs vs. target
- Show where cheaper alternatives perform
- Connect to resident experience
2. Resident Satisfaction (Target: 4.2-4.6 out of 5.0)
- Show your current score
- Show impact of vendor choice on score
- Connect to renewal risk
3. Annual Spend/Unit (Target: $1,680-$2,592, Under 12% rent roll)
- Show you’re within range
- Showing that cheaper vendors don’t always save money (callbacks)
- Connect to investor churn risk
The Metric to Watch in 2026: Acceptance Speed
Property Meld Target Range: 0.5 – 1.2 hours
While Speed of Repair is a critical lagging indicator of resident satisfaction and renewals, we discovered a hidden leading indicator in 2025: vendor acceptance speed. This metric, including response time and time to schedule, is showing signs of destroying resident satisfaction.
Acceptance speed = Time from when you assign a job to when the vendor:
- Acknowledges they received it
- Confirms they’ll take it
(Note: Time to Schedule speed should also be considered during this period.)
Why it matters:
“Indicative of how fast your team is aware if the vendor assigned is interested in taking the repair. If too long, could cause delays in re-assignment and thus total repair speed.”
Target range: 0.5 – 1.2 hours
Why This Can Destroy Resident Satisfaction
The Cascade:
Hour 0: You assign the job → Resident expects confirmation soon
Hour 4: Still no response (average vendor) → Resident starts wondering, you can’t give updates
Hour 12: Vendor finally responds → “I’ll get out there next week sometime”
Hour 24: Maybe scheduled, maybe not → Resident has waited a full day just to know WHEN
The damage happens before work even starts.
The Data
Properties with <1.2 hour acceptance speed averaged 4.6 satisfaction scores.
Properties with >4 hour acceptance speed averaged 4.1 satisfaction scores.
That 0.5-point difference? That’s the gap between target range and below target.
Making Acceptance Speed Non-Negotiable
Update your vendor SLA:
OLD: “Respond within 24 hours”
NEW: “Accept or decline within 1 hour, provide scheduled time within 2 hours”
The Message: “We operate in the <1 hour acceptance speed range because our residents expect modern responsiveness. If you can’t meet this standard, we’ll need to find vendors who can.”
What This Means for 2026
Your Action Plan
Week 1: Benchmark Yourself
Pull your 2025 year-end data:
- ✅ Speed of Repair (Target: 3.4-6.8 days)
- ✅ Resident Satisfaction (Target: 4.2-4.6)
- ✅ Acceptance Speed (Target: 0.5-1.2 hours)
- ✅ Annual Spend/Unit (Target: $1,680-$2,592, <12% rent roll)
Week 2: Identify Your Loyalty Trap Vendors
For each major vendor, ask:
- How long have we used them?
- When did we last evaluate alternatives?
- What’s their performance vs. benchmarks?
Week 3: Source Alternatives
Find 2 alternative vendors for your highest-volume categories via:
- Vendor Nexus (pre-vetted, digitally-enabled)
- Local search with strict vetting
Week 4: Launch Challenger Test
Give the alternative vendor 10% of the volume, track performance, and make data-driven decisions after 10 jobs.
The Bottom Line
2025 taught us that vendor management isn’t just about relationships, it’s about accountability backed by data.
Want to benchmark your performance? Pull your speed of repair, resident satisfaction, acceptance speed, and annual spend/unit from Property Meld Insights Pro. Compare against the targets above. Identify your biggest gap. Take action this week.
