Operational centralization continues to be 2022's apartment management buzzword. Companies that have long struggled to fill positions, particularly in their maintenance departments, are finding greater efficiencies when performing routine and necessary work such as apartment turns and preventive maintenance.

Equity Residential (EQR) is among them. Its director of operations strategy, Brandon Winter, tells GlobeSt.com that his company is "reimagining how our service teams operate to the benefit of our employees, customers, and shareholders through leveraging technology, centralization, and strategic outsourcing with partners like Lessen."

Historically, its communities operated with a service manager supported by a team of service technicians and porters to complete nearly all day-to-day service requests, turns, and preventative maintenance work at their one assigned community.