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This week on The Apartment Department, Anne Baum and Chris Johnson sit down with Brian Miller, Director of Partner Experience and Engagement at Zillow Rentals, for a conversation about what marketing teams are really navigating right now.

Drawing from conversations with operators and marketers across the country, Brian shares the patterns he’s seeing across the industry, including affordability pressure, rising concessions, operational complexity, and changing renter behavior.

In this episode, they discuss:

• Why nearly 40% of rental listings nationally now include concessions
• Markets where concessions are appearing on more than 60% of listings
• Zillow data showing that nearly 1 in 13 for-sale shoppers also engage with rentals
• How renters are using technology and AI to evaluate communities differently
• Why communities need their online presence to match the actual resident experience
• The operational reality behind managing apartment marketing today
• How marketers are pulling data from multiple systems just to understand market position and property performance
• The growing conversation around enterprise-wide AI strategy inside multifamily organizations

The conversation also explores how marketing teams can better communicate what makes a community valuable, why generic messaging is becoming less effective, and how operators are thinking about flexibility, speed, and transparency for today’s renter.

If you work in multifamily marketing, operations, or proptech, this episode offers a grounded conversation about the challenges teams are trying to solve right now and how the industry is adapting.

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