The epIQ Index is a powerful tool that helps multifamily communities and companies measure their online reputation. If you’ve been working hard to improve your epIQ score, you know how rewarding it is to see your efforts pay off. As we move into 2025, there are some key changes coming to the ApartmentRatings epIQ Top Rated award rankings, portfolio sizes, and reporting – and we want to make sure we have provided the information and education needed to prepare you for continued epIQ success.
Here’s everything you need to know to stay ahead of the game and ensure your community or company remains eligible for epIQ recognition in 2025.
What’s Staying the Same?
Before we dive into the updates, let’s cover what isn’t changing:
- There are no changes to the Community Top Rated Award criteria. All communities will still need to earn an A+ epIQ grade (95.00 or higher) with at least five reviews in a calendar year to qualify.
- The core purpose of epIQ remains unchanged: to provide renters with an accurate, trustworthy, and easily understood performance metric for determining the real resident experience in apartment communities they are researching. The epIQ Index remains the only renter-facing reputation metric for community performance and a reliable measurement of the resident experience.
Now, let’s look at what’s changing.
2025 Top Rated Company Recognition
The previous epIQ Top Rated Company award recognized companies that ranked in the top 100 within their portfolio size group, of which there were three: 1-9 communities, 10-24 communities, 25+ communities.
Starting in 2025, this standard will become more competitive, with only the top 50 companies per portfolio size group being eligible for the recognition. This change aims to further recognize and celebrate the highest-performing companies in the multifamily industry.
2025 Company Portfolio Size Groups
To create a more level playing field, portfolio size groups are expanding. Previously, there were three groups. In 2025, there will be four:
- Companies managing 1 community
- Companies managing 2-14 communities
- Companies managing 15-34 communities
- Companies managing 35+ communities
This change ensures that companies are competing against others with similar resources and scale, making it a more relevant and accurate comparison for renters and companies alike.
2025 Monthly & Biannual Reports
The epIQ reports provide insight into the top-performing communities and companies nationwide. In 2025, these reports will become even more selective:
- Monthly epIQ Report: Communities nationwide continue to raise the bar to meet renter expectations and we want to ensure our recognition aligns with those efforts. As the gap between scores for the top epIQ communities has narrowed, so will the number of communities on the monthly report. Therefore, as of February 2025, our monthly community reports will only showcase the Top 100 epIQ communities nationwide.
- Biannual epIQ Report: As we are shifting company portfolio size groups and company award criteria, we are also shifting how companies are recognized in the biannual company and community epIQ report. As of July 2025, the Biannual epIQ Report will recognize the Top 50 epIQ companies, along with the Top 100 communities nationwide.
These updates raise the bar for recognition, making the achievement of being included in the epIQ reports even more prestigious.
2025 epIQ Hot Streak
The epIQ Hot Streak is an elite recognition that shines the spotlight on communities consistently acheiving the highest epIQ Index month after month throughout the year.
Previously, communities needed to rank in the Top 250 every month of the year to qualify as an epIQ Hot Streak leader. However, with the updates to the epIQ monthly reports now featuring only the Top 100 communities nationwide, only those who maintain an epIQ Index placing them in this Top 100 will be recognized as an epIQ Hot Streak community in 2025.
How to Stay Competitive in 2025
As the epIQ bar continues to climb, what can you do to ensure your company and communities continue to reach top epIQ status?
- Stay proactive in resident satisfaction and review cultivation practices: Ensure you have a resident survey and/or engagement program to proactively measure resident satisfaction. Use that program to fully understand your resident sentiment. Address, fix and communicate all major and/or recurring issues, then ask residents to write a review. Review requests can be automated through programs like SatisFacts & ApartmentRatings Verified Review Program. Internal emails, resident engagement tools, or a combination of multiple programs are also effective.
- Manage review response programs: Active review engagement helps build trust and strengthens your community’s reputation. With residents expecting a response to their review within 2 days, it may be time to re-evaluate your review response process. Take proactive measures to ensure your team or review responder partner is engaging with every review (both positive and negative) in a timely fashion. The SatisFacts & ApartmentRatings team ensures review response (to reviews across all major review platforms) in 2 business days or less.
- Monitor your epIQ score: Our custom Exchange platform is designed to keep you informed. With notifications, real-time data, and actionable insights, you can keep an eye on your epIQ (and survey) performance, compare your scores with competitors, and adjust your strategies as needed – ensuring you stay on track for 2025 recognitions.
- Leverage resident review feedback: Not only can surveys help you measure resident satisfaction – reviews can help too! If you don’t have a survey program, using insights from your ApartmentRatings reviews can help improve the resident experience and increase satisfaction, turning constructive criticism into actionable improvements. You can access valuable data in Exchange to assist in these efforts – including the keyword search and review sentiment analysis tools.
- Make it a team effort: Make reputation management a team effort to maintain strong epIQ performance, fostering a culture of accountability and excellence within your communities. Create new goals for epIQ success across your portfolio. Encourage teams to share their successes with one another and encourage a little friendly competition. Celebrate those achievements at the company level and reward teams and communities for their achievements – and share them with us – we love to celebrate epIQ achievements!
These updates to the ApartmentRatings epIQ criteria and reporting in 2025 will make recognition more exclusive, competitive, and meaningful. If your goal is to earn an epIQ Top Rated Award, now is the time to start planning your strategy.
Want to stay on top of your reputation and make 2025 your most epIQ year yet? We can help – connect with a dedicated account manager or the education team today!
