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RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE

EUROPEANTENANT EXPERIENCE
REPORT 2026

An AktivBo report based on 518,042 tenant respondents across 265 individual tenant satisfaction surveys.

Preface

Why tenant experience matters

In residential real estate, a high service ambition fosters retention. The tenants who stay are the ones who feel heard, and trust of that kind is built across numerous touchpoints: a clean stairwell, a returned call, a fault report that doesn't disappear into the system. Many organizations still lack a structured, comparable way to capture what those touchpoints actually deliver, and to see where attention is paying off. But many have come a long way, and that’s what we are capturing in this report.

At AktivBo, we have spent more than two decades helping property companies listen to their tenants, residential and commercial, across more than 20 countries. Our standardized survey methodology makes it possible to benchmark satisfaction not only within a portfolio, but across organizations, markets, and property types. The participants in this report share a commitment to using tenant feedback as a management tool, not merely an annual exercise.

156 of the 265 individual tenant satisfaction surveys come from Sweden, with the remaining 109 spread across 12 other European countries. In other words, the dataset is Sweden-heavy.

What the report reveals

This report complements quantitative satisfaction scores with a large-scale analysis of open-ended tenant comments, classified by topic and sentiment using AI.

The results confirm that the human element remains decisive. Tenants who feel well taken care of by their landlord consistently rate every aspect of their tenancy higher. Conversely, perceived neglect — slow responses, poor communication, unfulfilled promises — undermines satisfaction far more than any physical shortcoming of the home.

We hope this report offers insights and a chance to see where your organization stands relative to peers, and concrete evidence of where improvement efforts will have the greatest impact on tenant loyalty and retention.

The AktivBo Team behind the report

Jon Svensson

Jon Svensson

Chief Executive Officer

Frida Kullh

Frida Kullh

Chief Operating Officer

Martin Talme

Martin Talme

Chief Business Officer

Vendela Meyerhöffer

Vendela Meyerhöffer

Analysis & Customer Development

Jonatan Moen

Jonatan Moen

Customer Development Manager

The value of feedback

Systematic tenant feedback creates measurable value, from lower vacancy and fewer complaints to stronger net operating income. Here is how structured measurement translates into results.

Stronger employee engagement

Structured tenant feedback gives front-line staff what engagement depends on: visible impact from their work, clear action plans, and recognition where improvement lands. The cycle reinforces itself — satisfied tenants generate proud staff, and proud staff deliver the service that satisfies the next tenant.

Lower vacancy and turnover

Tenants who feel heard stay longer. Each retained lease avoids re-letting fees, fit-out costs and months of empty rent. Vacancy is the largest avoidable cost in a residential portfolio, and a satisfied tenant is the most reliable way to reduce it.

Fewer complaints

When issues surface early through surveys, they can be resolved before they escalate. Proactive management reduces formal complaints and the resource cost of handling them.

Increased quality

Higher satisfaction supports stronger pricing power. Satisfied tenants are more willing to accept rental adjustments when they see that their landlord prioritizes their experience.

Efficiency benefits

Structured data replaces guesswork. Property managers can prioritize the right actions, allocate budgets more effectively, and demonstrate ROI on improvement initiatives.

Controlling excellence

By measuring and following up on external contractors, housing and real estate companies can ensure quality and costs in all agreements.

Brand development

Satisfied tenants are necessary to build a stronger brand. It helps in M&A processes, contract negotiations with external contractors, recruiting processes, and more.

Increased tenant satisfaction pays off

Tenant experience has long been treated as a soft issue in a hard industry. Customer orientation is a structural input to net operating income and it shows up in retention and tenant turnover, in operating cost and staff productivity, in brand strength, and in how a portfolio is valued by lenders, investors and ESG raters. Property companies that treat tenant satisfaction with the same seriousness as their financial metrics earn a measurable, repeatable return through the cycle. The ROI is real, and the next section puts a figure on it.

28 studies across 11 countries

Peer-reviewed and industry research from MIT, Henley, NAA, Vesteda, and more.

Proven ROI

Retention, vacancy, work-order cost, rent achievement along with other tangible metrics — translatable to hard financial outcomes.

Download the residential white paper to learn more

The ROI of tenant satisfaction

Example portfolio

15,000 apartments

+1%pts tenant-satisfaction uplift

Reduced vacancy

€198,000

Reduced fault reports

€101,250

Reduced tenant turnover

€56,250

€355,500 total annual net savings
€1.8M over 5 years
€7.9M asset-value uplift
€24 per apartment/year

Assumptions:
Example: turnover cost €2,500/tenant; vacancy cost €1,100/month; faults 3/apt/yr at €150 each.

Continuous measurement as an important KPI

The case for continuous measurement

An increasing number of property companies are choosing to track tenant satisfaction continuously, through daily or weekly survey distribution, often integrated with their property management system. This reduces manual work, improves data privacy compliance, and makes it easier to embed customer insights into daily operations throughout the year.

From project to KPI

With continuous follow-up, results tend to become more even and representative over time. When feedback is collected on an ongoing basis, the risk of the overall picture being disproportionately affected by isolated events during specific periods decreases, and it becomes easier to distinguish temporary variations from actual trends.

Frequent follow-up turns tenant experience into a KPI that is systematically tracked, discussed, and continuously improved, rather than a project activated on an occasional basis.

More data and insights open up more potential for improvement

The tenant experience is not created by a single event but builds up step by step throughout the entire "customer journey," in dealing with the landlord's processes, communication, and services. From the first contact and signing of the contract, through move-in and ongoing administration, to reporting damage, customer service, and move-out, the overall impression emerges through a series of clear touchpoints. When these work well, they create an experience of order, security, and professionalism that strengthens the relationship over time.

This is why residential real estate companies are choosing to complement the annual overall assessment with targeted surveys at selected stages of the customer journey. By tracking several touchpoints, close in time to the events actually experienced, companies gain a more precise basis for improvement. It becomes easier to distinguish between one-off events and recurring points of friction, to understand at which point in the process the experience is impaired, and to prioritize the right measures in the right place. An at least equally important effect is that feedback occurs while it is still current, which creates better conditions for taking action quickly as soon as, or before, something does not go optimally.

Below you see an example of customer journey touchpoints for residential real estate companies.

Contract signing
Move-in
Reconstruction
Fault report
Customer service
Move-out

CSC: Residential

About the report & method

This report draws on data collected through AktivBo's standardized residential tenant satisfaction survey across Europe.

Who participates

Participants include municipal housing companies, cooperative housing associations, private landlords, and pan-European residential property owners and companies. Several use third-party property managers to run day-to-day operations.

What types of properties

The portfolio covers residential properties, primarily apartment buildings across urban and suburban markets in mature European housing economies.

How results are calculated

Each participant runs AktivBo's standardized residential tenant satisfaction survey, covering questions across service, product, value for rent, profile and attractiveness, plus NPS. Respondents rate their experience on standardized scales. Index and question results are presented as the positive share — the percentage selecting one of the two positive options on a four-grade scale. NPS is reported on the standard −100 to +100 scale. All scores are averages across surveys, giving each survey equal weight. In addition, 1,353,664 open-ended tenant comments were classified by category and sentiment.

47.8% Average response rate
265 Tenant satisfaction surveys

in 13 countries and 5 regions

518,042 Tenant respondents

Ownership composition: Number of tenant satisfaction surveys per ownership type

Private

127 surveys

Investor- or fund-owned landlords; property-management firms

Municipal

112 surveys

City- or state-owned housing companies

Cooperative

26 surveys

Member-governed housing associations

A European view of residential tenant experience

The dataset spans 265 individual tenant satisfaction surveys across 13 European markets, grouped into five regions for comparison.

Benelux

  • Belgium
  • Netherlands

DACH

  • Austria
  • Germany

Nordics

  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • Norway

Other Europe

  • Czech Republic
  • France
  • Poland
  • Spain
  • United Kingdom

Sweden

  • Sweden
Map of the European regions covered

Key findings at a glance

What tenants value

Treatment by staff scores highest. The in-the-moment human encounter is residential's strength: Three of the four highest-scoring questions are about how tenants are treated.

Top scoring service questions

91.2%Treatment by caretaker
88.2%How caretaker cleaned up after the work
86.6%Treatment when reporting an issue

Where to act

The service approach is strong but unreliable on follow-through. Action taken as a result of contact (71.9%) and Getting the issue fixed within a reasonable timeframe (74.2%) sit at the bottom. The opportunity is operational discipline, not soft skills.

Lowest-scoring Take the Customer Seriously question

71.9% Action taken as a result of contact

Sustainability as a competitive factor

Sustainability issues continue to be central. This development is driven partly by stricter regulations and reporting requirements, and partly by tenants increasingly factoring sustainability into their decisions. The focus on sustainability has had a growing impact on the real estate industry, not least in connection with reporting and standards such as CSRD and GRESB. Sustainability also affects the ability to retain and attract customers. This year's results show that sustainability remains an area where expectations are high.

Want to learn how to get up to 6 GRESB points?

AktivBo is a:

GRESB Solution Provider

The CustomerScoreCard™

(CSC)

The CustomerScoreCard™ is AktivBo’s structured tenant satisfaction survey and the overall measurement framework that captures every relevant dimension of the residential living experience. It is AktivBo's implementation of what the wider industry knows as CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) or TSM (Tenant Satisfaction Measurement), with the Service Index as its principal satisfaction KPI. Built on more than 30 years of methodological development and a consistent 4-grade response scale, the CSC provides a comparable basis for benchmarking across European residential portfolios. Every number in this report originates in the CSC.

Six main indexes

The CSC summarizes tenant experience through six main indexes.

Service Index

service and customer care

Profile

the landlord

Value for Rent

rent vs. quality received

Product Index

the physical product

Attractiveness

appeal of the property and the area

NPS

loyalty (probability of recommending the landlord)

The five indexes ranked

Total scores across the headline indexes, alongside the regional view.

Total result

(average across all surveys)

Service Index
78.3%
Product Index
78.0%
Profile
75.8%
Attractiveness
84.6%
Value for rent
71.1%

Indexes sorted by AktivBo's method and actionability

Regional view

(average across surveys in the region)

Benelux DACH Nordics Other Europe Sweden
Service Index66.8%72.6%76.0%71.3%82.2%
Product Index70.4%69.3%74.1%79.1%78.8%
Profile50.4%71.5%71.6%62.6%79.9%
Attractiveness76.2%82.5%82.5%72.0%86.8%
Value for rent48.4%75.7%69.9%57.0%70.6%
1.

Service Index


  • Service as the headline indicator of tenant satisfaction
  • Total Service Index and regional comparison
  • Four sub-indexes (Take the Customer Seriously, Security, Clean and Tidy, Help When Needed) — total and regional view
  • Question-level deep-dive within the relational sub-indexes, and where the sub-indexes diverge most across regions

Service Index and the framework around it

A short orientation to AktivBo’s measurement structure, and to the index that anchors this report.

Service Index — most important index for tenant satisfaction

The Service Index is the most important index for tenant satisfaction, and the most central within the CustomerScoreCard™. It captures the dimensions most within management’s control, such as availability, conduct, information, speed of response and follow-through. Three decades of AktivBo data show that service is consistently among the strongest drivers of overall satisfaction, and improvement here typically requires routine and discipline rather than capital investment. That is why this report leads with it, and why most of the analysis that follows is anchored in the Service Index.

Inside the Service Index — four sub-indexes

The Service Index breaks down into four themed sub-indexes:

Take the Customer Seriously

contact, information, treatment, follow-up

Security

perceived safety in and around the property

Clean and Tidy

day-to-day standards of common areas

Help When Needed

issue reporting, resolution time, quality of work

These sub-indexes show where a Service-Index gap sits, and where an action plan should focus.

Service Index:

Total and regional view

Service Index sits at 78.3% across 265 tenant satisfaction surveys.

Total
78.3%
Benelux
66.8%
DACH
72.6%
Nordics
76.0%
Other Europe
71.3%
Sweden
82.2%

Service Index sub-indexes

The Service Index reads 78.3% at total, a respectable headline that hides a wider regional spread. Sweden leads on every sub-index; Benelux trails on three out of four. The divergence sits in the two relational sub-indexes — how tenants are treated and how reliably issues are resolved — while the physical sub-indexes hold steady across markets. Strategy at total level under-prices the execution gap; meaningful uplift has to be planned region by region, not portfolio-wide.

Four sub-indexes make up Service Index. Help When Needed sits highest at total level; Clean and Tidy sits lowest.

Take the Customer Seriously

Total
79.8%
Benelux
58.8%
DACH
73.2%
Nordics
77.2%
Other Europe
67.8%
Sweden
84.8%

Security

Total
78.9%
Benelux
74.0%
DACH
72.3%
Nordics
79.8%
Other Europe
75.0%
Sweden
82.5%

Clean and Tidy

Total
73.3%
Benelux
63.0%
DACH
67.9%
Nordics
69.9%
Other Europe
72.6%
Sweden
76.6%

Help When Needed

Total
82.4%
Benelux
66.5%
DACH
78.8%
Nordics
77.6%
Other Europe
69.8%
Sweden
85.8%

Take the Customer Seriously

Service Index sub-index covering contact, information, treatment and follow-up.

Take the Customer Seriously by region

Total
79.8%
Benelux
58.8%
DACH
73.2%
Nordics
77.2%
Other Europe
67.8%
Sweden
84.8%
Highest-scoring questions in this sub-index(Total)
Treatment by the property caretaker91.2%
Treatment when reporting an issue86.6%
Treatment at last contact86.2%
Lowest-scoring questions in this sub-index(Total)
Keeping promises77.2%
Telephone availability of the landlord76.8%
Action taken as a result of contact71.9%

Help When Needed

Across both relational sub-indexes, the in-the-moment encounter scores high: 91% on caretaker treatment, 88% on the post-work clean-up. Reliability of outcome sits materially lower: 72% on Action taken as a result of contact, 74% on Getting the issue fixed within a reasonable timeframe. The improvement opportunity is operational discipline, not interpersonal skill. Process gaps of this kind are where tenant turnover quietly accumulates.

Service Index sub-index covering issue reporting, resolution time and quality of work.

Help When Needed by region

Total
82.4%
Benelux
66.5%
DACH
78.8%
Nordics
77.6%
Other Europe
69.8%
Sweden
85.8%
All four questions in this sub-index, sorted high → low(Total)
How the caretaker cleaned up after the work88.2%
Reporting the issue85.8%
Quality of the work carried out79.9%
Getting the issue fixed within reasonable time74.2%

Service Index: where the regions differ most

Sub-indexes ranked by the gap between the highest and lowest regional score.

Regional spread

(lowest to highest region)

Take the Customer Seriously
58.8%84.8%
26.0%pts
BeneluxSweden
Help When Needed
66.5%85.8%
19.3%pts
BeneluxSweden
Clean and Tidy
63.0%76.6%
13.6%pts
BeneluxSweden
Security
72.3%82.5%
10.2%pts
DACHSweden

CASE: Stena Fastigheter

When the Customer Journey becomes a competitive advantage

When Cecilia Fredholm Vaarning, Head of Sustainable Business at Stena Fastigheter – one of Sweden's largest real estate companies – talks about the company's digital development, the focus is not on systems, platforms, or technology shifts. It is about relationships. For her, digitalization is a tool for deepening the customer dialogue, strengthening everyday security, and creating a more predictable experience. That, in turn, builds a stable and profitable business over the long term.

The starting point is Stena Fastigheter's long-term, relationship-based property management. As a family-owned company with roughly 29,000 homes and 2,000 commercial tenants, it has spent decades building the business on presence in the neighborhoods, social investment, and physical upgrades. When the company took a comprehensive approach to the customer journey, the ambition was therefore not to streamline people out of the equation. It was to reinforce what carries the business over time: the customer relationship.

The transformation was built on the principle that the customer shows the way. The goal was to create a digital highway across the entire customer journey, always with a person in the background. For Stena Fastigheter, the digital is personal. Behind every login is an individual with a concrete everyday question, a concern, or a need for quick help. At a time when customers expect immediate feedback, predictability and clear information are a central part of how security is experienced.

Three building blocks that have delivered results:

1. Build a personalized and predictable customer journey

The company rebuilt its entire customer portal and created a personalized flow where the customer always meets the right information at the right moment. Cases are routed automatically to the right person, and the customer receives ongoing feedback, for example through push notifications.

The results are clear. The share of digital cases rose from around 10 percent to more than 90 percent. At the same time, incoming calls fell sharply, and the customers who do reach the customer center come with more qualified questions. The effect is not fewer relationships. It is better relationships. Less friction in everyday life strengthens the sense of professionalism and reliability.

2. Bring the customer dialogue in-house and standardize the processes

A decisive change was to bring the customer center in-house and work with consistent processes and clearer roles. Nearly a third of all employees were involved in the development work to identify the “roadworks” in the organization, meaning the things that created unnecessary complexity for the customer.

This internal change work freed up time across the organization. When digital flows handle routine cases, property managers and housing officers can spend more time out in the neighborhoods, where relationships and security are genuinely built. Digital efficiency therefore became an enabler of greater local presence rather than a replacement for it.

3. Use data for care and predictive service

Stena Fastigheter works actively with data to reduce irritation and prevent questions before they arise. By analyzing customer behavior and giving proactive feedback, the company creates a feeling of being seen and taken seriously.

An important insight from this work is that the digital and the physical are not in opposition. Quite the opposite. Investments in safe, well-managed neighborhoods, social initiatives, and local engagement are reinforced by a smooth, transparent, and personal customer dialogue. Taken together, the physical, the social, and the digital create a stronger brand and more stable cash flows.

The business logic is clear. When the customer knows who to turn to, when answers come quickly, and when communication feels human, trust grows. And trust is a competitive advantage. Less friction in the customer journey reduces operational load, strengthens the relationship, and contributes to higher customer satisfaction, which over time affects attractiveness, occupancy rates, and results.

2.

Key drivers & Service Index


  • Correlation across 265 tenant satisfaction surveys
  • Each question’s survey-level score correlated against the Service Index
  • Overall ranking, per-region ranking, and a regional-contrast view across the next three pages

Top five key drivers

The top five Service-Index drivers are dominated by Take the Customer Seriously (four out of five); Reporting the issue from Help When Needed completes the list.

Rank Question Parent (sub-index / area)
1 Overall contact with the landlord Take the Customer Seriously
2 The e-mail handling by the landlord Take the Customer Seriously
3 Info about what is happening at the property Take the Customer Seriously
4 Treatment when reporting an issue Take the Customer Seriously
5 Reporting the issue Help When Needed

Top five key drivers by region

The same correlation method run separately for each region.

Benelux
DACH
Nordics
Other Europe
Sweden
1
General info from the landlord
The e-mail handling by the landlord
Overall contact with the landlord
Reporting the issue
Overall contact with the landlord
2
Feeling of safety in the cellar/loft
Treatment by the property caretaker
Receiving information during the case
Telephone availability of the landlord
Staff keeping their promises
3
Apartment’s layout
Would recommend the local area
Landlord’s chat
The e-mail handling by the landlord
Does the landlord take care of the tenant
4
The security of the storage area
Treatment when reporting an issue
Info about what is happening at the property
Visiting times for the landlord
The e-mail handling by the landlord
5
Telephone availability of the landlord
How the caretaker cleaned up after the work
Getting hold of the right person
Quality of the work carried out
Action taken as a result of contact

Method: Correlation with Service Index in each region's surveys, calculated separately.

Benelux

  1. General info from the landlord
  2. Feeling of safety in the cellar/loft
  3. Apartment’s layout
  4. The security of the storage area
  5. Telephone availability of the landlord

DACH

  1. The e-mail handling by the landlord
  2. Treatment by the property caretaker
  3. Would recommend the local area
  4. Treatment when reporting an issue
  5. How the caretaker cleaned up after the work

Nordics

  1. Overall contact with the landlord
  2. Receiving information during the case
  3. Landlord’s chat
  4. Info about what is happening at the property
  5. Getting hold of the right person

Other Europe

  1. Reporting the issue
  2. Telephone availability of the landlord
  3. The e-mail handling by the landlord
  4. Visiting times for the landlord
  5. Quality of the work carried out

Sweden

  1. Overall contact with the landlord
  2. Staff keeping their promises
  3. Does the landlord take care of the tenant
  4. The e-mail handling by the landlord
  5. Action taken as a result of contact

Where regional drivers diverge

Top-driver themes per region, with the constants and the contrasts highlighted.

Constants across regions

Take the Customer Seriously anchors every region. Sweden, Nordics, DACH and Other Europe each have three or more Take the Customer Seriously questions in their top five; Benelux has two. The relational service backbone holds across Europe.

Written-channel contact (e-mail, chat, or telephone) sits in the top five in every region. Tenants everywhere weigh how reachable the landlord is, even where the dominant theme differs.

Every region's #1 driver sits between 0.90 and 0.99 (Sweden 0.93, Nordics 0.99, DACH 0.91, Benelux 0.90, Other Europe 0.97). Top-driver strength is remarkably uniform across very different driver mixes.

3.

Product Index


  • Three sub-indexes: Public areas, Outdoor environment, Apartment
  • Total Product Index and regional comparison across the three sub-indexes
  • Outdoor environment as the structural weak point across the Product Index

Product Index — what tenants think of the property and surrounding areas

A short orientation to AktivBo’s Product Index and its sub-indexes.

What the Product Index measures

The Product Index captures tenants’ perception of the property and surrounding areas they live in: the apartment itself, the building’s common areas, and the immediate surroundings. Where the Service Index reflects how the landlord runs the relationship, the Product Index reflects what the landlord owns and maintains. Together they give a complete picture of tenant experience: service on one side, the physical asset on the other.

Three sub-indexes

The Product Index breaks down into three themed sub-indexes:

Public Areas — common entrances, stairwells, lifts, corridors and shared interior spaces

Outdoor Environment — gardens, courtyards, parking, lighting and landscaping

Apartment — the dwelling itself, including layout, equipment and condition

Each sub-index isolates a distinct improvement lever, so targeted investment can be planned against the specific area that drives the gap.

Product Index & the three sub-indexes

Public Areas (82.2%) and Apartment (77.4%) hold steady across regions, but Outdoor Environment is the lowest-scoring Product Index sub-index in every region except Benelux. DACH sits markedly lower at 55.5%.

The sub-indexes (Public Areas, Outdoor Environment, Apartment) give a fuller view.

Public Areas

Total
82.2%
Benelux
74.5%
DACH
71.0%
Nordics
78.8%
Other Europe
81.9%
Sweden
83.0%

Outdoor Environment

Total
75.6%
Benelux
70.6%
DACH
55.5%
Nordics
65.7%
Other Europe
74.5%
Sweden
77.0%

Apartment

Total
77.4%
Benelux
70.4%
DACH
72.7%
Nordics
75.2%
Other Europe
79.8%
Sweden
77.9%
4.

Value for Rent, Profile, Attractiveness


  • Value for Rent — perceived balance between rent paid and quality received
  • Profile — how the landlord is perceived as an organization
  • Attractiveness — appeal of the property and the surrounding area
  • Total and regional comparison across all three indexes

Value for Rent, Profile, Attractiveness

Three indexes complementing service and product: perceived value-for-rent, brand trust (Profile), and area appeal (Attractiveness).

Value for Rent

Total
71.1%
Benelux
48.4%
DACH
75.7%
Nordics
69.9%
Other Europe
57.0%
Sweden
70.6%

Profile

Total
75.8%
Benelux
50.4%
DACH
71.5%
Nordics
71.6%
Other Europe
62.6%
Sweden
79.9%

Attractiveness

Total
84.6%
Benelux
76.2%
DACH
82.5%
Nordics
82.5%
Other Europe
72.0%
Sweden
86.8%
5.

Net Promoter Score


  • Probability of recommending the landlord to friends and family
  • Scale −100 to +100
  • Total and regional view across the individual surveys

NPS total and regional view

NPS by region

(−100 to +100)

Total
−3
Benelux
−52
DACH
−6
Nordics
−22
Other Europe
−56
Sweden
3
6.

Ownership type: deep-dive


  • Service Index by ownership type: total and region-by-region
  • The ownership cut for private, municipal and cooperative landlords

Service Index by ownership type

Cooperative and municipal sit at 6.7 and 7.2 percentage points respectively above private at total level. The pattern holds in every region with enough data to compare.

Service Index — Region × Ownership

Average Service Index per region × ownership cell.

Region Private Municipal Cooperative
Benelux 66.8% – –
DACH 66.3% 75.5% 81.1%
Nordics 74.8% 80.8% –
Other Europe 69.9% 79.9% –
Sweden 80.3% 83.6% 81.5%

In DACH the ownership gradient is sharpest: private 66.3% → municipal 75.5% → cooperative 81.1%. In Sweden the gap is narrower (private 80.3% → municipal 83.6%). Cells with — have no surveys for that ownership × region combination. Averages across surveys.

7.

Sentiment Analysis


  • Open-text comments classified by category and sentiment
  • Where tenants speak strongly — and where they don't
  • When scores and words disagree: Categories with high scores but high negative comment share

Agentic AI turns tenant feedback into actionable intelligence

Built for property, powered by data

AktivBo builds AI services that are unique of their kind, developed exclusively to analyze tenant feedback. This is made possible by the fact that we operate in a single vertical — the real estate industry — working alongside 500+ property companies across more than 20 countries. It is the specialization, and the depth of data, that allows our models to recognize the industry’s patterns, terminology and connections.

How it works

AI agents interpret, classify, and prioritize unlimited amounts of responses automatically — connecting each comment to the right category and touchpoint in the customer journey. The models don't just categorize sentiment; they identify where frustration concentrates, flag emerging risks, and surface the actions with the greatest impact on satisfaction and retention.

From quantitative data to qualitative insights

In practice, this means that thousands of open-ended responses from tenants can be interpreted, summarized and connected to the right touchpoint in the customer journey. The platform automatically surfaces the actions that have the greatest impact on tenant satisfaction, and satisfied tenants ultimately lead to lower vacancy rates and stronger net operating income.

This is AI that does not guess

It compares, prioritizes, and points the way forward. Every comment is linked to the relevant category, placing tenants’ own words in relation to the areas being measured.

Topics and sentiment in tenant comments

The ten topics that draw the most negative comments, by volume and by intensity.

The index scores show how tenants rate their tenancy. The open comments show why: the reasons behind those scores, in their own words. The analysis is based on 1,353,664 open-ended comments, classified by topic and sentiment and linked to the area each one concerns. The ten topics that draw the most negative comments to the right read two ways: the number of negative comments a topic draws, and how negative it is once raised.

Volume and intensity are separate signals. The ranking counts negative comments; the pill shows how negative a topic is once raised. Fault reporting and Getting faults fixed sit lower on volume but are the most negatively-charged (72% and 54%); Traffic & parking and Contact channel make the list on mention count, only about a third negative.

Top 10 topics by negative comments

Maintenance & standard
69%
Entrance, stairwell, basement & storage
41%
Waste management
42%
Fault reporting
72%
Traffic & parking
35%
Contact channel / reachability
32%
Information from landlord
37%
Fittings & appliances
40%
Indoor climate (temp/draft)
49%
Getting faults fixed
54%

Bar: frequency of negative comments, which sets the ranking.
Pill: how many of the topic's mentions are negative.

1,353,664 open-ended comments
47 AktivBo residential main topics
69% of maintenance mentions are negative, the top topic

What the comments add to the scores

The index shows where satisfaction sits; the comments explain why, and where to act.

Lowest-scoring questions

Reporting and resolving faults

The two lowest Service questions (Action taken as a result of contact, 71.9%, and Getting the issue fixed in reasonable time, 74.2%) mark where the gap is. The comments show why: Fault reporting (72% negative) and Getting faults fixed (54%) are the topics with the highest negative sentiment, where cases stall without an update.

Inside the Service Index

Contact and information

The Service Index is the report's headline KPI, anchored by the relational sub-index Take the Customer Seriously (79.8%), revealing the service top drivers. The comments agree: Contact channel / reachability and Information from landlord both sit in the top ten. Only 32% and 37% of those mentions are negative, so the signal is volume, not intensity: reachability and clear information are what tenants raise most.

Beyond the rated questions

Topics the survey does not score

Some of the most negative-comment topics are not isolated by the rated questions. Waste management is the third-largest source of negative comments yet is not a headline index question. The open text surfaces it where the score cannot. Traffic & parking is the same kind of signal: it sits inside Outdoor Environment (75.6%), the Product weak point the closing flags, and the comments show where that weakness bites.

Index scores and comment sentiment, side by side

A combination of scores and text comments will give the full picture. The index locates the result and the comments give the reason and the action.

The rated questions confirm a real strength: the in-the-moment encounter is among the highest-scoring in the survey. The remaining gap sits in closure rather than contact. Tighten the process that turns a reported fault into a fixed one.

Index

rated questions

  • Treatment by caretaker91.2%
  • Cleaned up after work88.2%
  • Treatment when reporting86.6%

Comments

(% negative)

  • Fault reporting72%
  • Maintenance & standard69%
  • Getting faults fixed54%

What this report shows

The total understates the regional execution gap

At 78.3% the Service Index total sits above four of the five regions; Sweden's 82.2% pulls the headline upward, while Benelux (66.8%) and Other Europe (71.3%) sit furthest below it. Plan and target intervention at regional level — the total under-prices the work.

Service drivers are relational, not physical

After excluding Profile and Value-for-Rent questions, the top five Service-Index drivers are dominated by Take the Customer Seriously (four of five); Reporting the issue from Help When Needed completes the list. Service-Index uplift runs through contact, follow-up and treatment, not the building.

Regional driver themes share a backbone, diverge on edge cases

Take the Customer Seriously anchors every region’s top five drivers. Edge-case differentiation runs from Sweden’s emphasis on trust and follow-through, to the Nordics’ information flow, DACH’s personal-treatment moments, Benelux’s physical-asset focus and Other Europe’s issue-resolution lifecycle. One backbone, five flavors.

Outdoor Environment is the structural weak point in product

Public Areas (82.2%) and Apartment (77.4%) hold steady across regions, but Outdoor Environment (75.6%) is the lowest-scoring Product Index sub-index in every region except Benelux. The highest-return product lever in the portfolio.

AktivBo Analytics

A Tenant Experience platform driven by agentic AI

Built for the real estate industry

Designed around how property companies actually work — not a generic survey tool

Get actionable insights

Identify the priorities that deliver the greatest impact

Follow the customer journey

All tenant feedback in one clear overview

Support for ESG and GRESB

Collect and report social sustainability data as a foundation for your sustainability reporting

Benchmark across multiple dimensions

Compare your results internally and externally against the industry

Why the industry choose AktivBo

AktivBo is a specialist with 30+ years of property industry experience focusing on turning data into benchmarked actionable insights and implementation.

Working alongside 500+ property companies across more than 20 countries, we see what works every day, and what doesn't. That depth of experience allows us to bring proven best practice directly to your organization, saving time and resources by building on what has already been tested elsewhere. Our dedicated customer teams and consultants support the full improvement cycle: from analyzing results and setting realistic goals to driving change management and ensuring that actions are followed through.

Giving tenants a voice matters, but unless the organization has the drive to act on what it hears, results will not improve on their own. Nine out of ten employees in a property company work in a customer-facing role. By setting clear satisfaction targets, measuring consistently, and structuring the improvement process, you show every employee that their work is central and makes a difference.

Survey tool
Research company
AktivBo
Platform
Focused on survey send-outs and administration.
Generic workflow and functionality designed to fit all industries.
Industry-tailored workflow and functionality with advanced analysis functionality and filtering.
Benchmarking
Not industry-specific.
Smaller selection of industry-specific benchmarking.
Extensive industry-specific benchmarking across different segments and drill-downs.
Surveys
Generic survey templates.
Templates for different industries.
Tailored templates: CSAT, Customer Journey, and ESG questionnaires for the real estate industry.
Implementation
Create and administer your own surveys.
Full service.
Full service, plus the option to create and administer your own surveys.
Managed services
Not industry-specific.
Not industry-specific.
Industry-specific.

Survey tool

Platform
Focused on survey send-outs and administration.
Benchmarking
Not industry-specific.
Surveys
Generic survey templates.
Implementation
Create and administer your own surveys.
Managed services
Not industry-specific.

Research company

Platform
Generic workflow and functionality designed to fit all industries.
Benchmarking
Smaller selection of industry-specific benchmarking.
Surveys
Templates for different industries.
Implementation
Full service.
Managed services
Not industry-specific.

AktivBo

Platform
Industry-tailored workflow and functionality with advanced analysis functionality and filtering.
Benchmarking
Extensive industry-specific benchmarking across different segments and drill-downs.
Surveys
Tailored templates: CSAT, Customer Journey, and ESG questionnaires for the real estate industry.
Implementation
Full service, plus the option to create and administer your own surveys.
Managed services
Industry-specific.

From data to action

Turn feedback into smarter decisions

AktivBo helps landlords and property managers turn tenant feedback into smarter decisions — from benchmarking performance to building action plans that deliver measurable results.

Do you also have commercial property?

Explore the insights from the Global Commercial Tenant Report 2026.

Global Commercial Tenant Report 2026

Let's talk about how AktivBo can help you improve tenant satisfaction and profitability

Get in touch to discuss benchmarking, action planning, or a portfolio review tailored to your markets.