A real estate platform that offers multifamily developers data about current and prospective renters recently launched in several North Carolina markets, including Wilmington.

Washington, D.C.-based firm RCKRBX (pronounced “rockerbox”) uses surveys along with datasets from the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics, among other sources, to understand renter demographics and what’s driving renters' decisions in each market, said Kevin Hudak, RCKRBX’s chief research officer. That data is then provided to the multifamily developers subscribed to RCKRBX’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. 

The company’s move into North Carolina follows its launch in the Washington D.C. and Dallas-Fort Worth areas. In addition to Wilmington, RCKRBX has launched in the Fayetteville, Raleigh-Durham, Winston-Salem, Greensboro and Charlotte markets.

RCKRBX CEO Michael Broder said the firm traces its origins back more than two decades to when he and co-founders Hudak and James Moore were principals at Brightline Strategies, a research and advisory services firm. The company, founded in 1998, aimed to apply political research methods to "commercial enterprise,” Broder said.

“Our data models were really born out of the political world,” he said. “Myself, Jamie, Kevin, and several of the folks that work with us are former political operatives, primarily on the campaign research and strategy side.”

The firm didn’t turn its focus to real estate until 2008’s Great Recession, Broder said, after commercial real estate owners and operators began asking them to create data models to gauge the risk and resiliency of their portfolios.

“What we uncovered once we did the first models is that there was really nothing like this in real estate,” Broder said. “There was no forward-looking leading indicator, demand-side data that you could use and harvest to really understand how a set of tenants or resident populations would actually evolve over time, and what that would mean to demand and space needs and premiums and all the other factors that go into the performance of a real estate asset.”

Over the next decade, the company built up its real estate practice, eventually divesting from other industries. The firm also chose to move into a SaaS platform with a managed services arm, Broder said. RCKRBX was formed in 2020.

“What differentiates RCKRBX from all other data platforms in the real estate world is that our primary focus and what primarily powers the platform is what we call primary audience research, in other words, very sophisticated polling and predictive analytics,” Broder said.

In the Wilmington area, that means the company has independently recruited between 380 to 400 renters to align with certain demographics, income levels and zip code areas, among other factors, Broder said. The renter data is updated quarterly using surveys, datasets and focus groups, Hudak said.

The firm established a baseline of data before formally entering the Wilmington market. The data shows, for example, that there is a significantly greater demand among prospective renters for two- and three-bedroom rental units in the Wilmington area compared to other metros and the state overall. According to RCKRBX surveys, 42% of Wilmington's prospective renters said they preferred a two-bedroom unit while 35% preferred a three-bedroom unit. 

Surveys also showed renters in the Wilmington area ranked safety and security and rent and other monthly fees as their top two decision criteria. Approximately 32% of renters in the Wilmington metro ranked safety and security as their No. 1 criteria while 27% ranked rent and fees as the top decision-maker. When compared to data in other North Carolina markets, Hudak said this indicates renters in Wilmington have a greater focus on safety and security.  

“We try to help developers understand what really, not just checks the box, but also makes for a richer community that renters will want to stay in,” Hudak said, “because it's a lot cheaper and a lot easier to retain a tenant, a renter than it is to go out, have an empty apartment and find a new one.”

Broder said RCKRBX’s data capabilities help inform the decisions multifamily developers make for current and future projects.

“Because we can project in our data, pretty much three-plus years out in terms of what demand is going to look like based on leasing time horizons of current and prospective renters,” he said, “it really enables you to almost future proof a project because you know what that market is going to be looking for when you ultimately bring that project to market for lease-up.”

The company plans to continue to grow its footprint along the East Coast and the Sun Belt. By the end of the year, Broder said RCKRBX aims to be in the top 70 real estate markets nationwide.

“We had to prove that we could actually build the product, that it worked the way our custom research would in terms of the predictive nature and accuracy of the data, and then once we were able to do that then it's all about expansion,” Broder said. “And so the next year is all about driving market deployments.”