Every operator evaluating move-in technology eventually meets a product that costs nothing. No licence fee, no per-unit charge, no implementation invoice. For an operations team under budget pressure, that is a compelling opening.
It is also incomplete. Software has a cost structure whether or not the operator sees an invoice. In a model where the operator pays nothing, the revenue is coming from the resident, either through what the resident buys or through access to the resident. That is a legitimate way to build a business. It is also a set of decisions the operator is making on the resident’s behalf, usually without examining them.
Three questions surface what is actually being agreed to.
Question one: who is paying, and for what
Ask the vendor to describe the full revenue model in plain language. Which counterparties pay them, for what, and on what basis.
There is a real distinction between two models that can look identical in a demo. In the first, the vendor earns from services the resident genuinely needs and would otherwise buy elsewhere. Movers, packing, storage, and insurance fall into this category. The resident wanted the service, the vendor delivered it, and the economics follow the delivery.
In the second, the vendor earns from access to the resident. The product is the resident’s attention or the resident’s data, sold to third parties who want to reach a household at a moment of high purchasing intent. The move-in workflow becomes a distribution channel.
Both models can be run well. They carry different risks for the operator, and only one of them keeps the operator’s interests and the resident’s interests pointing the same direction.
The FCC has already ruled on one version of this
This is not an abstract concern. Regulators examined a specific form of it in residential real estate and prohibited it.
In its 2022 order on competitive broadband access to multiple tenant environments, the Federal Communications Commission stated: “We prohibit a provider from entering into or enforcing an exclusive revenue sharing agreement with an MTE owner.” The Commission found such agreements “anti-competitive” and said they “amount to de facto exclusive access agreements.”
The order went further and addressed graduated arrangements as well: “We also prohibit providers from entering into or enforcing graduated revenue sharing agreements with MTE owners.” Under those arrangements, “a provider pays an MTE owner a greater percentage of revenue as its penetration in the building increases,” which the Commission found “discourage competitive entry to MTEs.”
The reasoning is worth holding onto beyond broadband. When a vendor’s payment to the owner rises with how many residents the vendor captures, the owner acquires a financial interest in limiting the resident’s alternatives. That structure attracts regulatory attention wherever it appears.
Question two: what happens to the resident’s data
A move-in platform sees a household at its most exposed. Names, forwarding addresses, move dates, service selections, sometimes payment details and identity documents. Ask three specific things.
Who owns that data contractually. Where it can be sent. And what happens to it when the agreement ends.
The regulatory floor here is not theoretical for large operators. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as the California Apartment Association set out for its members, a business is covered if it has “gross annual revenues in excess of $25 million,” or “buys, receives, or sells the personal information of 50,000 or more consumers, households, or devices,” or “derives 50 percent or more of annual revenues from selling consumers’ personal information.” Residents covered by the law have the right to “opt-out of sale of personal information,” and a right “to non-discrimination in terms of price or service when a consumer exercises a privacy right under CCPA.”
The National Multifamily Housing Council flagged the same territory for the industry, publishing guidance that “identifies 14 specific steps firms should take to prepare for existing and forthcoming legislation” and advising that firms “can prepare by proactively accounting for data privacy and security considerations in business operations.”
Most operators sign move-in vendor agreements without answering the three questions above. The exposure sits with the operator regardless, because the resident handed over the information believing they were dealing with their apartment community.
Question three: whose name is on it when something goes wrong
A mover damages furniture. A service the resident selected inside your portal never shows up. An insurance policy the resident believed was in place turns out not to be.
The resident does not call the vendor. They call the leasing office, because the offer appeared inside your workflow, under your brand, at your community. Whatever the contract says about liability, the reputational cost lands on the operator.
This is where free becomes expensive in a way that never appears in the software budget. The operator has outsourced the resident experience to a party whose commercial incentive is transaction volume, while retaining the reputational consequences of how those transactions go.
Resident-facing surveys suggest operators already misjudge what residents notice. Reporting Zego’s 2025 Resident Experience Management Report, NAA found that “apartment operators ranked a technology-enabled lifestyle as being the most important to renters. Renters disagree and rank this as a much lower priority.” The same research found that according to renters, the top three reasons they are not going to renew are “rent is too expensive; poor maintenance response; security issues,” and concluded that “many properties are losing good residents for preventable reasons.”
The gap between what operators believe residents value and what residents report valuing is the gap a poorly governed vendor relationship widens.
The regulatory floor is rising
Disclosure standards in rental housing are tightening, which raises the cost of an unexamined arrangement.
In March 2026 the Federal Trade Commission opened an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on rental housing fee practices. Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, stated that “rental pricing practices that are neither clear nor transparent undermine competition and harm consumers.” The Commission noted that “the failure to advertise the true total rent limits consumers’ ability to make informed financial decisions, increasing their search costs.”
Enforcement preceded the rulemaking. The FTC noted that Invitation Homes agreed to pay $48 million over allegedly “excluding mandatory monthly fees from the advertised rent,” and that Greystar Real Estate Partners was ordered to pay $23 million for allegedly having “misrepresented the true cost of renting a property and excluded mandatory fees from the advertised rent.”
None of that speaks directly to move-in platforms. It establishes the direction of travel. An operator who can explain exactly what every party earns, and can show that residents were told plainly, is in a materially better position than one who cannot.
What a defensible arrangement looks like
A few characteristics distinguish a vendor relationship an operator can stand behind.
The revenue model is disclosed in full and the operator can restate it from memory. If explaining how the vendor makes money requires the vendor in the room, the operator does not understand what they have signed.
The monetized services are services the resident actually needs. Movers, packing, storage, and insurance are purchases the household is making regardless. Insurance in particular belongs in the workflow as financial risk mitigation, verified before keys change hands rather than chased afterwards.
Resident choice is real. The resident can decline any service and still complete their move-in and move-out without friction or penalty.
Data ownership sits with the operator, with defined limits on where information travels and a clear deletion path at termination.
Commercial terms are structured rather than hidden. Flexible commercial structures are normal in this category and there is nothing wrong with them, provided the operator can see the whole picture and it does not create an incentive to narrow the resident’s options.
Traditional tools focus on task tracking and administrative coordination. Moved embeds revenue-generating services and insurance verification directly into the workflow.
Frequently asked questions
Is there anything wrong with a vendor earning from resident services?
No. Residents buy movers, packing, storage, and insurance during every move. A vendor earning by delivering those services well is aligned with both the operator and the resident. The concern is a model where the earnings come from access to the resident rather than from service delivery, because that decouples the vendor’s incentive from the resident’s outcome.
How do we evaluate this without a procurement team?
Three documents answer most of it: the full revenue model in writing, the data processing terms, and the service level commitments with named remedies. If a vendor will not put the revenue model in writing, that is the finding.
Does paying for software actually change the incentive?
It changes who the vendor answers to. When the operator is the paying customer, the operator sets the service standard and can enforce it. That is the practical difference, and it is why the question of who pays is worth asking before the demo rather than after.
We are mid-contract. What can we do now?
Ask for the revenue model in writing and review your data terms at the next renewal window. Most agreements have a notice period that makes this a planning question rather than an emergency.
Closing
Free software is a pricing decision the vendor made, and it tells you where their revenue comes from. For an operator managing 10,000 units or more, the real test is whether the arrangement keeps the operator, the vendor, and the resident pointed in the same direction, and whether the operator can explain it plainly if a regulator, an owner, or a resident asks.
If you want a structured review of what your current move-in vendor arrangement actually commits you to, reach out to our team.
Related reading: how the move-in and move-out process generates revenue for property managers, and the complete guide to resident onboarding automation. See also Moved for multifamily operators and the resident experience.
