Glossary

Vacant Unit Days (Down Days)

Also known as: Down Days, Vacant Days

The number of calendar days a unit sits vacant and off-line between a resident's move-out and the next resident's move-in, comprising both make-ready turn time and any additional marketing or lease-up time once the unit is rent-ready.

Vacant unit days translate directly, dollar for dollar, into vacancy loss — each additional down day is one more day of lost gross rent on that unit — which is why it is tracked as a leading operational KPI distinct from the trailing, portfolio-level vacancy-rate percentage. Sophisticated tracking decomposes the figure into 'turn days' (move-out to rent-ready) and 'lease-up days' (rent-ready to move-in) to diagnose whether a slow turnaround reflects a maintenance or vendor-capacity constraint versus a leasing or pricing problem, since the two call for entirely different fixes. Stabilized conventional portfolios commonly target combined down days in the low double digits, with meaningfully longer down days expected and explicitly underwritten during a heavy value-add renovation program, where extended vacant unit days are a planned cost of the business plan rather than an operational failure.