The Price Index
The Multifamily R&M Price Index
A quarterly, invoice-derived read on what multifamily properties actually pay for repairs and maintenance products versus the best verified market price for the same items. Built from The Benchmark's line-item analysis, published every quarter on this page. The industry's existing benchmarks say what properties spend; this one says what the same purchases should have cost.
Why this index exists
The benchmark data available to multifamily today is annual, survey-based, and category-level. It can say what the average property spent on repairs and maintenance; it cannot say whether any of that spending was at the right price, because it never sees the invoice line. The National Apartment Association's income and expense research, the industry's best public source, put repairs and maintenance near $1,098 per unit for 2024 inside roughly $8,657 per unit of total operating expenses. Useful context, but a property can sit exactly on those averages and still overpay for everything it buys.
What the index measures
The index is built from the same analysis The Benchmark performs every quarter: each invoice line a property paid, identified down to the product and SKU, priced against the same product from cheaper verified suppliers. Aggregated and anonymized, that produces a measure no survey can: the gap between what properties actually pay and the best verified price available for the identical item, by category, quarter over quarter. It answers the question the category averages cannot: not what did properties spend, but what should the same purchases have cost.
How prices are verified
A price counts as verified only if it is a real, available price for the same product from a real supplier at the time of analysis, and every price in a Benchmark report is linked to its source. The index inherits that standard: nothing in it is estimated, modeled, or drawn from a survey response. Sample size is stated plainly in every release, in properties and invoice volume, and it grows as the analyzed portfolio grows. Small and honest beats large and vague, and the method is the same at any scale.
The release schedule
The index publishes quarterly, matching the cadence of the underlying analysis, with the inaugural release built on Q3 2026 data, timed for budget season, when the numbers are most useful. Each release updates this page in place with that quarter's findings: the observed gap between paid and best verified prices by category, the products where overpayment concentrated, and quarter-over-quarter movement. Releases are announced by email and on the resources library.
Ahead of the first release
What the underlying analysis has already found
- $22,546
- Average annual savings discovered per property, across a sample averaging 200 units
- 451%
- Average return on product investment, or 4.51x
To receive each release when it publishes, write to isaiah@joinstilwell.com with the subject “Price Index releases,” or start a conversation from any page on this site.
Start with one property and one quarter
Send us a quarter of invoices and we will show you what it should have cost. If there is nothing there, we will tell you that too.
