Best questions for tenants survey about rent affordability

Here are some of the best questions for a tenants survey about rent affordability, along with tips to craft them for maximum insight. If you want to build your own survey in seconds, you can generate a Tenants survey about rent affordability with Specific’s AI survey builder.

The best open-ended questions for tenants surveys about rent affordability

We love open-ended questions because they unlock stories, context, and emotions that simple checkboxes often miss. Use them when you want tenants to describe their unique situations and share ideas or worries in their own words. Here are the 10 questions I’d add to a tenants survey about rent affordability:

1. How have rising rent costs affected your ability to pay for other essentials like food, healthcare, or transportation?

2. What factors make your current rent feel affordable or unaffordable for you?

3. Have you made any changes to your living situation due to rent increases in the past year? Please describe.

4. If you’ve struggled to pay rent, what actions have you taken (e.g., working extra jobs, moving, seeking assistance)?

5. Do you feel your landlord is responsive to concerns about rent or housing costs? Why or why not?

6. How have local policies or rental market trends impacted your rental experience?

7. What kind of support or resources would help you better manage your rent payments?

8. If you had to move because of unaffordable rent, where would you consider relocating and why?

9. How does the cost of rent in your current area compare to similar areas you’ve considered?

10. Is there anything else you’d like to share about how rent affordability is affecting your life right now?

When you ask questions like these, you tap into perspectives you might not expect—especially important when statistics show that 50% of all U.S. renter households are cost-burdened, spending over 30% of their income on housing costs [1].

The best single-select multiple-choice questions for tenants surveys about rent affordability

Single-select multiple-choice questions come in handy when you want to quantify a problem or kick off a conversation, especially if tenants might be unsure what to share or feel overwhelmed by open text fields. Offering a few thoughtful options invites quick, honest responses, and you can always follow up afterward for more detail. Here are a few examples:

Question: What percentage of your household income goes toward rent and utilities each month?

• Less than 30%

• 31%–50%

• More than 50%

• I'm not sure

Question: In the past year, have you experienced a rent increase?

• Yes, my rent went up significantly

• Yes, but it was a small increase

• No, my rent stayed the same

• No, my rent decreased

Question: What is the biggest factor affecting your ability to afford rent right now?

• Low income or job loss

• Rising rent prices

• High utility costs

• Other

When to follow up with "why?" Follow up with why when you notice an answer that might mean something different for each person—or when you want to dig deeper into the context behind a choice. For instance, if a respondent selects "Rising rent prices" as their biggest affordability challenge, asking "Why is this the main issue for you?" can reveal factors like local supply, landlord policies, or inadequate wages. You might find actionable insight that shapes future decisions or advocacy.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Include "Other" when your listed options might not cover every scenario. This gives tenants a voice to highlight overlooked challenges and, paired with a follow-up question (“Can you describe what’s affecting you most?”), you get unexpected insights that elevate your understanding.

Should you use an NPS question in a tenants survey about rent affordability?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) isn’t just for SaaS or retail—it’s a smart way to measure loyalty and satisfaction in the rental world, too. Using an NPS-style question, you can quickly quantify whether tenants would recommend their living situation to others, which often mirrors their sense of affordability and overall well-being. For a razor-sharp picture, create a purpose-built NPS survey for tenants about rent affordability and follow up with tailored open-text questions for 0-6 (detractors), 7-8 (passives), and 9-10 (promoters) responses. This helps segment different groups and understand what drives advocacy—or what needs to change.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions are where qualitative gold lives. Tools like Specific’s automated follow-ups can probe for clarification, nudge for stories, or ask “why” immediately after each answer—all in real time. This transforms the survey from a one-way form into a lively conversation, surfacing richer, unexpected themes.

• Tenant: "Rent is hard to afford lately."

• AI follow-up: "Can you explain which factors have made it harder for you to afford your rent recently?"

Without that follow-up, the original answer remains vague. But using dynamic AI, you get specific reasons: rent hikes, job loss, rising utility costs, or issues unique to the respondent’s location. This allows you to link responses to larger trends, like the 62.7% median housing cost ratio among lowest-income renters [2], or to compare local challenges in places such as Florida, where 62% of renters are cost-burdened [3].

How many follow-ups to ask? In our experience, 2–3 follow-ups per question get you the most context without survey fatigue. The key is having settings that stop following up when you’ve captured what you need—Specific lets you customize this easily.

This makes it a conversational survey, so tenants feel like they’re sharing experiences rather than filling out paperwork. That higher engagement leads to deeper, more authentic insights, which you might otherwise miss.

AI survey response analysis is easy: With all that rich qualitative feedback, you may wonder how to make sense of it. Analyzing responses with AI means you can summarize patterns and themes from hundreds of detailed stories instantly, without manually reading every answer.

Try generating a survey and see how automatic follow-ups bring your data to life every time.

How to write a ChatGPT prompt to design tenants survey questions about rent affordability

If you want to use GPTs like ChatGPT to brainstorm even more questions specific to your context, start with a simple request:

Begin with:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for tenants survey about rent affordability.

If you want better results, add context about your goals, audience, or focus area. For example:

I work at a non-profit that advocates for affordable housing. Can you suggest 10 open-ended questions for a tenants survey about rent affordability, focusing on the impact of rising costs on families with children?

After that, try categorizing your questions for structure and clarity:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Finally, zoom in on the categories most interesting to you—then prompt again:

Generate 10 questions for the category “Coping Strategies” and 10 for “Policy Suggestions”.

This iterative process helps you design an informed, actionable survey tailored to your tenants and concerns.

What makes a survey conversational, and why use AI to build one?

A conversational survey is designed to feel like a back-and-forth chat—dynamic, responsive, and tailored—rather than a static form. AI survey generators, like Specific, use natural language and dynamic follow-ups to make the experience engaging and human. You get richer feedback because respondents are more comfortable and more likely to share details.

Here’s a quick comparison:

Why use AI for tenants surveys? Because rent affordability is a complex, deeply personal issue—and with so many tenants balancing rent, bills, and life stress, you can’t afford to miss the nuances. An AI survey example built for tenants will uncover insights that point to real solutions, not just pie charts. If you want to see what it’s like to make and analyze a conversational survey, check out our guide on how to create a tenants survey about rent affordability.

Specific offers a best-in-class user experience for both tenants and survey creators, with features like dynamic follow-ups, chat-based survey editing, and instant AI response analysis. The result: faster turnaround, higher-quality data, and a far more enjoyable process for everyone.

See this rent affordability survey example now

Experience a real conversational survey and discover the difference in depth and engagement from traditional forms—get started and see how easily you can collect actionable feedback from tenants about rent affordability.