Tailwind Group Earns National Recognition for Resident Experience, Operational Excellence, and Value-Add Projects

Resident Experience & Operational Excellence

Tailwind Group, a leading owner and operator of student housing communities nationwide, has once again been recognized among the Top 10 Student Housing Companies in the 2025 ORA® Power Ranking by J Turner Research, marking more than five consecutive years of Top 10 performance.

The ORA® (Online Reputation Assessment) score is derived from resident reviews across major platforms and online listing services. It evaluates over 3,200 off-campus student housing communities nationwide. Tailwind Group’s continued ranking in the Top 10 demonstrates sustained performance and consistency in providing a high-quality resident experience at scale.

“This recognition is a direct reflection of our commitment to people,” said Kadi Mancuso Rice, Vice President of Leasing and Marketing at Tailwind Group. “At Tailwind, we are committed to fighting for the highest possible good of the people who matter most, and this recognition is a direct reflection of that standard in action. It comes to life through our teams, especially our onsite leasing and maintenance teams, who deliver the resident experience every day. What makes this especially meaningful is that we are doing this while growing our portfolio through complex, value-add investments, proving that when you prioritize people, performance follows.”

Tailwind Group’s achievements are reaffirmed by its recognition in all five categories of the 2025 Einstein Best of Awards: Customer Service, Communication, Cleanliness, Maintenance, and Security. These rankings highlight the company’s operational excellence in areas most important to residents and demonstrate that our focus on fundamentals continues to set us apart.

A key difference in Tailwind Group’s performance is its portfolio strategy. The company continues to grow through value-added acquisitions, often taking on communities with challenging reputations. Maintaining Top 10 ORA® performance with this model demonstrates the strength of Tailwind’s platform and the team’s ability to improve both asset performance and the resident experience.

At the property level, the Quarters Ames ranked #26 among the Top 100 properties nationwide, earning an ORA® score of 93. This recognition highlights top-tier performance in a fully stabilized and optimized community.

For a complete list of rankings, please view the full report here: The 2025 Student Housing Company ORA® Power Ranking

Value-Add Renovations

Tailwind Group also received two awards at the Student Housing Business Innovator Awards held at the InterFace Student Housing Conference held in Austin, TX:

• Best Property Turnaround – The Landing CoMo (Columbia, MO – University of Missouri), a complete transformation from a distressed asset acquired at roughly 44% occupancy to a fully stabilized, 100% occupied community with substantial rent and NOI growth.

• Best Property Renovation/Value-Add Project – The Landing Lawrence (Lawrence, KS – University of Kansas), a multimillion-dollar renovation completed ahead of schedule and under budget, transforming a 26-year-old asset into a competitive, modern community.

Both projects were completed with long-term partners RC Contractors (Lansing, MI) and HPA Design Group (Dallas, TX). This powerful trio has completed 10+ value-add student housing renovations in the past five years and continues to raise the bar and set new standards.

“We have become almost solely focused on our value-add acquisition strategy over the past several years,” said Brandon Smith, President & CEO of Tailwind Group. “We are hyper-focused on entering great college markets at an attractive cost basis. From there, we work with incredible partners like RC Contractors and HPA Design Group to build and optimize our value-add scope. Both projects that we were rewarded for checked all our boxes, and we could not be prouder of the results we achieved for our team members, residents, investors, and the local communities in which the real estate was transformed.”