NMHC Rent Payment Tracker: 79.4% of Households Paid Rent by Oct. 6

The National Multifamily Housing Council’s Rent Payment Tracker data shows that 79.4% of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by Oct. 6, based on a survey of 11.4 million professionally managed apartment units nationwide.

This share is unchanged from the share of apartment households who paid rent through Oct. 6, 2019. Last month, 76.4% of households made a full or partial rent payment by Sept. 6.

“Our initial findings for October show that despite ongoing efforts by apartment community owners and operators to help residents facing financial distress through creative and nuanced payment plans, rent relief, and other approaches, renters and the broader multifamily industry are confronting growing challenges,” says Doug Bibby, NMHC president.

In this latest NMHC Rent Payment Tracker Webinar, Bibby notes that the industry has come through the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic “remarkably well,” with renters by and large working to meet their commitments and owners and operators working to accommodate them. However, ongoing job losses and an ongoing “hokey pokey in regard to the stimulus package” from Congress remain significant roadblocks and future risks.

Elizabeth Francisco, president of ResMan, cautions that the Rent Payment Tracker dataset does not paint a full picture of how much rent is being collected per unit. According to ResMan data, revenue per unit has fallen by 7% since the start of the pandemic. The number of households on payment plans has risen in August and September, and many who have moved to month-to-month leases remain on them.

Jeff Adler, vice president of Yardi Matrix, adds another wrinkle to the data – it does not convey how many households may have left the rental system altogether in order to move in with family and friends, which he considers “household destruction.” This is more pronounced in highly dense areas, where housing costs are higher.

Overall, Adler expects the multifamily industry to “continue on a slow grind forward,” despite ongoing operator and renter struggles.

“As we have called for months now, leaders in both parties in Congress and in the Trump administration need to step up, return to the negotiating table, and provide much-needed assistance and support to the tens of millions of Americans who call an apartment home,” Bibby says. “In light of the CDC’s nationwide eviction moratorium—a policy that will do nothing to deal with the long-term economic pain residents and housing providers are facing—policymakers need to act now to forestall the health and financial crises we are already grappling with from evolving into a housing crisis, which would undermine the economic recovery and destabilize the country’s housing market.”