According to the National Multifamily Housing Council’s Rent Payment Tracker, 79.8% of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by April 6, based on a survey of 11.6 million professionally managed apartment units. This is a 1.9 percentage point increase from the share who paid rent through April 6, 2020, and compares with the 82.9% share of apartment households that paid rent by April 6, 2019.
This report marks the first anniversary of the Rent Payment Tracker, formed in response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This month’s data is more evidence of a recovering economy and the resilience of the multifamily industry,” says Doug Bibby, NMHC president. “While we are not out of the woods yet, there is light at the end of the tunnel. The recently passed American Rescue Plan included $26 billion in rental assistance as well as billions more of housing resources that will prove critical to keeping families safely and securely housed and the nation’s rental housing sector stable.”
In this month’s NMHC Rent Payment Tracker Webinar, Greg Willett, chief economist at RealPage, notes that overall Class A and B properties have fared better in collection rates than Class C or other types of apartments. March and April have been strong months overall, owed to overall economic improvement and the passage of the latest stimulus package.
At the local level, both Willett and Chase Harrington, chief operating officer at Entrata, have observed that collections also vary by location—particularly by how “open” a state is and the state’s messaging about eviction moratoriums. More “renter-friendly” cities are noted to have lower collections overall, which Harrington owes to a lack of “clear messaging” about management companies’ willingness to work with struggling renters.
Guest industry professional Nancy Goldsmith, managing director of property operations at Bozzuto, says that 88.9% of Bozzuto’s tenants made a rent payment by April 6 and 99.7% made a rent payment during the month of March. The company’s management portfolio consists of approximately 80,000 units across 265 communities in 11 states, plus 3 million square feet of retail in mixed-use buildings. Of those Bozzuto renters that are overdue, 7% owe rent that is 90 days or more past due, with some owing between six and nine months of back rent.
While rental assistance funds are now available for state and local-level distribution, Elizabeth Francisco, president of ResMan, notes there is little communication about how distribution efforts will occur, or even of the existence of assistance programs. This, in turn, makes it “difficult to gauge effectiveness” of the stimulus programs. Goldsmith adds that Bozzuto has received $200,000 to date, but only from a few of the states in which it is active and covering very little of the pandemic’s impact.
“Unless you know where to go to access this—the communication of where this is going is really quite inadequate. Consumers don’t even know the programs exist,” Goldsmith says. “Everyone’s heart is in the right place, but the communication needs to be coordinated in some fashion so that people know where to even go and ask.”
As for what renters are currently looking for, Goldsmith points out that fewer roommate situations are coming up in renter inquiries, both because of changing preferences during the pandemic and lower rents. Apartments with balconies are in high demand, and workers are considering commutes in their search, with an eye toward returning to the office.
When asked what the best way would be for property managers to blunt or prevent an eviction crisis, the experts agreed that connecting renters with assistance funds is the best solution available—with the hope that renters would be responsive to efforts to work with them. Overall, industry professionals remain optimistic about the future, despite worries regarding COVID-19 variants, the still-incomplete vaccination process, and rising housing costs.
