From April 23 to April 30, J Turner Research conducted a survey of over 3,700 apartment residents across the country about whether they would be able to pay rent—among other obligations—in May. Based on these results, the firm predicted an 80.2% rent payment rate for May—within 1 percentage point of the 80.6% rent payment rate reported by the NMHC on May 15.
“Most information about the effects of the coronavirus on multifamily indicate what’s happened regarding rent receipts, and we thought it would be interesting to forecast what would happen the next month. We were pleasantly surprised at how accurate our information is as compared to the actual results released by NMHC, a respected trade association,” said Joseph Batdorf, president of J Turner Research.
According to the report, 80.2% of respondents indicated that they would be able to pay their May rent on time. Of the remainder, 6.3% reported they could make the payment by the end of the month, and 12.9% reported they might be unable to make the payment.
“Through our research, we want to give the owners and managers a heads-up on what the rent situation is going to be like so they can proactively prepare and react to what’s going to happen month on month. We will continue to survey residents to predict rent collection for the coming months,” Batdorf added.
J Turner will release its next round of resident survey data regarding rent payments for June later this month.
