The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 91.3 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by July 20 in its survey of 11.1 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.
This is a 2.1-percentage point decrease from the share who paid rent through July 20, 2019 and compares to 92.2 percent that had paid by June 20, 2020. These data encompass a wide variety of market-rate rental properties across the United States, which can vary by size, type and average rental price.
“The extended unemployment benefits and other government support that have proven critical to keeping apartment residents in their homes expire in just a few days,” said Doug Bibby, NMHC President. “Lawmakers are currently negotiating, but Members of Congress and Trump administration leaders need to understand that unless comprehensive action is taken now to protect the tens of millions of Americans who live in an apartment home, they risk destabilizing the nation’s housing market, undermining the nascent economic recovery, and turning the ongoing health and economic crisis into a housing crisis.”
The NMHC Rent Payment Tracker metric provides insight into changes in resident rent payment behavior over the course of each month, and, as the dataset ages, between months. While the tracker is intended to serve as an indicator of resident financial challenges, it is also intended to track the recovery as well, including the effectiveness of government stimulus and subsidies.
However, noteworthy technical issues may make historical comparisons imprecise. For example, factors such as varying days of the week on which data are collected; individual companies’ differing payment collection policies; shelter-in-place orders’ effects on residents’ ability to deliver payments in person or by mail; the closure of leasing offices, which may delay operators’ payment processing; and other factors can affect how and when rent data is processed and recorded.
Total unit counts may change as units are leased or vacated and survey methodology is refined.
Find more information, including the methodology, on the NMHC Rent Payment Tracker here.
