The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 86.2 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by September 13 in its survey of 11.4 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.
This is a 2.4-percentage point, or 279,457-household decrease from the share who paid rent through September 13, 2019 and compares to 86.9 percent that had paid by August 13, 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.
“While it remains clear that many apartment residents continue to prioritize their housing obligations and that apartment owners and operators remain committed to meeting them halfway with creative and nuanced approaches, the reality is that the second week of September figures shows ongoing deterioration of rent payment figures – representing hundreds of thousands of households who are increasingly at risk,” said Doug Bibby, NMHC President.
“This sadly comes as little surprise given that Congress and the Administration have failed to come back to the table and extend the critical protections that supported apartment residents and the nation’s consumer base during the initial months of the pandemic.
“Instead of being satisfied with a half-baked nationwide eviction moratorium which does nothing to deal with renters’ real underlying problem—financial distress—lawmakers should instead look to the successful model of the CARES Act and provide economic support to those who need it most—the tens-of-millions that call an apartment home, revitalizing the recovery at the same time.”
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.
Find more information, including the methodology, on the NMHC Rent Payment Tracker here.
The NMHC Rent Payment Tracker FAQ can be found here.
