The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 78.4 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by October 6 in its survey of 11.8 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.
This is a 1.0 percentage point decrease from the share who paid rent through October 6, 2020 and compares to 79.4 percent that had been paid by October 6, 2019. This data encompasses a wide variety of market-rate rental properties across the United States, which can vary by size, type and average rental price.
“The uneven economic recovery and recent natural disasters are likely playing a role in the decrease of rent payments over the last month,” said Doug Bibby, NMHC President. “Accordingly, it is that much more urgent that rental assistance funds are distributed as quickly as possible to renters and housing providers in need.”
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.
The NMHC Rent Payment Tracker FAQ can be found here.
