After a full month of repercussions the housing market and job market have faced due to the pandemic, 80.2% of apartment households still managed to make a full or partial rent payment by May 6, according to The National Multifamily Housing Council’s latest Rent Payment Tracker.
Despite the high number, this is still a 1.5 percentage point decrease from the share who paid rent during the same period last year.
According to the report, 78% of renters were able to make a rent payment in April. Last April, 82.9% of renters made a payment.
“Despite the fact that over twenty million people lost their jobs in April, for the second month in a row, we are seeing evidence that apartment renters who can pay rent are stepping up and doing so,” said Doug Bibby, NMHC president. “We expect May to largely mirror April, when the payment rate increased throughout the month as financial assistance worked its way to people’s bank accounts.”
Meanwhile, New York extended its eviction moratorium through August, where 44% of renters said that they would struggle to make a rent payment.
Over half of those who responded to a survey from PropertyNest said that they would pay their rent as usual on May 1 (55.7%). But, there was still 11% that said they wouldn’t have the money for May 1 rent and 10.8% said they would have to wait until they received their stimulus check.
“However, we are in uncharted waters and will be watching this closely over the course of the month as millions of households will not be able to access unemployment benefits, and those who have may find that they are not enough to cover rent plus all the other financial pressures caused by this crisis,” Bibby continued. “Those benefits will also likely fall short in high-cost areas. That’s why we are calling on Congress to include $100 billion in direct renter assistance in the next pandemic relief package.”
