The amount of rent payments collected in the U.S. has ticked down slightly to 79.3% of apartment households making a full or partial rent payment by August 6, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council’s Rent Payment Tracker.
While this is a slight increase from July 6 this year, it is a 1.9 percentage point decrease from the share of renters who paid rent through August 6, 2019.
NMHC said that rent collections in early August are as expected, based on collections during the previous few months, but the cut-off of extra unemployment benefits may make things worse.
“Over the past few months apartment residents have largely been able to meet their housing obligations,” David Schwartz, NMHC chair and CEO said in a statement. “In no small part, this is due to the enhanced unemployment benefits enacted under the CARES Act and significant steps by apartment owners and operators to help their residents.”
“These unemployment benefits that have proven so important to so many households have now lapsed, meaning greater financial distress for millions and the potential worsening of America’s housing affordability crisis,” Schwartz said.
According to RealPage, missed payments were most frequent in lower-priced Class C properties. Through August 6, this month’s rent was collected from 72.7% of the residents in Class C units, while 82% to 83% in the Class A and Class B inventories were made in time.
Year over year, rent collections are 7.7 percentage points lower in Las Vegas; 7.5 percentage points off in Los Angeles; and 7 percentage points off in San Jose.
The smallest share of rent collected was in New York, where 64.5% of households were up-to-date on rent payments, RealPage said.
