Before you read into the headlines about "Nearly a Third of U.S. Apartment Renters Didn't Pay April Rent", here is the rest of the story:
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Here's a quick update to the data we provided to the Wall Street Journal regarding renter payment data as of this past Sunday April 5th, looking at approximately 15% of the professionally managed apartments in the US that use Entrata Accounting Software.
The WSJ wanted to run the data as of the 5th to be as timely as possible, which we applaud. Because the 5th was a Sunday, many apartment renters didn't have to pay rent until Monday the 6th (without being late), so the headline here is now quite outdated and doesn't reflect whats really happening.
Now that we have data for the 6th and 7th of April, we can see the following trends (comparing payment data from March 1st - March 7th and conflating it with data from April 1st to April 7th).
Unpaid rent (delinquency) went up by 2.92% for conventional apartment communities, with 15.08% of April apartment rent unpaid as of this morning.
Unpaid rent (delinquency) went up by 6.55% for student-housing with 13.81% of April student apartment rent unpaid as of this morning. This data includes data from 23 of the 25 largest student housing operators.
Retail / Commercial delinquency went up by 14.77%.
Summary: Apartment renters for the most part still paid their rents as expected in April. We expect apartment delinquency to spike considerably in May as the lock-down will extend through April 30th at the earliest. If the lock down persists into June, we expect the apartment industry to be exposed to significant risk--particularly in states that have banned evictions.
Retail / commercial operators are already being hammered, and likely is already effecting the ability of these operators to meet mortgage commitments to lenders by the end of April.
Sadly some renters who haven't lost their jobs are taking advantage of eviction bans from various states. We recommend Governors roll back eviction bans for renters who haven't lost their jobs to ensure systemic stability.
