COVID-19: Impact on Apartment Marketing (Webcast Summary)

To support the multifamily community through the current COVID-19 crisis, we’ve launched a series of discussions centered around its impact on the rental housing industry with the latest data, expert insights and actionable measures stakeholders can take to minimize fallout. Register for upcoming webcasts and watch previous episodes on-demand at the COVID-19: Resource Center. This is a condensed summary from the webcast, COVID-19: Impact on Apartment Marketing, broadcast on April 23, co-hosted by RealPage VP and Deputy Chief Economist Jay Parsons and LeaseLabs SVP Business Development Brock MacLean, with special guests Sheri Killingsworth, Vice President Marketing & Communications at Lincoln Property Company; Ryan Perez, Vice President of Marketing at CF Real Estate Services; Sue Essa, Vice President Training and Development at Fairfield Residential; Chris Brown, Senior Manager Technology Property Management and Optimization at Prime Group Residential; and Rich Hughes, Head of Data Science at RealPage. LATEST APARTMENT MARKET DATA Despite the good news that both large and smaller metros were seeing an overall decrease in new Coronavirus cases—with Albany, GA; New Orleans, LA; New York Metro; Edwards, CO; and Houma, LA topping the charts for the biggest decreases —another 4.4M US workers filed unemployment in the week ending April 18, bringing the unadjusted total for unemployment filings over the last 5 weeks to more than 26M. The fallout from this unprecedented job loss has leasing traffic, guest cards and new leases continuing to trend downwards. Although these fundamentals were down dramatically YoY, demand was better than late March and early April numbers with new lease signings landing at 15.6%. This activity proved to be much better than the market anticipated—with the most extreme forecasts having predicted a decline of 80%-90%. Rescinded move-out notices continue an upward trajectory that has surpassed 3.5% as of April 18...